12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Very good printer but for one big issue.
Date of Review: Sep 11, 2007
The Bottom Line: Do not buy unless you have a lot to spend during normal no color usage.
This is a good printer, especially the duplex printing function. That function is great, save paper, can do lots of good stuff with it.
However! Ink usage destroys all the good. Why? Have no idea why the engineers decided to do it this way but it really stinks.
As per Canon's own support site.
1. "Automatic cleaning of the print head."
2. "Color inks may be used to create black."
3. "In order to keep the heavy black ink from smearing on the page or in the printer, color ink is used when duplex printing to help create black text."
All three reasons stink. This is more an issue of printer manufacturers making the majority of their money from ink sales thanks to HP. There is no reason from an engineering standpoint this waste of ink needs to take place. At the very least they could have made it so you would not need to insert the three color carts when printing in black. Even better yet have a control. They have a gray scale but as noted above it still uses the 3 color carts. At 15.00 each. So when you add it up ..... this good printer costs a lot to run.
