CNET Editor's rating: 6.7 out of 10
Reviewed by
Felisa Yang
Review date: 04/23/07
Release date: 03/19/07
The good: Decent print quality and speed for the price; inexpensive inkjet printer; great software bundle; supports Vista.
The bad: No output tray; stingy warranty.
The bottom line: With its decent print speeds, serviceable print quality, and great software package, the Canon Pixma iP1800 is a good choice for home users who want an inexpensive inkjet printer for basic printing needs.
The Canon Pixma iP1800 is an entry-level, photo-oriented, single-function printer, and is the successor to the Pixma iP1700. For $50, you get a basic inkjet printer capable of printing decent-quality documents and photos. Though it lacks photo-oriented features such as media card readers and a PictBridge port (not surprising, considering the price), it does come with a comprehensive and easy-to-use software bundle that can help you create photo projects. We like this printer for home users with basic needs and a tight budget. We also like its print quality better than that of its low-cost competition, including the Lexmark Z845. Compared to the iP1700, the iP1800 offers a more complete software package and slightly faster photo prints, though the print quality is comparable.
Design
The Canon Pixma iP1800 is a model of simplicity. Its all-black body measures 17.4 inches wide, 6 inches tall, and 9.3 inches deep, and weighs a feather-light 7.3 pounds. A simple paper support flap opens up from the top, and it features adjustable paper guides. Unfortunately, there is no output tray; printed pages are simply ejected from the front of the printer, so be sure to set the printer far back enough on your desk or table so that the pages don't go tumbling to the ground. This omission is puzzling, as a simple flap with a paper stop seems easy enough to add on. (Its predecessor, the Pixma iP1700 also lacked an output tray.) For example, on the Lexmark Z845, the output tray telescopes out from the body of the printer. Under the Canon Pixma iP1800 paper eject slot is a switch that you can adjust for the type of media you're using--keep it to the right for envelopes and t-shirt transfers, and to the left for all other types of media.
There's no control panel to speak of, just two buttons on top: power and paper feed. Despite the fact that this is a photo printer, it lacks media card slots and a PictBridge port, though this isn't surprising, considering the printer's low price.
The Pixma iP1800 uses a two-tank ink system: one black tank and one tricolor tank (cyan, yellow, magenta). Changing the tanks is an easy task: when you open the body of the printer, the print head slides into view. Simply pop out the depleted tanks and pop in fresh ones. Canon offers both regular- and high-capacity replacement tanks. The regular black tank costs $16 and the regular tricolor tank costs $20. The high-capacity versions of each cost $20 and $25, respectively. The lack of optional six-color printing and the printer's low purchase price mark this as a photo printer for casual snapshooters.
Canon estimates that an 8.5x11 page of black text will cost 7 cents and an 8.5x11 page of color graphics and text will cost about 11.5 cents. A standard 4x6 photo will cost roughly 28 cents. These numbers are a little higher than those from Lexmark, but are within the expected range for a low-cost inkjet printer.
Features
The feature set for the iP1800 is very limited, due to the fact that it's a single-function printer. It's compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP/2000, and Mac OS X v.10.2.8 to 10.4.x. It does come with three software suites: Canon My Printer, Easy-LayoutPrint, and Easy-PhotoPrint. Canon My Printer gives you quick access to printer settings, printer status, and troubleshooting. In the printer settings, you can specify media type and page layout, apply photo effects (for example, simulate illustration, monochrome effects, and photo noise reduction), set up profiles, or perform routine maintenance.
Easy-LayoutPrint provides step-by-step assistance in creating a number of photo-heavy projects, including albums, calendars, stickers, and regular layout prints. The program walks you through the steps, starting with choosing a project, deciding on layout, picking images, editing images and text, and changing print settings. It's a breeze to use and offers a variety of preset layouts and backgrounds. While it does offer a large selection of layouts, it doesn't allow you to manipulate and customize the layouts. For example, all of the inside pages in an album must use the same layout. To work around that, you could create multiple "albums" and collect all the prints into one album, but allowing users to edit layouts is a more user-friendly route.
Easy-PhotoPrint provides a tabbed interface for viewing all of the photos on your PC and printing them. With one button click, you can select all the photos in a folder and print. Or you can manually designate how many copies you want of each photo and make corrections or enhancements before printing. The corrections/enhancements tab allows you to make changes automatically or manually. If you choose the automatic red-eye correction, for example, the program will determine where red-eye occurs and correct it. If you'd rather do it manually, you can use your cursor to highlight the red-eye areas and apply the correction. Under enhancement, you can apply digital face smoothing and blemish remover tools. Both seem to generally blur the area you select, to provide an overall softer look. One feature we found really useful in the Easy-PhotoPrint software was the ability to compare the original photo to the corrected or enhanced photo side-by-side. Once you've saved your edits, you can choose the paper and a layout for your photo prints.
Performance
The Canon iP1800 performed as expected, considering its price. It printed text at a rate of 5.82 pages per minute, slightly slower than the Lexmark Z845's 6.85ppm. It was speedier than Lexmark at printing 4x6 photos, though: 0.72ppm vs. 0.48ppm from Lexmark.
Note: *The Epson Stylus C88's photo speed is for 8x10 prints. The rest of the printers were tested using 4x6 prints.
As far as print quality, the Pixma iP1800 did an okay job. Text prints on inkjet paper were quite good for a $50 inkjet printer: the text was well-formed, though the characters' edges weren't as clean and sharp as we'd like. Color text looked good, too, with smoothly blended colors. The color graphics print showed some of the same problems with text, though the photo elements showed great detail and sharpness. Color blocks were smooth, though we'd like to see a bit more saturation. In the 4x6 photo prints, we saw some graininess, especially in flesh tones. Photo details were sharp enough, but the colors were on the cool side. We'd like to see more warmth and brightness. Overall, the print quality should suffice for basic snapshooters and printing Web pages. Anyone looking for high-quality photo prints will need to spend more for a better printer. Overall, we liked the photo quality better than the Lexmark Z845 and found it be on par with that of the older Pixma iP1700.
Service and support
Canon backs the Pixma iP1800 with a short, 90-day warranty. This is a far cry from Canon's usual one-year warranty and a big disappointment, though Canon emphasizes that its research shows few issues with its entry-level printers. Toll-free phone support is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to midnight, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., ET. You can also fill out a Web support form to send e-mail to a tech. Canon's site offers a searchable knowledgebase, FAQs, downloadable manuals and software/drivers, as well as information on supplies.
7 out of 10 - Very good Good quality but thirsty
This is a nice, inexpensive USB inkjet printer for both text and photos. It can even handle the duties of ...
This is a nice, inexpensive USB inkjet printer for both text and photos. It can even handle the duties of a small office printing flyers but because of its ink guzzling usage, SOHO use can get expensive. I recommend getting Ink Saver (inksaver.com) to cut back on ink usage without sacrificing quality. Overall I recommend it for home users but try to stay away from it if you consistently print over 100 pages a week.
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by randy915 (see profile) -
June 1, 2007
7 out of 10 - Very good Good for casual photo printing
Inexpensive photo printers have come a LONG way from my old Epson Stylus 980. Much better quality, much improved pricing. ...
Inexpensive photo printers have come a LONG way from my old Epson Stylus 980. Much better quality, much improved pricing. Ink is still expensive particularly compared to the $43 I paid for the printer with cartridges at Wal*Mart.
A simple output tray would be nice so that output isn't simply shoved across the desk or onto the floor.
The included setup program made it easy to set head alignment for best output. And photo output on gloss photo paper is quite good to my untrained eyes. A friend said, looking at a photo I printed, "Thats from a printer???!!!!". A pretty good compliment for an inexpensive printer.
Printer status monitoring software works well except when I use the printer on my low-end print server. The printer works fine but monitoring apparently works only through one print server that Canon has approved. Canon tech support pointed at the print server maker and the print server tech support pointed at Canon's software. Sometimes you get what you pay for!
Direct camera support would be nice but see the last sentence in the paragraph above.
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by mike5335 (see profile) -
October 26, 2007
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 out of 10 - Excellent Nice printer for the price
I purchased this printer to go with my new Vista PC and I like it a lot. It was a ...
I purchased this printer to go with my new Vista PC and I like it a lot. It was a breeze to set up (even in Vista) and text looks really sharp on the prints. It is also very fast - black and white prints take less than a second and color is speedy too. Print quality looks realy good to me - I owuld not rely on it for photos but for normal printing needs it is more than ready.
Ink looks to be pretty affordable and is easy to install. You also get some bundled scrapbook and photo software - but I left it off my system.
The printer is large and needs a lot of desk space. It also has it own power button - which may be a good thing to some people - but I prefer a printer that is one when the PC is on and off when the PC is off. The lack of an output tray is not a big deal for me since I would not have the desk space for the printer if it were any larger.
Overall, I think under $50 is a good deal on a nice looking and nice featured printer. Set up is easy and prints look good - what more could you want for the money?
NOTE: Mine is the "special edition" one from Wal-Mart. I can find no difference in the product but there may be some minor changes from the model I use and the one reviewed by CNet.
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by BrodieB (see profile) -
May 21, 2007
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 out of 10 - Spectacular Looks great, attractive price
I work computer sales, so I do have some sense of how this product measures up to other printers on ...
I work computer sales, so I do have some sense of how this product measures up to other printers on the market today. The resolution, 1200 x 4800 dpi, is more or less standard for most photo printers. PPM (pages per minute) can range from 16ppm to 26ppm for black and white text for photo printers, to upwards of 35 ppm for office jets. Personally, I never print photos... my colored ink usually dries up before I get the chance to use it all, so I can't say much about that sort of thing. It's the same resolution as the iP1700 (which got good reviews on photo printing). I wouldn't say it would do a sad job, but for those serious about making nice-looking photo prints, I would go for something with six or more cartridges in general to get better color resolution. Also there are other similarly-priced models, like the Lexmark X1270, that include a scanner/copier which comes in handy sometimes, but then that would have made the product bigger and heavier- the size and light wieght is a plus for this model. There's really nothing exceptional about its performance, and with printers under $50, you can't expect a lot of features like PC-free printing, etc. But, all that aside, I really am a fan of its dimensions/appearance. Apart from the fact it gets fingerprints easy, the shiny black exterior is really attractive compared to the humdrum grey or white color most printers have. I also love how compact it is. The paper feeder folds down so it becomes a box shape. Its great for storage, and you can set stuff on top of it when you're not using it. It's also light wieght so you can easily take it with you places if you need to, and the fact it doest have a paper tray jutting out awkwardly gives you, again, better storage, and more desk space when youre not using it. Also, the paper feeds nicely -- not a huge paper capacity, but the paper stacks in on top, so its easy to put more in. All in all, its a really ideal purchase if you are a) just looking for "a printer" and nothing fancy, b) don't have a lot of room and want something you can store and/or uses as little desk space as possible or c) want a cheap printer that makes decent photos.
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by draekon (see profile) -
April 10, 2007
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 out of 10 - Spectacular Awesome printer, especially for such a low price
I really like this printer, I leave it on fast mode all the time and the quality is good enough ...
I really like this printer, I leave it on fast mode all the time and the quality is good enough for printing school assignments. It prints quickly, I've never had a paper jam, and when doing manual duplexing it hardly ever sucks up two papers at once (as compared to my previous printer, an HP 3600 that used to suck up two pages every time I duplex, thus ruining the entire document every time...). What I don't like is that it takes it a while to print the very first page right after you turn it on (it spends a lot of time cleaning and turning the rollers and I don't know what else), and I've noticed that if you're trying to print a document with both colour and black and white text, while in normal quality mode, it uses the colour cartridge for the entire page, so the black text comes out dark brown not black. Obviously this also wastes the colour cartridge unnecessarily. This problem is easily solved - if you switch the quality to "fast", it uses the black cartridge for black and the colour cartridge for colour (ironic, the document actually ends up looking better in "fast" mode than in "normal" mode because of this).
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by LMF5000 (see profile) -
August 8, 2008
8 out of 10 - Excellent I'm satisfied with the print quality, but no tray??
The only thing about this printer that bugs me is that if you are printing regular documents (opposed to printing ...
The only thing about this printer that bugs me is that if you are printing regular documents (opposed to printing pictures)there is no print tray, so your print outs will shoot out of the printer onto your desk or where ever you have your printer stationed. Imagine having 10 or more pages scattered on your desk after printing. Other than that, it gets the job done.
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by chism263 (see profile) -
April 10, 2008
3 out of 10 - Poor Not for serious photos
I just bought this printer at Walmart for over $90, which I later found out is a total ripoff compared ...
I just bought this printer at Walmart for over $90, which I later found out is a total ripoff compared to what everyone else paid.
Right out of the box, I installed the driver/software and did some test prints with the included 4x6 Glossy Photo Paper. The first thing I noticed was that it is unable to do proper black and white prints. All of the black and white prints look like Sepia. I have a properly calibrated monitor and this printer cannot print accurate colours at all, colour or black and white prints.
The second and probably worst part about this printer is that it leaves little perforated dots across the whole print (about 6 rows of dotted lines). I believe this is due to the roller wheel things pressing too hard on the paper. I bought this to try and do my own prints at home and I am not satisfied at all.
8 out of 10 - Excellent A really nice printer for the price.
I bought this printer at Wal-Mart but not before I checked the reviews on Cnet. It has been a really ...
I bought this printer at Wal-Mart but not before I checked the reviews on Cnet. It has been a really good printer considering the price. That it prints really nice photos is a huge bonus I wasn't even looking for. I do have to say in regards to the photo printing that the software for that particular feature is a little cumbersome. I would prefer that it had some iPhoto integration.
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by jaredwbrown (see profile) -
September 6, 2007
6 out of 10 - Good good for low frequency general printing
This printer prints photos by using only the tri-color cartridge, mixing the three colors to produce an ugly composite black. ...
This printer prints photos by using only the tri-color cartridge, mixing the three colors to produce an ugly composite black. The black cartridge is used only for text when plain paper is selected. So if you forget to change "plain paper" to "photo paper" when printing a 4x6 glossy photo, it will us the black pigment cartridge to do its printing. This results in an ugly print that smudges easily.
The composite black is not dark enough and gives the printed photo a very ugly, muddy look, as if the whole print had started to fade with time. Dark areas lack detail and resemble dark blots of watercolor.
However, text documents printed with the pigment ink are water proof. The printer does an okay job with text and does really well with color documents. What I absolutely HATE about this printer are the star wheels that guide the paper out. These exert such pressure that they literally eat into thinner plain paper creating a perforated effect!
On photos, the star wheels also leave ugly and distracting trails, on a single 4x6, there are 7-8 of these trails! As expected, changing the paper thickness lever has no effect.
The printer is also quite noisy, but becomes more bearable with quiet mode switched on.
For the price, it's a decent printer. But the star wheels are really a major bummer. I'm not sure if this happens to others as well though, could be just mine.
Updated Since getting this, I've refilled the color cartridge once, the yellow ran out very quickly but the printer still reported it to be adequate. So I was printing documents with faint or missing yellow. I do find refilling it easy however, so this does make the printer a bit more attractive for the budget conscious.
Updated Since getting this printer just a few days ago, I've refilled the color cartridge once. It was an easy process but can get messy if you're not careful. Since refill ink is cheap, I guess this makes the printer more attractive to the budget conscious.
The printer will report an error that the tank is empty but you can override this by following the directions given on the screen when the error pops up.
7 out of 10 - Very good Nice Printer - Expensive Ink
Bought at Walmart's for $44 Easy to setup, and the packaged software is decent. The shiny ebony finish looks ...
Bought at Walmart's for $44 Easy to setup, and the packaged software is decent. The shiny ebony finish looks great, and the print speed and quality are more than satisfactory. The bad aspect of this printer,(and almost all printers) is the price of the replacement cartridges, which cost as much as the printer itself. BTW..The ink is not refillable at Walgreen's So bottom line for me? The cost of ink keeps this printer from being a great printer.
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by Lahawk (see profile) -
July 27, 2007
320 nozzles (black), 3 x 384 nozzles (cyan, magenta, yellow)
Minimum Ink Droplet Size
2 pl
Print Speed
up to 20 pages/min - B/W,
up to 16 pages/min - Color
Connectivity Technology
Wired
Interface
USB
Max Resolution ( Color )
4800 dpi x 1200 dpi
Printer Features
Borderless printing
Printing
Ink Palette Supported (Colors)
Cyan, magenta, yellow, black
Color
4-ink
Media Handling
Media Type
Plain paper,
Photo paper
Media Sizes
2.1 in x 3.4 in,
Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in),
B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in),
4 in x 6 in,
Legal (8.5 in x 14 in),
A5 (5.83 in x 8.25 in),
5 in x 7 in,
A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
Envelope Sizes
International DL (4.33 in x 8.66 in)
Media Weight
64 g/m2 - 273 g/m2
Telecom
Modem
None
Networking
Networking
None
Power
Power Device
Power supply
Voltage Required
AC 120/230 V
Power Consumption Operational
7 Watt
Power Consumption Stand by / Sleep
0.7 Watt
Miscellaneous
Consumables Included
1 x Ink tank ( Color ) - Canon CL-38,
1 x Ink tank ( Black ) - Canon PG-37
Scanner
Type
None
Copier
Copier Type
None
Expansion / Connectivity
Expansion Bays Total (Free)
None
Expansion Slots Total (Free)
None
Connections
1 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin USB Type B
Compatible Slots
None
Environmental Parameters
Min Operating Temperature
41 ?F
Max Operating Temperature
95 ?F
Sound Emission (Operating)
44.5 dBA
Battery
Type
None
Software / System Requirements
Software Included
Canon Easy-PhotoPrint,
Drivers & Utilities
OS Required
Microsoft Windows XP,
Apple MacOS X 10.2.8 or later,
Microsoft Windows 2000,
Microsoft Windows Vista
CNET Labs' Benchmarks
CNET Labs Photo Speed Test (pages per minute)
0.72
CNET Labs Presentation Speed Test (pages per minute)
1.98
CNET Labs Printer Graphics Speed Test (pages per minute)
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