Canon PIXMA IP1600 Photo Printer Review & Its True Cost of Ownership

By Christy Berger

With Canon PIXMA iP1600 Inkjet Printer you can make high quality photo printings at home. No need to limit yourself with standard paper sizes for your photo printings as Canon PIXMA iP1600 printer offers a wide variety of paper sizes and weights. For example; you can print on standard-sized papers, on credit cards or on envelopes if you want. Canon PIXMA iP1600 printer lacks output tray.

Here are some of the specifications and features of Canon PIXMA IP 1600:

* USB interface; compatible with Windows and Mac (in case you need it, no parallel port provided)

* Up to 4,800 x 1,200 color dpi resolution, droplets as small as 2 picoliters (This is a pretty high resolution for a low end home use printer)

* Borderless 4-by-6-inch photos in as little as 70 seconds (of course this is assuming draft mode printing, but even normal printing is fast for a photo printer at this price range)

* ContrastPLUS 5-color ink system; built-in two-sided printing (again great for a home printer, you probably will not use it a lot but still is good to have)

* Printer ink cartridges: Printer ink cartridges: PG-40, CL-41 (This is the reason why this printer is probably this so inexpensive: Very expensive cartridges that are very hard to find and there is not compatible. Beware before you purchase)

* Accepts media ranging from credit card to legal sizes

Here what comes in the regular box: Canon PIXMA iP1600 printer, PG-40 ink cartridge, CL-41 ink cartridge, power cable, setup manual, CD-ROM, quick start manual, registration & warranty card

The street price of this printer ranges between $40 and $65 but this is only a part of the story as we all know. It is the supplies that will make the bulk of the cost of ownership. Canon PIXMA IP1600 printer uses cartridges that are very hard to find and very expensive. So you will be wasting all the money you save (and more) while buying the printer on its printer supplies.

This is how we calculate cost of ownership of a printer: "number of prints per month" times "cost of the printer cartridge" divided by "the yield of the printer cartridge".

For example, lets assume that you will print 40 photos per month using this printers ink cartridge set that yields about 60 photos and a set of cartridges cost $80 for the genuine Canon brand ink cartridges (since there are no compatibles exist in the market). The monthly "cost of ownership" is then

(40 photos) x ($80) / 60 pages = $53 / month . Yes, you read it correctly: it is more than the cost of printer if you choose the print that much.

This article is prepared by Christy Berger from MyOfficePortal.org. A longer version of this article can be found at Canon PIXMA IP 1600 Photo Printer Review. Main resource of this article is Canon PIXMA IP1600 Photo Printer Ink Cartridges at PrintCountry.