fun with Canon: pixma ip4600 vs pixma ip4500

[panos]

I just had a look at the comparison page for the ip4600 and the ip4500 in order to find how Canon intends to sell these new models. It seems however that Canon is being quite frank as they admit that their old 4500 was a better printer. Look at this or read this small commentary on any characteristics where a difference was found:

Black yield
4600: 350 pages
4500: 525 pages

Expect to replace black cartridges every 250 "real" pages of plain text on the old model. That's really bothersome for heavy office users.

color yield (each color)
4600: 505 pages
4500: 935 pages (almost double!)

Almost double yield for the old model! I think "yield" is something of a nuisance to printer manufacturers.

Speed
4600: 21ppm (Max.), 11.2ppm (Standard)
4500: 24ppm (Max.), 11.7ppm (Standard)

The old model is FASTER!

Borderless 10 x 15cm at high quality speed
4600: 20 seconds (Standard)
4500: 21 seconds (Standard)

Practically the same, but let's not deprave the new model of its few laurels.

Media Weight
4600: Canon special media up to 300 g/m
4500: Canon special media up to 273 g/m

Probably refers to Canon's new media.

Two sided printing
4600: auto select on plain paper
4500: auto select on Photo Paper Plus Double Sided, Super White Paper or plain paper

Is this really true? The new model can't recognize the old two-sided media?

Power:
4600: Standby ~ 1.3W, off ~ 0.5W, printing ~ 14.0W
4500: Standby ~ 1.2W, off ~ 1.0W, printing ~ 13.0W

The old technology was less power hungry.

Noise:
4600: 45.5 dB(A)
4500: 34.5 dB(A)

Interesting and serious. The ip4600 is much noisier than the ip4500 -- to a level that can be upsetting. I guess Canon has removed some "useless" noise dampers-shields to minimize weight and costs, thus increasing noise.

Weight
4600: 5.7kg
4500: 6.9Kg

See above.

 

[Smile]

Why is canon making stupid out if itself? Who or even why would anyone design a worse printer model than they have now? This must some wide scale test to see how stupid consumers really are.

Everyone here knows that nobody reads cat cartridge yields, how much ink they contain.
So some marketing wizard at canon decided to do the same with printer specifications.
If people continue to buy them with same rate as old printers I'm sure we will see some more stupid thing from canon anytime soon

 

[pharmacist]

I did warn other forum members to be carefull purchasing the latest PGI-520 and CLI-521 based printers. These printers are also more likely to perform more head cleaning cycles compared to the old PGI-5/CLI-8 based printers, making your more expensive ink to run out more quickly then ever and having you to replace your waste ink pad more quickly -which most people don't know how to do- thus making the average consumer to buy more expensive cartridges more often or worse: to dump their so-called defective printers more quickly.....and buying more printers, etc,etc,etc.......

 

[websnail]

You'd have thought that they would have a clue about how to avoid this sort of blatant profiteering but this last means that Canon have left themselves waaaay open to legal attack now.

It's not environmentally better in terms of power, cartridge use, recycling and stinks to high heaven of a lock in policy.

The word "idiots" is fairly understated I reckon

 

[tsu3000]

These are very interesting stats. When I purchased my IP4500 I did consider the IP4600 because one normally assumes newer model = newer & better tech. However I read a few rumours that the new model was not as good. So I got the IP4500. It wasn't easy to find, because stocks were very low (in the UK at least) and I had to wait about a month for it. I did contemplate cancelling the order due to the long lead time, but I'm glad I didn't

 

[Gompy]

People from druckerchannel have made a test about the ip3600 and the ip4600.
They released it today.
In that test there is also a comparison with these printers and their predecessors, the ip3500 and ip4500.
If someone is interested, here is the Google translated link to that test, it's 13 pages:

http://tinyurl.com/5ajczd

Gompy

 

[panos]

Very nice test from Druckerchannel indeed.

I noticed that the old ip4500 is benchmarked in text printing twice as fast as the new model, probably because of the much higher nozzle count for the pigmented black...

 

[Serville]

Does anyone notice that IP4500 seems to do A LOT OF pausing before printing, or when it gets ready ?
The green LED keeps blinking for like 20-30 secs everytime before it gets steady.
I still remember IP3500 does not do this a lot. It can get ready to print almost instantly.

And the design of the front cover is stupid. You have to open the top cover just to open the front cover.
But everytime you do this, the printhead will invitably move to the center, and the printer has to reinitailize the printhead position which can take 20-30 secs. This is really stupid. Why can't they ust copy IP3000 design, where you can simply press the front cover to unlatch.

 

[KnightCrawler]

The carts are smaller:

9ml vs 13ml

and

19ml vs 26ml

I don't think it has much to do with cleaning cycles.