Canon PIXMA iP2600 review

Gallery

Verdict:

Buy now, save up for ink later. Good prints, though not as cheap as the printer.

Review Date: 20 Jun 2008

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

We looked at Canon's PIXMA iP2600 last month, but wanted to retest it against some pricier photo printers.

It costs almost £40 less than any other model in the group, but produced the best photos we've seen from a budget inkjet. The iP2600 is more solidly built than most units in this price bracket, and paper was easy to load into its rear tray. It uses a pigment black cartridge for documents on plain paper, and a tri-colour cartridge with dye-based cyan, magenta and yellow inks for photos.

This means dark areas in photos are created by combining the three coloured inks. The results were surprisingly good, and skin tones and bright natural colours were accurate. However, both blacks and the overall tone of photos were paler than those from the more expensive machines on test. Most of our pictures were smooth and clear, except for some graininess and slightly abrupt gradations between areas of pale colours.

Document prints were also excellent, with particularly sharp reproduction of plain black text. Illustrated documents were bright and richly coloured, although some text in our mixed colour prints looked slightly fuzzy.

Like many budget inkjets, the iP2600 is quite expensive to run. A mixed colour A4 document page costs 7.5p, even if you buy Canon's high yield ink cartridges. The high yield CL-41 colour cartridge should last around 112 photos, so printing one photo, including paper, will cost around 38p. That's a lot more than photo printing services charge, so you're paying for the convenience.

The iP2600 is a good choice if you want a cheap printer for occasional use. We were pleased with the quality of its prints, despite their cost, and happy to confirm its Top Value rating.

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