Canon Pixma MX700 OR should I get the MP970 or...?

[Steven T]

On newegg the MP970 ends up not being much more with the 100 dollar rebate so price is not really a deciding factor.

The MAIN focus for me is QUALITY of print. I want very good quality printing.

Speed comes second. If I'm printing 100 pages and one printer does 100 a minute or so faster I don't really care.

Lastly, ease of use. Im pretty tech savy but I DONT want a machine thats going to constantly paper jam. Networking would be nice too since we have PC's in different rooms.

Can anyone help me choose? My budget is $300 MAX with ink If you don't like these 2.

 

[Steven T]

BTW, people seem to be happy with both on newegg. The mp970 has 5 stars on all 8 reviews. However CNET gave it a poor review and said it's image quality is not on par!?

I have learned that sometimes CNET do hire morons to do their reviews. I'm hoping that was the occasion on this one at least... If it weren't for that review I would probably just go with the 970 but im stuck!

 

[Steven T]

PLEASE ANYONE KNOW ABOUT MULTI PURPOSE PRINTERS??

 

[DBissett]

I don't know anything about the 970 but I've had the MX700 for a couple of months and am very happy with it. Print quality is excellent and speed is fine. No jams. Have printed/copied quite a bit and done a little faxing. These machines are obviously slower than your much more expensive office network machines but do a great job.

Dave

 

[gypsyman]

I have also been looking at an all in one fax, scan, copy. My research leads me to believe that the Canon MX700 is the best compromise out there but the color prints are not as good as a dedicated photo printer. I have decided to drop the fax function to get the best color prints. Excellent color prints are my top priority. I have narrowed my choice to the Canon MP970 which is $139 after a 100 rebate at Amazon or the Canon MP610 which is $153 at Amazon. Having read many reviews (the cnet one is off base on the MP970 according to owners) most of them are very good on both printers, I am still unsure which one to get. Perhaps someone could read the following and tell me which will print a better color print.

The MP970 has the advantage of 7 seperate ink tanks.
The MP610 has 5 ink tanks.

Both printers boast a 9600 x 2400 dpi.

The MP610 has a 4,608 precision nozzle print head.

The MP970 has a 3,584 precision nozzles print head.

So the MP610 has less ink tanks but more nozzles.

Which one can I expect to print the best color prints, or will the difference be negligable?

I plan to buy one or the other this week..

 

[QuixoticOne]

I looked pretty hard at the MP970 and the rest of Canon's printers recently.

Overall I found the print quality (of high resolution color photos specifically) to be pretty excellent on the MP970.

No other printer in the small-format category in Canon's line-up seemed to have the quality and technical merits of the MP970.

The relatively cheaper CLI-8 inks is a bonus for the MP970 over some others.

The better (more colors) set of inks for the MP970 is certainly a quality advantage over printers with lesser numbers of inks.

The microdroplet / dithering resolution of the MP970 seemed superior to most anything else when I checked, and that leads to good image quality.

The downsides to me were:
a) not so good support for printing under multiple operating systems, e.g. LINUX.

b) unknown reliability; obviously something that prints, faxes, scans is going to have more POTENTIAL mechanical / electrical problems than JUST a printer.

c) Limited paper size options, e.g. no roll feed, only 8.5x11 paper size maximum, et. al.

d) more expensive per page and per month if you're mostly printing business documents instead of high quality photos. You'll still use up fairly expensive inks every few months just to keep it running even if you rarely print photos. In that case a cheap laser printer or something like that would have lower cost of maintenance / refills / per page.

e) problematic availability of 3rd party discount inks and refills for the carts. Basically it is probably NOT a good choice to buy this printer if you do NOT want to buy original CANON carts. for it.

f) If you're PRIMARILY looking for quality B&W photo prints there may be better choices than a color printer, i.e. getting multiple black/grey ink sets in a different model of printer.

g) doesn't print on CD/DVDs at least not without hacking it, as far as I recall.

h) warranty not so good.

i) if you're primarily looking for cost per page of photo prints and you do a LOT of photo printing, there are better models of printers that are more expensive initially but the ink costs less over time. Basically if you're using more than a few hundred dollars a year in ink you should consider the economics of cost / page.

 

[gypsyman]

Thanks QuixoticOne. That was quite informative. I am always grateful when someone takes the time to post an informative response.

 

[you2]

Doesn't the new MX series support pigment inks? Does anyone know how the print quality of these inks compare to the Mp series? I presume they have better longevity (even if the quality is lower). (He did ask about the MX700...)

 

[Interitus]

While I'm not as printer savvy as some others here I will say that I recommended one of these to my mother not too long ago. She wanted an all-in-one that could do photo prints as well. I can't recall the exact model number she purchased (I'm pretty sure it's an older number series of the MP line), I was very impressed with it. After hooking it up for her, we played around with it and did a few photo prints as well as some scanning and regular print duties just to make sure all was well and to see how well the unit functioned. Again I'm not really printer savvy or a photo printing enthusiast, but the prints looked very good and seemed to me to have a good speed to all printing tasks. The unit felt pretty well built too, my only quabble with it was that the paper/photo loading tray seemed a bit flimsy and paper seemed to line up crooked if you just looked at the feed backer. The actual unit itself though was very solid and was a breeze to set up and get running. I was in the market for a new printer at the time as well and even though I don't do photo printing, it inspired me to purchase the MP475 for an all-in-one without photo capabilites. I've been very happy with this unit as well. The 475 lacks seperate color cartridges (one color, one black) but still produces very vivid color on powerpoint presentations and a few small pictures I have printed on plain paper.

I've used my 475 now for about 3-4 months with no problems and I've used her model for awhile as well with no issues. Never a jam. Ink for both was very cheap too. Only thing I could ask for would be network abilities.

Also my mom's model had 5 tanks (the more I type I'm thinking it was in the 600 model range, might in fact be a 610) and again I was still very impressed with it for a printer that wasn't a dedicated photo printer.

 

[vcarterm16]

Hi,
First, a bit of happy news for all you folks hoping to buy the mp970, Amazon.com has it for $244 PLUS you get free shipping and a $100 rebate. after tax my total cost was $166.

I just rushed to purchase it online, without seeing the machine in person. Now I have read the cnet review and I'm panicking. Does it really have poor image quality? I'm a photographer (second job) and was hoping to make a little cash by selling photos at streetfairs and festivals. I really need true photoquality up to the 8x10 size for this. Could anyone please help me out? Have you seen the actual prints? How do they look?
I saw the canonpixma 610 prints at the local camera store and they were satisfactory.
thanks for your help,
Vickie
PS, it might not be too late to cancel that Amazon order!

 

[gypsyman]

I just ordered this 2 days ago at Amazon. After having read all the Amazon reviews and the CNET user reviews, Steves digicam and PC Mag, I am satisfied this will be good printer. I even ordered after reading the CNET review. Many people commented that the CNET review was off base and are very happy. You make the call.

PCMAG editors choice

Steves Digicam reviews

 

[bahi]

A supplement to QuixoticOne's detailed and useful message of 22nd Feb.

1. The MP970 prints easily onto CDs and DVDs, and comes with a CD/DVD tray specially for that purpose. No Lightscribe, obviously, but it'll print using the inkjet head on media that supports including, including those funny small CDs that you can get. (There's an adapter included for them.)

2. There's no fax.

3. If you do a lot of regular (non-photo) printing at the mythical 5% coverage rate, you can print very economically with this machine. My calculations of print cost, using mostly the standard pigment black and light colour against the same setup using lasers like the Xerox Phaser 6110 and the Samsung CLP-300 came out slightly in favour of the Canon.

4. I bought one three days ago. I do a lot of photographic printing and have struck up a deal with a local print shop to bypass all automatic image enhancement to get decent traditional (Fujifilm Crystal Archive) prints out of their photo machines, and I print regularly using a variety of inkjets and papers. The quality of the MP970 is quite outstanding. If you're sensitive to the gamut of a device (often noticeable in its ability to hold the colour of a light blue sky when printing a cityscape or landscape), the MP970's use of six tanks (five colours plus black - there's also another black, not really used for photos) gives it an edge.

5. The LCD screen and the general feel of the device, and its quietness, inspire confidence.

It also comes with an adapter for 35mm slides and film negatives. I'm getting okay results from old negatives but have nothing to compare them to and, in any case, they were taken on simple point-and-shoots and disposables, not SLRs, so it's silly to be picky. What is nice is that scanning and printing both work well over the network. (I use a Mac, and network scanning of reflective and transparent media is supported using OS X's built-in Image Capture.)

QuixoticOne makes very good points regarding B/W prints and compatible cartridges. The C|Net review is curious. Was theirs a duff unit or was there a problem with settings? I'm surprised. One downside they did get right and which is pointed out elsewhere is that duplex printing is slow. On the other hand, it works well and is a bonus within this price range.

I hope anyone who gets one enjoys it as much as I am. I bought an iP4300 for my mother a long while back and it continues to work beautifully for photo printing and regular documents. She goes for long periods without printing and doesn't get the old Epson problem of ink vanishing to nothing during that time. (Canon recommend printing in colour and black, or cleaning, once a month.)

 

[you2]

Do you know how the MP970 compares to the IP4500 or MP610. I was originally leaning towards the 6700D which is no longer sold. The MP970 has the extended number of colours of the 6700D but the IP4500/MP610 has smaller droplet size.

Also, how is cost per photo (and longevity) from the MP970 ?

 

[bahi]

Originally posted by: you2
Do you know how the MP970 compares to the IP4500 or MP610. I was originally leaning towards the 6700D which is no longer sold.

I don't own either the iP4500 or the MP610, though I did consider both. I haven't heard of a 6700D. I bought an iP4300 for my mother and used that from time to time when I visited. It's great and still ticking along nicely. Technically, the MP970 beats the iP4500 and the MP610 in terms of gamut (range of possible printed colours) because for photos, it uses four non-black inks and one black. The MP610 and the iP4500 use three non-black colours and one black for photos. All have a separate pigment black for text. The gamut difference won't be noticeable to everyone all the time but a direct comparison of wide-gamut landscapes or cityscapes will show a difference, as might prints that include caucasian skin tones.

The MP970 has the extended number of colours of the 6700D but the IP4500/MP610 has smaller droplet size.

As far as I know, droplet size is actually the same - all, including the MP970, use droplets as small as one pico-litre. Maximum print resolution is the same, too, though scan resolution in the MP970 is higher than the MP610.

The MP970's print head has fewer nozzles. Its resolution and droplet size are the same as the others' so I'm guessing that the print head is smaller and moves more to print the same area but someone here probably knows the right answer.

Also, how is cost per photo (and longevity) from the MP970 ?

Again, for photos, it should be the same for all current Canon photo printers - they can all use similar ink types (ChromaLife100) and print to the same types of paper so if you stick with genuine Canon ink and print on approved Canon paper, the predicted survival times before *any* noticeable degradation are: 10 years in the open air in daylight, 30 years under glass in daylight and 100 years in a high quality album. (These figures are predictions, calculated by using techniques designed to accelerate degradation, and they represent the length of time before any visible deterioration sets in. The approved papers go from the regular "Glossy Photo Paper Everyday Use" right up to "Photo Paper Pro PR-101".

There a Canon PDF on testing methods and background here here. Figures and info from Canon's UK site here.

The figures compare very well to my experience of traditional lab photos in albums and to some HP inks but I believe Epson's pigment inks are some way ahead for longevity. (I've had it with Epson, though.) Canon's inks are still dye based, despite offering decent longevity. (Probably exceeding most traditional lab prints.)

My calculations for running cost were pretty positive using UK prices, which will, sadly, always be significantly higher than US prices, but they beat cost-per-page prices of cheap lasers. I got less than 2p/page printing greyscale text documents (invoices, etc.). The equivalent prices for cheap lasers (Xerox 6110, etc.) came out about 30% higher using similar sources.

The other advantage of the MP970, ethernet aside, is the ability to scan (albeit slowly) negatives and slides @ 4800x9600.

 

[bahi]

Also, I've just learned that apparently it's common for CD/DVD label printing to be disabled on Canon printers in the US so perhaps the MP970 doesn't offer this and doesn't ship with the DVD/CD printing caddy, as it does in Europe and Asia. Apologies for the mistake in the earlier post.

 

[nycdude]

I just recently purchased the Pixma MX850 AIO because I needed a fax and I have not had any issues with it and it seems to print well so far but we'll see. Only con is the carts can be refillable but the chip will always say its empty. That feature can be disabled thank goodness. Good thing is that the cost ratio for the genuine canon carts is not too expensive so I've been told.

 

[Big Fat Fish]

I was deciding between the same 2 printers last week. I ordered the MX700 but seen the amazon deal on the MP970 shortly after. I sold the MX700 to a friend and ordered the MP970, now he wants a MP970.

If you need fax go with the MX700, if you do not then go with the MP970. I really really like the MP, its print quality is mind blowing.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=30&threadid=2162145

 

[13Gigatons]

I don't recommend the MX700, no photo black. I recommend the MP970, MX850 or MX7600:

1. http://www.usa.canon.com/consu...ryid=123&modelid=16279

2. http://www.usa.canon.com/consu...ryid=123&modelid=16506

3. http://www.usa.canon.com/consu...ryid=116&modelid=15481


If your doing photos then the MP970 is the best bet. It also has networking.

 

[KK]

I just bought the mp970 and it so far looks good as far as features goes. I haven't printed any photos with it yet.

Anyone try any ink other than canon ink with theirs?