Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II review

Canon's Pixma Pro9000 Mark II is easier to set up and use than many semi-professional printers.

For example, unlike some Epson models, you don't have to swap matt and gloss cartridges for different media. Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 is included, and you can download various tools from Canon's website, including pre-defined ICC colour profiles for third-party paper and a utility to generate your own custom profiles.

We tested the Pro9000 at its highest quality settings for colour and black-and-white photo printing. For black-and-white prints, you should enable greyscale mode in the printer's preferences settings. Print speeds were faster without this enabled, at four minutes and three seconds for an A3 photo, but the results had a noticeable green cast. In greyscale mode our print looked great, but it took almost 20 minutes to print.

The Pro9000 is designed to excel at full colour. Its eight-ink system includes green, red, pale magenta and pale cyan as well as the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. We compared its prints with the A3 printers from our last group test. Colour prints were bright, with deep blacks and smooth shading. Slight over-saturation at default colour settings makes images leap off the paper. Although its prints are vivid and bright, they're not as detailed as photos from Epson's Stylus Photo R2880, which also produced softer, more naturalistic colours.

A colour A3 photo took just four minutes and five seconds at the highest quality settings. In standard quality, an A3 print takes just over a minute and a half, although we see little point in using this high-end printer for anything less than maximum quality. Smaller prints were faster - 6x4in photos took an average of 56 seconds each at maximum quality, while a pair of 10x8in images took one minute and 54 seconds.

Photo printing costs are high. On Canon's Photo Paper Pro II, a 6x4in print costs 47p, with an A4 print costing £1.33. However, an A3 print costs £3.30 - significantly less than a similarly sized 12x18in print from online service SnapFish, which costs £5.50.

The Pro9000 is excellent and matches the quality of many commercial photo printing services. Its A3 and A3+ prints are fairly good value, but it's expensive to buy and run compared to other A3 printers. For a little more cash, Epson's R2880 produces more subtle and detailed photos. If you're on a budget, HP's four-ink Photosmart B8550 produces vivid prints for around £100 less.