Canon ip4300, ip5300 or ip8500

[frankg]

Having enjoyed a Canon i965 for the last few years to find it no longer powers up I am looking for a new printer. I am trying to decided between an ip4300 and ip5300 and also considering one of the last 8500s still for sale. Does anyone know of any advantages of the 5300 other than speed.

I am not fussed about the extra time to print but don't mind paying more for the 5300 if there any other improvements of the machine build.

I am tempted to buy one of the last 8500s around especially when I read so much about the new chipped cartridges. Would I still reap the benefit of the 8 cartridge system of the 8500 if I used third party inks?

 

[ghwellsjr]

According to my favorite link to Canon's website:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndex1Act&fcategoryid=103

there isn't a 5300 so I can't say anything about it. Can you provide a link to this printer?

I will say that any Canon printer prior to the chipped ones would be preferable so the iP8500 would be my choice over the iP4300. In addition, the iP8500 has 768 nozzles per color while the iP4300 has 512 so it should be about 50% faster. The iP4300 is really a 4-cartridge printer since it will only use one of the black cartridges at a time. And the iP8500 is really a 6-cartridge printer since it rarely if ever uses the red and green cartridges. The iP4300 actually has six sets of nozzles for the dye inks, so it almost functions like a 6-cartridge printer. It also has a pigment black cartridge which is used on plain paper. If you get Canon ink or a good third-party ink, the pigment black ink will not run if the paper gets wet. So the iP4300 is designed as a plain and photo paper printer whereas the iP8500 is designed as a photo paper printer.

However, I would look into some other printers. CompUSA still lists the i9900 for $450. It will print on paper up to 13 x 23 inches and uses the same print head as the iP8500. And you can still find refurbished MP870 all-in-one printers with five cartridges. Read this link for more details:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1533

I don't understand your concern about re-inking for an 8-cartridge printer.

 

[frankg]

This is the link to the ip5300. It is from the Australian website:

http://www.canon.com.au/products/home_office/printers/colour_bj_printers/ip5300.html


With my reference to the 8500 - I am wanting to know if using third party inks would give the benefits of the extra red and green over the 4 cartridge systems.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The iP5300 appears to be a 5-cartridge printer similar to the iP4300 except that it has three sets of nozzles for the cyan and magenta inks instead of only two making it, in effect, function as an eight-cartridge printer. That must be why it is faster. It also will print on CDs.

Many third-party ink suppliers do not have the red and green inks but they may not even be used unless you do profiling with special software. Since they are so rarely used, it probably won't matter if you re-ink with a different brand of ink or just buy Canon OEM cartridges, if and when they run out. You certainly don't want to buy the iP8500 just to get the extra two colors. The main reason to buy it would be to get the non-chipped cartridges, but I would search for the i9900 which gives you wider print capability.

 

[hpnetserver]

The red and green ink tanks of ip8500 are used only when very saturated red and geen exist in the photo. all printers that use only 4 color ink tanks will have to mix the ink from the 4 ink tanks to produce red and green colors. The red and green are not as accurate some times and not as saturated as printed with red and green ink from ip8500. It's true the red and green ink are much less used comparing to CMY ink but they do make a significant difference in printing photos. Photos printed from ip3000, 4000, 5000 and the like do look very decent. But photos printed by i960, ip6000, ip8500 and ip9900 are a bit better. You will need to do side by side comparison to see and appreciate the advanatges from these higher end photo printers. If you see little differences that's because the image does not contain extreme deep red and green colors. I think most digital snap shots rarely contain such extreme colors. It probably won't make much difference in printing such images.

 

[chippedoff]

Hello.

I would go with the (older) unchipped cartridge canons.

To be honest if you can afford photoshop or even Paint shop Pro and understand resolution and density then i can tell you that ex: i get just as good an output form my Ip3000 than i get from my MP830 (at max quality).

Even scanning in the printed media there is a very minute difference in output that would require Eagle vision to detect.

I would recommend getting the S9K canon colour profiles. They do wonders for Canon printers.

Enjoy.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The iP3000 does not have a dye black cartridge and does not use its pigment black ink on photo paper. I have compared photos printed on an iP3000 and on an MP760 (similar to the MP830) and there is a noticeable difference in the darkest blacks. However, either photo by itself looks perfectly acceptable. I recommend the iP3000 or any current model that does not have a dye black for printing predominately on plain paper.

Where do you go to get S9K canon colour profiles? And what wonders do they do?