Canon has introduced their latest inkjet photo printers in the A3+ range, and this promises to take economy (say, ink consumption) to the next level.
The Canon iP8770 brings up the second line or semi-professional line of photo printers, just behind the PRO-series printers that are bulky and feature more than six individual inks to achieve better finesse in colour reproduction. This makes the iP8770 ideal for office or homes that regularly print photographs in A3 or A3+ format.
Design and Build Quality
The Canon iP8770 has a polycarbonate outer body, which looks sturdy. The printer has only three buttons—Power switch, Print/Trouble Shooting, and Wi-Fi. The printer is not very compact, but it fits neatly on the desk and the trays fold well and fit on the body. The print head is fixed and so it cannot be replaced by the user, unlike in some of Canon’s top-line professional A3+ size photo printers.
Key Features
The iP8770 can print up to a resolution of 9600 x 2400 dpi. As mentioned above, print head is permanent. The printer uses six individual ink tanks— one black (Pigment Black) and five colours (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, and Grey). There are 6,656 nozzles in total, and the minimum ink droplet size is 1picolitre.
The iP8770 can print a 11 x 14 inch photo at a maximum speed of approximately 120sec and a 4 x 6 inch photo at approximately 36sec. It can print up to a maximum width of up to 322.2mm (12.7inch) with borders and borderless up to 329mm (13inch). The printer supports various sizes of paper such as A3+, A3, A4, LTR, LDR, 4” x 6”, 5” x 7”, 8” x 10”, and 10” x 12”.
The rear tray can handle up to 150 plain papers, 80 high resolution (HR- 101N) papers, 10 A4 and 20 4×6-inch Photo Paper Glossy/Semi-Gloss/Matte papers, 10 Photo Paper Pro Lustre papers, or 10 envelopes. The CD-R tray can print one disk (Manual handling by disc tray). Print head can be aligned automatically or manually from the quick menu.
The iP8770 uses TCP/IP protocol for networking. It is WiFi enabled and uses IEEE802.11n / IEEE802.11g / IEEE802.11b network types. It operates in 2.4GHz frequency band, and has a maximum range of 50m. The device uses WEP64 / 128bit, WPA-PSK (TKIP/ AES), and WPA2- PSK (TKIP/ AES) security protocols.
The printer supports Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X v10.6.8 and later operating systems. It has a USB 2.0 interface and supports Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print. The printer has dimensions of 590 x 331 x 159mm (W x D x H) and weighs approximately 8.5kg
Ergonomics
The Canon iP8770 was very easy to set up, without the need to install the print head as in the case of some Canon A3+ printers. Installing the ink tanks is effortless and once these are successfully installed, the LED on the ink tanks light up. The buttons are self-explanatory. Once the drivers are installed, the on-screen instructions guide you to set up the printer. The software allows you to monitor the printer without any effort.
Even the print interface does not have any complicated menus.
Performance
The Canon iP8770 performed well in our tests. We tested the printer with Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II 275 gsm media. The 8770 produced a rich gamut, not usually seen in 6-colour printers. Colours were very pleasing and greys were printed without any colour bleeding in to it. Line reproduction was flawless and we did not observe any moire pattern in closely spaced lines. We did not observe any colour bleeding in text reproduced with various backgrounds. Skin tones were reproduced accurately, and subtle details were printed without any problem. Blacks were reproduced as true blacks and saturated colours were reproduced satisfactorily.
In Standard mode, the printer reproduced an a4 borderless colour photograph in under 1 minute and 17 seconds, while in High quality mode, it took about 1 minute and 48 seconds. This is one of the fastest in similar printers. In High quality mode, the prints were a little bit sharper and colours deeper, though you will notice the difference only if you observe very closely.
Value for Money
The Canon iP8770 retails at an MRP of Rs.22,195, which is reasonable for an A3+ size printer. However, the real value for money depends on the price of consumables since it is a recurring expense.
The Black PGI-750 costs (MRP) Rs.840 for standard capacity and Rs.1150 for higher capacity. Each of the colour cartridges cost Rs.695 for standard capacity and Rs.995 for higher capacity. So replacing a set of standard capacity cartridges will cost you Rs.4315 (MRP) and a set of high capacity cartridges will make you poorer by Rs.6125. Canon has managed to cleverly hide the capacity of these cartridges so that even the retailers don’t provide it on their sites. By comparison, Epson’s highcapacity (70ml) ink tanks for their L-series ink tank printers retail at Rs.441 per cartridge (MRP), and hence six cartridges would cost Rs.2646. And visually, these ink tanks hold much higher capacity of ink than a Canon individual cartridge does. |SP
FINAL SCORE 89%
Design and Build Quality 18/20
Key Features 18/20
Ergonomics 18/20
Performance 19/20
Value for Money 16/20
PLUS
• Good build quality
• Easy to set up
• Great print quality
• Fast printing
• Wi-Fi capable
MINUS
• Not very economical
VERDICT
The Canon iP8770 is one of the best ‘budget’ A3+ photo printers in terms of print quality, and it outperforms some of the recent toppers. But if you are concerned about the high printing cost, this device does not offer any relief. At this, we would leave the judgement to the buyer’s discretion. And for the print quality it delivers, the iP8770 rightly earns a Best Buy.
Sujith Gopinath
