Guess what is superior about printing with the MG8120 vs. iP4820 ?

[mikling]

I always had a suspicion about the marketing gimmicks with the printer manufacturers. My suspicion was profound because I had long noticed that the more expensive printers did not produce the expected superiority. Add to this the aspect that there are many misconceptions about the number of inks and the image quality.

So I was wondering about the differences between the print quality of the MG8120 and the iP4820. The MG8120 is a much more expensive printer than the iP4820. Yes, it is a multifunction unit etc. And then again it sported an extra grey cartridge to be used in B&W output. But what about the print quality or exactly what was the difference in color ??????

So having a new 4820 and being inquisitive, I downloaded the driver for the MG8120. I was never sure whether or not the 8120 used the gray cartridge when printing color. I thought to implement that process would be difficult, but you never know. All results are with OEM Canon inks.

I installed the 8120 driver and it installed the Canon 8120 profiles.

So what I did next was to print an image using the 4820 with a Canon supplied profile for a certain paper.

Following that, I then printed the same image using the 4820 but this time using the profile that Canon supplied for the MG8120 for the identical paper.

The results were not identical. Now if the profile was unsuitable for the 4820, you'd expect the the 4820 using the 8120 profiles should be horrible. They were in fact better. The differences were that using the 8120 profile, the picture was a tiny bit more saturated and exhibited a slightly less warmth. The image included a grey ramp and there was nothing terribly wrong with either ramp except that one was warmer....
the one with the "proper" 4820 profile.

Next I then used a Black and White test image using the same process to confirm if the 8120 profile was in fact unsuitable for the 4820. Again similar results. Using the 8120 profiles on the 4820 allowed the 4820 to produce a better B&W image. Nothing was wrong with either image.

Again if the profiles were wrong, then the B&W results using the profiles would be wretched. But they were superior.

So here is now an interesting question.

Is Canon using dumbed down profiles to differentiate their printer capabilities? That is, provide proper profiles for the best printer but provide not so good profiles for their lesser printers? That way in a demonstration of the two printers, one can show that the more expensive printer is more capable? When if fact they are identically capable in color mode.

Based on this I would be led to believe so.

 

[stratman]

Fascinating and surprising. Might be a good idea to archive the MG8120 driver in case Canon changes it in a future build so that it is only installable/working with an MG8120. For that matter, Canon might alter something in the IP4820 printer so that any version of the MG8120's driver will be unrecognizable.

If Canon goes to the lengths to opacify their cartridges to ostensibly vex refillers, it wouldn't be that hard for their coders to add something to break this compatibility in either future versions of MG8120 software or IP4820 hardware. Could be that early adopters of the IP4820 may be the only who can benefit from this fortuitous coincidence.

 

[qwertydude]

I wouldn't put it past Canon to pull these kinds of shenanigans. They did put out the IP4700 when it's basically no different from the IP4600 except for driver differences designed to waste ink even faster AND lower quality grainier prints, although faster, when using the matte photo paper setting. I even bet with the opaque cartridges Canon will claim it's for your protection, to protect your precious ink from light to prevent fading and color shifts.

 

[Digital10d]

I bet if you made a custom icc profile for each printer the results would be identical. However I would expect the printer with the grey ink would produce a more neutral print visible only in the grey areas. When I tested the output from my IP4700 vs PRO9000 when I first had them the results were very close. The PRO9000 print showed better shadow detail, the IP4700 block shadow detail ever so slightly. The test was with Canon OEM ink on Ilford paper both with custom ICC profiles made with EyeOne. The results were very similar which makes me believe the new A3 IX6550 with just 5 inks (4 for photos) will be an excellent choice over the PRO9000 unless you are after the very best, which in practical terms is had to see.

At the moment I'm using OctoInkJet (IS ink) in my PRO9000 and Miklings B&W in the IP4700. The B&Ws from the 4700 are just sublime and so easy that I'm hoping the new carts in IX6550 can be refilled, then I would have my ultimate setup, two A3 printers one for colour the other BW.

If Canon had brains then they would realise that many of us like to print both colour and B&W. If I was in charge I would take the red and green inks out of the PRO9000 replace them with two shades of black, and rewrite the driver with an advanced B&W mode like my old Epson 2400. Now that would be a sweet dye ink printer for all !!

 

[mikling]

Actually my suspicion was that Canon is pulling a shortcut on the MG8120 or grey ink printers. On the Epson, the grey inks are used in color printing. On the Canon, not so apparently.

This was why I ran the test on B&W images afterwards as well. If indeed the grey ink was to be used on the Canon during color output, it would clearly be absent and the image on the 4820 using the 8120 profle would have been very obviously wrong, because of the lack of grey channel. The fact that they were near identical indicates that the grey channel is not used in color mode.

Now if someone wanted to run a similar test on the 8120 or 990/980 then it would conclusively prove the hypothesis.

And yes, in the end the profiles between the CLI-221/225/521/526 appear to be totally intechangeable/identical. This was the same phenomenon on the CLI-8 CMYK printers.

 

[l_d_allan]

This was why I ran the test on B&W images afterwards as well.

Perhaps you could do the following as your ink cost is quite low as a vendor ...

Put in a complete set of full carts, and print a bunch of b/w images, perhaps on plain paper to reduce costs. Use a media type that really soaks the paper to accelerate results. Or the photo paper media type you would use for real photos for applicability. Then see how much, if any, gray was used compared to usage of other carts?

Wasteful, but might clear up some of your speculations.

I'm skeptical that Canon deliberately cripples their printers. Maybe I'm not only a refilling newbie, but also naive, but ... HP and Epson and Lexmark and ... eventually Chinese copyright thieves ... are fierce competitors. Engineering Econ 101 through EngineEcon-999 is mostly about trade-offs in costs ... most bang for the buck. We as consumers are the recipients of "invisible hand self-interest."

 

[mikling]

one needs to simply look at the relative suggested price of an R1900 and an R2880. Compare the construction. Now explain the huge discrepancy. Hundreds of dollars.

The difference in cost is intrinsically a firmware change and some badges and more importantly the suggested price is created for the market it is targeted towards.

 

[Stumped2]

I wouldn't put it past Canon to pull these kinds of shenanigans. They did put out the IP4700 when it's basically no different from the IP4600 except for driver differences designed to waste ink even faster AND lower quality grainier prints, although faster, when using the matte photo paper setting. I even bet with the opaque cartridges Canon will claim it's for your protection, to protect your precious ink from light to prevent fading and color shifts.

I have an iP4700 & am getting tired of the long cleaning cycle that sometimes occurs when turning it on. From what you are saying it appears I should use the iP4600 driver. Is there some feature that might be missing if I do so?

 

[RMM]

Mikling,

I have an MP980 and it appears to me that the gray cartridge is indeed used in color printing as well as B&W. In my printer printing mostly (90%) color photos the gray cartridge is getting used at a slightly faster rate than the cyan/magenta cartridges. This is using the printer driver color management and Photo Paper Platinum settings.

The MP980 is a fairly fast printer. It seems to have more PGBK & color nozzles than my other printers. Especially more than my relatively slow MX860.

 

[qwertydude]

I have an iP4700 & am getting tired of the long cleaning cycle that sometimes occurs when turning it on. From what you are saying it appears I should use the iP4600 driver. Is there some feature that might be missing if I do so?

Sorry nope tried that this is in the firmware of the printer.