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| Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Inkjet Printer (2171B002) | 
 enlarge | Brand: Canon
Category: CE
List Price: $129.99
Buy New: $95.00
You Save: $34.99 (27%)
New (62) Used (1)
Avg. Customer Rating:  97 reviews
Color: Gray/Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Modem: None
Shipping Weight (lbs): 22
Dimensions (in): 17.5 x 11.9 x 6.3
nv:Print Method: Inkjet
Resolution: Up to 9600 x 2400 dpi
Print Speed: Up to 31 PPM (Black)
Print Speed: Up to 24 PPM (Color)
Special Features: Border Free Printing
Dimensions: 17.5"W x 11.9"D x 6.3"H
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity: PictBridge
Standard Paper Input: 100 Sheet Input Tray
Duplex Printing: Yes
Paper Sizes Supported: Letter
Paper Sizes Supported: Legal
Paper Sizes Supported: Envelopes
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: 2171B002
Model: 2171B002
UPC: 013803081084
EAN: 0013803081084
ASIN: B000V2MK8C
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new, fast shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
 Never a more frustrating printer experience February 28, 2008
40 out of 51 found this review helpful
I fight with this printer all the time just trying to get it to recognize printer cartridges. Canon decided to try to thwart 3rd party cartridge use by wasting all of our time and money adding security features on the ink carts themselves and in the printer software. This gives me headaches weekly even if I am using Canon's own cartridges. Sometimes it just doesn't want to recognize them and the only fix seems to be to "reset" by completely unplugging the printer and waiting TEN MINUTES. Very convenient, Canon.
Also, the printer's ink-level feature seems to have no notion of how much ink is actually in the cartridges. I wasted at least 3 perfectly good and very expensive cartridges until I figured out this must be based on some average use figure Canon invented that doesn't seem to favor your wallet. When I finally do get it to print the quality is fine but not worth all the frustration.
Canon seems to have decided to make printers in their best interest and not the consumer. This is the last Canon printer I will ever buy. What an anti-consumer nightmare. Shame on you, Canon.
 Great Printer February 24, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have had several Canon printers in the past and each one is better than the other. Photos come out great from my scanner or digital camera in either 4x6 or up to 8x10. Print speed is fairly fast in either color or B&W. Only downfall is no usb cable included. I guess Canon is to cheap to include a cable you can buy online for about $3.00. I used the free shipping option and received my printer in 4 days. I noticed that if you order a product that costs above $100 it ships out very fast. Products that are in the low $$ range are not shipped out too quickly using the free shipping .
Claus Wolf's MyMac.com Review February 16, 2008
46 out of 46 found this review helpful
Canon labels the Pixma iP4500 as a premium photo and document printer, and when I bought it in early January my main purchasing criteria was high quality photo prints and the ability to print on DVDs and CDs.
The printer itself looks tremendously stylish. Next to my iMac it looks as if the designers of the printer had been sitting in front of an iMac when coming up with the design. The printer looks great, which kind of is important as it is located together with my iMac in the living room. The only downside to the good looks is that the shiny black plastic attracts dust like a magnet.
One of the many up-sites to this printer is that it has two paper trays. The bottom tray sticks out about 10 cm (4 inch), when you expand it to hold A4 paper, but that is a small price to pay, considering that this way you do not have to store paper in the top tray. The top tray easily adjusts to hold all sorts of paper sizes from 4x6 photo paper to A4 or letter size. A button on the main unit lets you select the tray you wish to use and I found this a real benefit.
I like the printer driver, though I haven't a lot to compare it to. I find it easy to use and flexible enough to fulfill my beginner's needs.
Photo Quality
Comparing photo quality is really hard, as I do not have a bunch of similar printers here, for which I could compare print outs side by side. So I will just simply say that the print outs I have made on glossy photo paper look stunning. So stunning indeed that we have a few of them hanging in our living room already.
The printer uses 5 separate ink tanks, which I am being told is good for photo quality, and i am happy to believe that. What it really means to me is that if one color is out, I can just replace that one color rather than an entire combined cartridge. In my opinion the environmental and bank account friendly option.
Placing a photo print out next to pictures I had "developed" by a popular German photo printing service I must say I personally would consider the Pixma iP4500 print outs almost a bit nicer, at least the smaller sizes, though it greatly depends on the photo paper you use.
The first photo paper I tried obviously wasn't of the best quality, I have to admit, and thus you end up seeing some tracks from where the printer transported the paper. That is rather unfortunate as it takes away from the otherwise superb impression the pure print-quality gives me.
Of course I tried better quality photo paper as well, and those tracks weren't there. So you will definitely want to invest in good photo paper to get the best prints, but I would assume you knew that already. I also find that investing in photo paper with a higher weight per square meter makes the prints feel more like "real photos", but again I would think that you all knew that already.
When printing a normal photo at A4 (about letter size) I notice a minute amount of striping in one area, but I need to get within a few inches of the A4 print in order to see the striping and it is only noticeable in an area of grey clouds. Looking at the image from a normal distance, I cannot see much of a difference. I printed that image last night and the first thing I am going to do is buy an A4 frame, that photo is going to hang in my office.
Black & White
We used the printer to print the inlays and envelopes for our wedding invitations, while black and white only, the speed with which these print outs were completed was purely amazing and the quality was perfect for my impression. Our friends and family were impressed to have professionally printed, yet personalized invitation cards.
In my opinion the result was extremely good and I would be hard pressed to find any fault with the output. Comparing it to my three year old laser printer, I would say that the quality was better and the print outs happened much quicker.
Speed
From a pure specification point of view the printer can deliver a 10x15 borderless photo in 9600x2400 dpi in about 21 seconds. Documents can be printed with a speed of up to 31 pages per minute (b/w) and 24 pages per minute (color).
Printer speeds are hard to really achieve, as they are measured under very specific conditions that we endusers normally don't see. I would think they are more a guide value than anything else and my impression of this printer is that it is quick, very quick.
Did I sit next to my printer and have it print a 30 page document to measure its speed? No I didn't. Did I stop the speed of printing a 4x6 borderless photo? Yes, I did, it took about 35 seconds, which is considerably slower, but when do you start to measure? When you push the print button, or when the printer makes its first noise of transporting the paper? I did measure from pressing the print button to finished photo and I don't think that speed is anything to complain about.
PictBridge
A nice feature is the ability to print directly from my digital camera. I have a Canon A700 which is PictBridge compatible and I plugged it into the printer just to see whether that would work. I was pleased to say the least - the print outs just worked and while I don't think I would trust my Mom to print a high quality photo from within iPhoto, I think that she'd have no issue getting it done this way.
This isn't going to be a feature, I am going to use every day, not even every week or month, but I definitely can see its usefulness.
Printing on CDs & DVDs
One of my requirements for buying this printer was that it should print on CDs and it does. You get a little plastic tray, in which you place the CD/DVD and you fire up the CD Label Print Application to design the label you would like to print.
While the print outs are of decent to good quality, I have a bunch of gripes about this particular feature.
The biggest complaint I have is the software not allowing you to adjust the inner circle to be smaller. The DVDs I bought have a fairly large printable area (see photo), but the software cannot adjust to this larger printable area and thus leaves you with a large white inner circle. I already adjusted the circle as much as was possible to reduce the remaining white area, but it is still rather disappointing to get your DVDs, see that they really look good, but still have that white circle in the middle. There is also a bit of white space at the outer edge, which is less than a millimeter and doesn't bother me too much.
What you see here is that it tells you that the inner circle cannot be smaller than 17mm, but I can only get it to be 33mm. So text and reality just do not match up resulting in the following print out:
The software unfortunately is also not quite intuitive, no tool tips for icons for a starter. My first attempts at printing a DVD saw me resize an image to cover the entire disk, but when I printed this image to disc, the software seemed to have magically reduced the image and printed it much smaller than what it was showing me and thus left a very ugly white space on the disc. So while the software is pretending to be WYSIWYG, it really is more like what you see is what you might get (WYSIWYMG).
If you set a background image that problem isn't there and t works quite well, you get additional design elements like text, rectangle, circles and the lot - but all in all the CD Label Print software leaves me wholly unimpressed as "old fashioned" looking, difficult to use, not quite ready for more complex label designs and most importantly not quite flexible enough, where it does count.
All in all
I think it is tremendously difficult to evaluate a product you have purchased yourself. After all, if you bought it you want to make yourself believe that you made the right decision, objectivity can be hard to come by. I have tried hard to be as objective as possible, but I might be a bit harsh in my verdict.
All in all I am very happy with the printer. The print outs that I have shown to friends and family have impressed, I personally like both the photo and standard print quality. I am sure there is better, but I know there is worse.
There is that issue with the CD Label Software not being flexible enough and this I find annoying as it was one of the main reasons for purchasing this printer.
On the whole I am really happy with the printer and would recommend it to others. Is there room for improvement, yes there is a little, and I hope that Canon will address it as much as is possible with software updates. From a reviewer rating point of view - this is a very decent product, but also look at the competition.
If you were to buy this printer, I am sure you wouldn't regret it - thus I am happy to award:
MyMac.com Rating: 4 out of 5 [...]
Softwar problems with Canon iP4500 printer February 13, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
My new Canon iP4500 printer works great -- with the Canon software that accompanies their product. It fails miserably, however, with my Photoshop CS2 software. My third print with the Canon iP4500 displayed a series of parallel lines across the surface. After testing several prints from different photos with the same results, I e-mailed Canon technical help, twice. First, I was instructed to realign the printer head. I'd done that, per their software directions when I set up the printer, and doubted head alignment was the problem. Nonetheless, I followed their instructions and realigned the print head, twice. The problem remained unresolved. I contacted e-mail technical help a second time and was instructed to remove the ink tanks, unlock and remove the print head, then replace the head and the ink, realign the head, and try again. No difference. I then called technical support, expecting a voice from India and little help beyond something simple and ineffective -- that was my previous experience with Hewlett-Packard. Instead, I heard an American voice and was walked through a procedure that ultimately identified my Photoshop CS2 software as my problem. I had no such limitations with Hewlitt-Packard and am still discouraged at this, for me, serious limitation.
The resulting Canon prints are superior to the HP Photosmart D7360. In fact, the Canon black and white prints are VASTLY superior to the HP. The iP4500 also is markedly faster and loads both regular letter-size paper and photo-paper that can be accessed from two separate trays. My HP, for example, required I remove one kind of paper and manually load the other when I needed to switch papers. The iP4500 takes five inks, two black. My D7360 took six inks, one black. Replacing ink in the iP4500 is less expensive.
I love the results from the Canon iP4500. The software Canon provides out-performs what HP sent with their D7360. I strongly recommend the iP4500.
 Amazing printing for $100 February 12, 2008
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
I don't normally write a notes to people about a product but I just have to tell you all about my new Photo Printer.
After months of research and reading reviews and product testing etc. I settled on a new Canon Pixma iP4500.
After printing Two photos I am truly in awe and amazement at the Power of a $100 inkjet printer.
I own a few other Canon products, a Canon CanoScan 8400F, and a Canon MiniDV Camcorder. I have not owned a Canon Pinter however since the early 1990's when I used a Bubblejet printer.
The iP4500 retails for $130 but I got it on sale from Amazon for $99. It came with free shipping and Its amazing I placed the order Feb 2nd and It was delivered on Feb 6th. It has 5 individual Ink Tanks. I had been leaning towards an Epson RX595
all-in-one printer for the last 6 months but I kept being drawn to the new Canon line every time I visited Staples. I really did not need a Printer/Scanner/Copier thinga-majig... I just needed a decent photo printer. There is the standard C, M, Y. and then a black, and another Black which is Pigment Black. I learned later the other black is Dye Black. All I know is that the two Blacks are used for different things, the Dye Black is for great Photos and the Pigment Black is for great sharp quality text. I had leaned towards the Epsons because of the 6 ink tanks: with the CMYK and then Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta. But I have to tell you that this printer does a darn good job with the colors it has. One very cool feature I did not know about is the iP4500 has two paper paths. There is a Rear tray that can hold up to 50 sheets of paper and a Cassette tray that can hold 150 sheets of paper. I decided I would use the Rear tray for photo paper and the Cassette for Plain paper. I can switch with the push of a button on the printer itself or with the software.
I have been using a HP Deskjet 960C forever. It was used primarily for business graphics but I often tried to print photos with it but never got the best results I had hoped for. It took a lot of tinkering to get a decent Photo print from the HP. I am sure HP's newer printers are great but I am tired of all the 2 cartridge printers, I hated running out of blue and having to replace the whole tri color cart. Even if these Individual Ink tanks may not hold as much ink, at least when Blue runs out, I can just go buy blue.
About the photos... I found two pictures of my new kitties. I had edited these pics for 4x6 size and set print res to 266dpi. I adjusted the curves and played with the saturation to try and make the odd colors level out. I own a Nikon Coolpix digital camera which I've used for 6 years, although its showing its age, it still takes decent photos. I did some basic sharpening and got rid of the red eye. I use Adobe Photoshop CS (v8) and set the image to print. Using the Canon IJ Print Utility I set the pic to high quality photo glossy paper. I have some 4x6 photo glossy paper I got last Christmas, not Canon brand, but it works. I put the paper in the rear tray and set it to print in Photoshop. Here is the most amazing part... A FULL COLOR 4x6 Photo was printed in LESS than 20secs!!!! I could not believe it. My old HP would take 2-3 minutes for a 4x6 Photo especially with Glossy paper. The Image was dry already and did not smudge. The ink drops are so tiny. I had to pull out a Loop and look through it to see the pixels. They are that small... I normally am used to pixelated photos. But this photo at just 266dpi res showed NO VISIBLE pixelation!
Now the main thing I did not like about this iP4500 is the lengthy Print head alignment process. It took me 3 sheets of paper wasted and the Alignment used a bunch of blue and black ink. I do not know why, but it took over 15 minutes for the printer. The 2nd thing I did not like is the CD that comes with the printer allegedly has some good software on it but It won't load on my Mac. The only thing that my Mac saw on the iP4500 CD was the Printer Driver and an Electronic Manual. So if you are wanting a Printer combo software pack, you won't get anything with this printer.
Of course, I have come to expect that USB printer cables do not come with Printers now a days. But I just don't understand why for a few bucks more these companies cannot put a basic cable in there. These Printers should be good to go right out of the box. Luckily my old HP had a USB2.0 cable which I connected to the USB2.0 port on my Mac and then the Mac OSX saw the printer right away. I am using OSX Tiger 10.4.11 on my main Mac a MDD Dual G4. I wish my Mac mini could hook up to the iP4500 as well. But I do 95% of my photos and graphics with the G4.
Sorry for a lengthy review. But I was just amazed and hoped telling someone they might consider a Canon printer.
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