Customer Reviews
Great Printer...hard to find ink.
One of the reasons i purchased this printer was because the ink used different cartridges for the colors. I heard that, because of this, it will be cheaper to buy ink for it in the future.
However, now that I'm almost out of ink on my first set of cartridges, I'm finding that it's pretty much impossible to get a good deal on these particular cartridges. The sites online that sell ink for very low prices just don't carry these. You have to pay...sigh...retail.
Anyway, other than that, this is a GREAT printer. Works well online, prints fast, does double-sided prints, photos look great, etc. The cartridges are just a bit harder to find for a bargain.
Very good quality photos, paper prints plus wireless
I wanted a printer I could share wirelessly between a couple of PC's, and one that would print better quality than my current $90 all in one scanner/printer/photocopier.
Basically the IP5200R fit the bill.
The printer is a little bit larger that one would expect, but the toploading of paper gives it a good form factor.
Setting up the printer was pretty easy. I just followed the directions regarding inserting the inks and getting the wireless going.
For my PC, I just followed the prompts and plugged the printer in by USB, and soon it was configured wirelessly and I could remove the USB cord.
I had a little bit of problem getting it installed on my MAC, but the Canon tech help was good, and I found out for some reason it was my MAC wireless card acting up, then all was fine.
In terms of print quality, it does an outstanding job on normal documents on normal paper, including printing color.
For photos, I discovered I really needed to use the Canon Easy Photo Print utility to get the best quality prints.Printing from other applications didn't result in as good a quality.
The Easy Photo Print was easy to use, although another Canon software product called Easy Photo kept getting software errors trying to open a pretty normal JPEG.
That didn't bother me because Easy Photo didn't look like anything serious I'd want to use. HOwever the Easy Photo Print is a fairly nice print utility to use.
Wondering about print quality? Naturally I printed a 4x6 of a pretty tough print, high contrast, snow, color and fine detail on the IP5200R, my previous inkjet, and compared the same shot to one I printed using an INTERNET photo printing service.
Well, the IP5200R won. The INTERNET photo printing service had the worst quality, the $90 all in one looked a little better, but the IP5200R had better color, and better detail.
The speed of printing is a great feature, as I can print a 4x6 in under a minute wirelessly. Not too shabby.
Also, the Canon Photo Paper Plus printed as well as another manufacturers ultra premium paper, although the paper itself wasn't quite as heavy a wait. This is a good thing because Canon Photo Paper Plus is much cheaper.
Canon has a fairly expensive Pro paper which is probably heavier.
The Canon inks are all individual containers for each color, and look to contain a healhty amount of ink. And the replacements don't look that expensive.
All in all, I think the ink and paper costs are going to be a little lower than my previous printer.
Having said all that, why did I give this printer four stars instead of five?
Well, it's a bit of a head scratcher, but I'd say the massive size of the printer is slightly off-putting. Also, the quality of the print is better than cheaper printers, but it's not going to be a knock your socks off difference, but you will notice an improvement in quality.
Surely the difference in speed, and the wireless capability, as well as an all round printer for general document printing and a pretty nice photo printer (with top easy top mounted paper feed) gives this printer a four or a four and a half star rating.
I'd recommend the IP5200r!
Telling my friends about this printer!
What an excellent product!
Amazing quality - 9600 x 2400dpi resolution
Wireless 802.11B/G
borderless 4"x6" in a little over 30 seconds
Amazing quality! This printer prints twice the quality of the "Picturemate" printer that only prints 4x6 photos. This Canon costs 10 dollars more than the picturemate, and is wireless and prints full size pages, has 2 paper trays, etc.
Ink drops at 1 picoliter - there are Epson printers that are 2x and 3x as expensive as this printer and only print at 1.5 picoliter, and at about half the resolution.
Having 2 paper trays is awesome!!!
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