Canon Photo Printers: S900 and S9000 – THG.RU

Introduction

The article first appeared in Tom’s Hard News Email Newsletter

The start of a new year seems to have given Canon the inspiration to pull out all the stops in its inkjet printer offerings. While Canon’s competition is remarkable for its absence (i.e., none of them announced any new products), the Japanese manufacturer has launched no less than six new models.

Three of the six are desktop products:

• The S200 replaces the (mediocre) S100;
  

  

• The S520 supersedes the S500;
  

  

• The S750 does away with the S630.
  

  

The other three are photo-dedicated:

The S820 is the “in” thing nowadays, since it is a stand-alone product. That being said, it has the same characteristics as its predecessor, the S800. So, there’s not much new there. The two really novel printers are the S900 and S9000, which have three new features to offer:

• The number of nozzles has doubled. This means that printout times, already faster with the brand’s older model, leave the competition in the dust.
• Border-free printing.
• Border-free A3+ photo printing (S9000).

History

BJC-8200

Canon was always criticized for its color printing, but ever since the BJC-8200, it has built a solid reputation for itself in this area. For the first time on a Canon model, the dots were really invisible, the colors bright and faithful. Its prints were of even better quality than those of the rival companies’ flagship models – the HP Photosmart and Epson Stylus Photo.

The system that Canon used for this product was not much different than the one on its desktop versions. The BJC-8200 used a set of six cartridges (black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta and yellow) with separate ink tanks inserted in a semi-fixed head block, which we discuss below.

S800 Photo

Canon typically changes its series every year. In 2001, the top-of-the-line BJC 8200, which had led the ranks in an impressive number of comparative tests, gave way to the S800. Its new features were not actually very important, the most notable change was its name – like the rest in the series, the “BJC” was replaced by a plain “S”. Another change was that the user could notice a slight increase in printing speed. There were still 1536 nozzles, but the print speed was 4 ppm for color, as well as for black and white.

S900 and S9000

So, we can’t say we have seen much change in two years, which makes the launch of the S900 and S9000 all the more interesting. The number of nozzles has doubled, now totaling 3072. This means the speeds have gone up accordingly: 7 ppm in color and black and white. And while its rivals have opted for adding new functions to their products (such as HP’s paper detection and analysis), up until now, Canon was quite happy to deliver a raw printer. But not anymore; the S520, S850, S900 and S9000 now have border-free printing.

Heads: Advantages and Drawbacks

The print head block is, as we already explained in our desktop printer comparisons, the core element in the printing process. Print quality depends on it, both when the product is new, and in the long term.

HP and Lexmark have heads integrated into the cartridges, which means new heads every time the cartridge is changed, at least if you buy original cartridges. The only trouble is that this makes a big difference in the price of a new cartridge and, indirectly, in the cost per page for the device.

Epson, on the other hand, has a head fitted to the printer. This makes the cartridges quite a bit cheaper, but, as the heads stay in place, they wear out in time. So there are three risks:

1. When it is not used, the head is inclined to clog because the ink dries. There is not much chance of this with HP and Lexmark, where the heads are always new. This becomes fairly tiresome in time, because the heads must be cleaned so often, and cleaning is a long process — noisy and ink-consuming.
2. The more you print, the more wear on the heads. Results towards the end of the device’s lifetime are likely to be of poorer quality than at the beginning.
3. The printer warranty also covers the head. When the warranty runs out, you will have to change your printer if the heads cannot be unclogged, unless you decide to have it repaired – but this is expensive and not always the wisest decision.

Canon has semi-fixed heads. Actually, they are integrated into a separate block and are neither part of the printer nor the cartridge. So, you should change the block when you think the print quality is no longer up to snuff, or when the heads are completely clogged.

The Tests

The test procedure was more or less the same as the one we used for our desktop printers.

The only difference is in our method for calculating cost per page. The cost per page for desktops does not apply here. For these devices, it seemed more sensible to find the cost per photo. Afterwards, you can compare this with the prices charged by your usual photo developer.

The tests consisted of a series of prints in monochrome and color, each with the same level of precision in the characters, color block unity and color rendering.

As usual, we also tested the time taken to print one page and a series of pages, both in monochrome and in color.

The Tests, Continued

We then tested the specific photo features of the products.

This explains the test prints of 10 x 15, A4 and A3 photos, also in monochrome and in color.

Lastly, we tested color chart results in gray, cyan, magenta and yellow. Those of the S800 were very good, especially for the dark yellows, and that is exactly where its rivals mostly failed.

Just a word about the following pages: to make for easier reading, our comments only refer to the S900, because the same applies invariably to both models. Print speeds are identical, as are the cartridges and print quality for each.

S900 and S9000: Speed

Standard Tests

In case you were in doubt, the S900 cannot be considered a general purpose printer. If you measure its times against those of desktop printers, it hardly compares with devices that are under $150 – it costs three times as much! There is one notable point, though: the S900 is very slow in black and white, but it is fairly fast in color. This implies that it has been optimized for this mode, which our photo tests confirmed.

Photo Tests

A 10 x 15 cm photo printed in 4 minutes 40 seconds on the S800. The S900 is a lot faster, and only takes 94 seconds! It can even rival the fastest ones around, such as the brand new Canon S520 and S750, which replace the S500 and S630, respectively.

We also tested the S9000 in A3 border-free mode. Our test photo was printed out in less than eight minutes.

Comparison With Rivals: A4 Photo Print

When compared with other photo-dedicated models, the S900 and S9000 are easy winners. The most surprising comparison is with the S800. The difference we noted in the 21 x 29.7 cm photo prints is one to four. In many cases, this would justify dropping the old model in favor of the new. Its Epson and HP rivals are way behind it here.

The HP Photosmart is a de facto general purpose model, the only one with really good desktop printing results. On the other hand, the fact that it doesn’t focus on the photo mode eventually becomes a disadvantage. Overall, it is six times slower than the S900 in high resolution.

The S900 comes out fairly well in the end. It may be slower than the HP in desktop mode, but remember that this configuration is only for use as a spare printer. If you can afford it, the ideal solution is to combine it with a laser printer.

S900 and S9000: Quality

Results

The photo tests were done on Canon PR101 paper. We consider this to be the best on the market, though it is also among the priciest. One of its characteristics is that you have to wait about a quarter of an hour before the colors reach their final tones.

As we said above, the mark for color is 9 / 10. Along with the S800 (which has exactly the same quality), this is the best score out of all those tested so far. Prints are nearly perfect, but we did find two flaws:

• The prints are fragile. They are very sensitive to scratching of any sort. It’s best to keep them protected in an album if you want to store them for a long time.
• There are still defects in tone, especially in the lighter colors. This is almost certainly the only aspect which distinguishes it from a traditional silver print.

The greatest disappointment was the black and white mode, which was far worse than the HP Photosmart. This is its main failing. So don’t count on this one if you want to print monochrome photos! Many desktop printers do the job much better.

With regard to desktop printing, results are not bad, even though they lack precision. They are far from the lovely prints you get with the S500, S520 or the Photosmart!

S900/ S9000 Compared To Their Rivals

The figures speak for themselves. The photo scores of the S800, S900 and S9000 are spoiled by their poor monochrome results.

S900 and S9000: Cost Per Page

Cartridge Life

No surprises here. The cartridge life varies greatly, particularly notable are the excellent quality of the black cartridge and the weakness of the lightest colors (photo Cyan and photo Magenta).

Photo Ink Costs

The prices above were estimated without the paper, which is very expensive, often in the region of $1 per A4 page. Canon does not crush its rivals quite the way it usually does, but its printers do come out somewhat better. This is exactly where the HP printer has its downfall: its photos work out to be twice as expensive as its rivals.

Conclusion

More than ever before, the Canon 2002 product range has gone on the offensive. In desktop printers, the new S520 and S750 are good replacements for the S500 and S630. In the scanner category, the D1250U2, the first USB 2-compatible model for the general public, already sets the standard for its kind. We’ll take a look at this scanner later in a 1200 dpi scanner test.

As we have seen, the S900 / S9000 are, in our view, the best photo printers around at the moment. But it’s best to bear a few things in mind if you want to get the most out of them:

• Avoid monochrome photo prints. The results are lousy.
• These are not desktop printers. Used in this mode, they are slow and the characters lack precision.
• Keep a stock of Photo cartridges in light Cyan and light Magenta. They last a third of the time that the Cyan and Black ones do.
• Photo prints are wonderful and likely to deceive many people into thinking they are looking at an excellent traditional print. An experienced eye will be able to pick out a few slight defects in the tones, however.

The number of flaws could put many people off, but don’t let yourself be fazed. We have listed the main problems likely to be identified by really demanding users. These models are actually high quality and very attractive. What we especially liked was the S9000, which is sold for a pretty reasonable price when you think of all that it has to offer.