Printer confusion: Canon pixma 6700, 6600, 6000, 5200 etc

[Xalky]

Thanks very much for all your help. I've decided to go with the 6700 as I will be printing loads of photos and not much text. Plus since you all have a few printers each and it seems to be the norm to get the best for what the use, I figure I can always get a good printer for text.
I'm still unsure which direction I'll take with regard to ink tanks/cartridges/carts, but I'll let you know how I get on and what I decide. If the printer is as good as ghwellsjr and Trigger 37 say, it might be worth voiding the warranty to not need a small mortgage to get new ink. And if it does stuff up, I'll try to get it fixed under warranty and let you know what Canon say.

As far as print quality goes, you made a good choice with the ip6700d. I just recently acquired one and it prints color photos beautifully. I had an ip5000 before and I would say that the print quality was similar but not quite as nice as the ip6700d.

The cheapest I've seen OEM cli-8 carts sell for is around $13 US on e-bay, but by the time you pay for shipping it's probably no cheaper than buying locally. I print a lot of photos, so I decided to refill my cli-8 carts. So far, I don't regret the decision. I opted to buy a spare set of cli-8 carts so that I can just swap carts as they empty out, but that's an extra $90+ up front to pay for the convenience of having a spare set of carts ready to go. I don't reccomend getting aftermarket cartridges for the cli-8, because of the hassle of swapping the chip over to the 3rd party cartridge. IMO, if your gonna go thru the hassle of swapping a chip, you may as well refill and save about $3 a refill. It costs under $1 per refill with quality ink when you buy your ink in 4oz bottles. You can buy a whole refill set of ink for ip6700d for about $40 which will yield 72-80 refills. I only buy top quality refill ink, stay away from the cheap chinese ink as it could cause problems. For penny's more per refill it's worth getting Ink Specialists ink.

I've had my ip6700d for less than 2 months now, but I've already refilled all six cartridges about 3 times each, thats 18 refills. total cost=under $18. If I had to buy 18 OEM cartridges the cost would have been $270. $270 - $18= a $252 savings in 2 months. So, screw the warranty. I've already saved enough $$$ to buy a brand new printer.

The technique for refilling the cli-8 is exactly the same as filling a bci-6 cartridge, they're almost identical except for the chip.

As far as the black text goes I use a Brother laser printer/copier/fax, Intellifax 2820 . It's a laser and it prints black text at about 40ppm and its much cheaper to operate than an inkjet for text printing.

 

[ghwellsjr]

One last point,... I know a lot of people are very dissapointed that these new printers don't have the fast text or black print speed. That made me quite upset myself as my old i560 will print fast black at 22 ppm, and that is moving. All the spec's on the iP6600D that are printed for the US market, won't even tell you what the speed is of the black text. I downloaded the UK, and the AUS Canon spec', which are the same, but their documents tell you a lot more. The black print speed for text in the iP6600 is 18ppm,.. not all that bad. I still think it should be as fast or faster than the i560 because the printhead has 512 nozzles comparied to the 256 in the i560. The horizontal pitch of the 6600 is 1/9600" and I can't believe they move the print head slower, back and forth. The vertical pitch is 1/2400" and that could be the problem. Once they set the driver to achieve that resolution, it must take more passes to print the black text lines. That would be the only way it could be slower. It all comes down to the print driver, and what they have enabled the printer to do. Each time you select a different quality setting, you are actually reducing the resolution, but because they are not using Pigmented black, they leave the text resolution higher so the "Dye" ink will look good. You would think that if it could go faster,they would do it. If anyone knows the anwer I would really like to hear it.

The 6000 series have six cartridges and are ideal for printing on photo paper. The 5000 (and below) have five cartridges and are ideal for printing on plain paper but they do fine on photo paper, too. The main difference is that the 5000 series includes a pigment black ink cartridge which will not smear on plain paper if it gets wet. Dye inks do not smear on photo paper. Both series include a dye black, and instead of a pigment black, the 6000 series has two lighter colored cartridges (magenta and cyan) too bet better control of fine color gradations.

Trigger37, the reason for this confusion is that Canon mislabels "text printing" to imply that it has to do with when you are printing black text. What they really mean is when you are printing in greyscale on plain paper, whether it is text, images or a combination, they use the pigment black cartridge with its wider printhead exclusively.

The 6000 series printers do not have a pigment black cartridge so that is the reason why it is slower. The pigment black nozzles on the 5000 series and below are bigger than the dye nozzles and are placed at 600 per inch. The dye nozzles are placed at 1200 per inch. So the combination of having more nozzles placed farther apart is where the "black text" speed come from. If you print black text on photo paper, it will be just as slow as printing a color image because it will use the smaller denser dye black nozzles, even if it has pigment black nozzles. And of course this is the only way you can print on a 6000 series printer because it does not have a pigment black cartridge.

One more thing, this speed for printing on a 5000 series printer in black/grey on plain paper only applies if you are doing normal printing. If you select duplex, booklet, or bordered, it reduces the intensity of the pigment black and adds in dye colors, thus slowing it way down to what it would be like on a 6000 series printer or on photo paper.

 

[NaoWiv]

Trigger 37,

Unfortunately I had made up my mind to buy the iP6700D and have only just gotten back to check messages. I got it online through printers.com.au for $289AUD which was the cheapest by far that I could find. Please don't anyone put a link to a cheaper site in here as it will completely ruin my feeling of supreme joy at having found such a fantastic printer!

It really is great on photos and contrary to what some others have said, it prints text perfectly in any colour at a speed I am content with. I presume this is because it is all brand new. I will certainly let you know if the quality ever diminishes (quicker than normal wear and tear). It was very easy to set up and install, although it is quite annoying that it doesn't come with a printer-to-computer cable. I read a review somewhere that reminded buyers to purchase one separately but I forgot and had to wait a couple of days before I could get one.

On the topic of warranties, Canon have maybe learnt a thing or two, (unless the following comes standard in all Warranties and I'm just being a nice and unsuspecting person), I'd like to quote point 10. from the Product Warranty Terms and Conditions that came with the printer:


Quote:
10. For Canon printer products, the use of a non-Canon ink cartridge or refilled Ink cartridge does not affect either the warranty to the customer or any Canon support contract with the customer. However, if printer failure or damage is atrributable to the use of a non-Canon or refilled Ink cartridge, Canon will charge its standard time and materials charges to service the printer fo the particular failure or damage.


Having read that, obviously Canon will try to attribute any damage to the refilled ink tanks if possible, but providing the damage wasn't caused by them and can be proved thus, the warranty should still stand. So, I will definitely be looking into refilling my ink tanks as the cheapest I have found them here is $AUD23 each. Rather expensive, as you said. I'll look into the easy Australian options and let you know what I find. If anyone else has particular favourites, I'd love to hear them.

 

[NaoWiv]

Sorry. Xalky, only just saw your post. I am definitely going to refill my ink tanks now that you've done the math so clearly! I hope I wont have to refill quite so often, but I do print a lot of photos, so I guess its likely.

inkman.com.au seems to be a good site over here, but they don't sell ink in larger bulk sizes than enough for 2-3 fills. Does anyone know of anyone else in Aus? I'd rather not have to pay for postage and shipping from the US or UK if I can help it.

I am also now looking at getting an all-in-one (printer, copier, fax and scanner if possible) laser printer for black text only . Is Brother one of the best types to go for? I've so far done no research on this as was concentrating on my colour printer and didn't want to get confused.

 

[Xalky]

Sorry my reply is so late too!
Maybe you can contact Aus. ink supplier and se if They sell in larger quantities. Just because they don't list it doesn' t mean it's not available. Also, try to stay away from chineese ink. Poke around here for a reccomendation or ask the aus suppliers where the ink comes from.

 

[Trigger 37]

NaoWiv,...I think the best printer/copier/Fax, Scanner,.. in the world is made by Canon. I have an MP730 and it is wonderful. I don't know why you would every look at a Brother. Mine prints black text at 22ppm. and the color is a good as any of the i560, i860, i960 series printers. I bought a used one for $20 believe it or not because the lady thought the print head was bad. I cleaned it and everything is fine now.

On your statement above about Canon's warranty and non-Canon ink,... if they stand by that in the USA, then all of us that are refilling our printers know what we are risking. All of us that have had Canon printers for awhile know how rugged the printheads are. Anyone that has filled carts and had to clean a printhead knows that they can take care of the printhead by using good ink and carts and taking care of the printer as required. In other printers like Epson, you can't take out the printhead and you can't clean it, and you can't see the ink levels in the carts because you can't see through them. If we take car of the printhead it will be the other things in the printer that will break and the warranty will cover this.

However,.. this is still a big "Out" for Canon. They know that 98% of their customers are not even computer literate, let alone know how to take care of their printers or have the time to do it. So if any of those 98% screw up their printer by not taking care of it, and have used non-Canon ink or carts, you can bet that Canon will charge them for everything they can. This whole chipped cartridges thing could be the result of 100's of Canon Service Techs all over the world telling Canon,... 90% of all the problems brought into them are clogged up printhead due to non-oem carts or inks,.. but Canon still has to honor the warranty and fix the dump thing. So someone at Canon sees that Epson, HP, and others are putting chips on their carts and getting away with it. They figure if they can stop 10-20% of their customer base from using other ink and carts via their warranty threat, they will save millions on repair and sell more ink... Kind of win win for them. If something else in the printer breaks, like from a paper jam, then they will fix that no questions asked.

I would appreciate it if anyone else can confirm the warranty statement that was included by NaoWiv above.