Canon Pixma IP4600

Canon Pixma IP4600 Photo Printer

While the iP4600's photo quality and speed are pleasing, its lack of media slots and lackluster text speed are not. The $100 (as of 3/3/09) Canon Pixma iP4600 color inkjet printer is inexpensive to buy and maintain. Although it's minimally equipped and slow when printing text, it's still worth considering for the budget-minded home user and amateur photographer. The Pixma iP4600 printed fairly well on plain paper in our tests. Though text pages exited at a snail's pace of 7.3 pages per minute (ppm), they looked black and crisp on all but the most intricate fonts. Photos were slightly grainy and pale, but still acceptable. Predictably, Canon's own photo paper improved matters: Images showed better detail and smoothness, and flesh tones were pleasing despite containing a slight hint of yellow. Best of all, the iP4600 printed photos quickly--its 1.9-ppm rate is currently one of the best results we've seen. All that attractive output costs well below average to print, too. At the time of this review, the standard-size inks cost $15 for a 350-page pigment black for printing text (or 4.3 cents per page). The remaining dye-based colors--cyan, magenta, yellow, and a second photo black designed for greater color depth--have yields ranging from 471 to 665 pages.