![]() For the sake of print quality, reliability and long-lasting results, you’re best off sticking with genuine supplies or at least opting for independent alternatives that aren’t overly cheap and have a good reputation. For photo printing, you also risk poor color fidelity and a massive reduction in the longevity of the print. However, with very cheap cartridges, there’s a risk that the ink might have impurities that can block the ultra-small nozzles of the print head, which can be a major problem. Independently manufactured ink cartridges often cost a small fraction of the price of the genuine articles. You can pretty much guarantee there’s no mess involved. The valve will also shut off automatically once the tank is full. What’s more, they’re gravity fed so there’s no squeezing involved, and ink is only released via an internal valve once the bottle is safely positioned in the receptacle at the top of the tank. Nowadays, ink bottles generally have individually keyed tops, so each one only fits in the correct tank. That often used to be the case but times have changed. You might worry that refilling ink tanks with bottles might be a messy business. ![]() All in all, cartridges can be a pain and a financial drain for anything other than occasional printing. And as for the lack of convenience, you can almost count on cartridges running out just when you need them most, which can be a big problem if you don’t have spares to hand. Conventional cartridge-based inkjet printers are generally sold with ‘setup cartridges’ that last next to no time, and a full set of regular replacement cartridges often costs as much or even more than the printer itself, so it’s easy to see where manufacturers make their money. Ink tanks beat cartridges for running costs and convenience. The best of breed sometimes include a scanner with ADF that can scan both sides of double-sided documents simultaneously, in one pass, effectively doubling the speed. Many also feature an ADF (Auto Document Feeder) for automatic the scanning or copying of multi-page documents, saving you the chore of feeding pages in one by one. The vast majority of inkjet printers these days come complete with a built-in scanner, which can add greatly to their all-round versatility. Just as you need to print documents and images from your computer, you might also need to digitize or copy existing pages. Up-market photo printers tend to feature additional colors of ink, often light cyan and light magenta, for an extended gamut (or color space), and top-notch ones usually feature additional gray cartridges to extend the tonal range and drama for black & white photo prints. The dye-based black ink enables greater depth and contrast than relying on ‘composite black’, created from mixing cyan, magenta and yellow together. Dual photo/document printers sometimes feature both dye-based and pigment-based black inks. Traditionally, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) inks are featured in printers, as this enables effective mono and color document printing. The flipside is that dye-based inks are better for photo printing on glossy paper, as the smaller molecules enable the ink to be fully absorbed beneath the protective glossy top layer of the paper. Pigment-base inks are also better for premium photo printing on matte photo paper and fine-art media. For document printing on plain paper, they’re more smudge-resistant so are less likely to be ruined by a ring of moisture from a water bottle, or from the use of highlighter pens. Pigment-based inks have larger molecules and are more robust. Frequently asked questions about inkjet printers Dye or pigment? Canon’s free supporting apps are particularly powerful and print quality for both color and monochrome photographic images is simply spectacular. In our tests with high-quality media, however, we’ve never had a problem. It’s not completely risk free, as Canon doesn’t guarantee that ink won’t leach into the edges. Indeed, a huge range of Canon and third-party fine art papers are directly supported and, unlike previous PIXMA PRO-10 series pigment-based models, borderless printing is available on matte media. While a Chroma Optimizer cartridge helps to deliver smoother output on glossy and luster papers, compared with most pigment photo printers, the PRO-300 really comes into its own on matte and fine art photographic media. ![]() Borderless printing on matte media isn’t risk-freeĪlthough it looks almost identical to Canon’s PIXMA PRO-200 A3+/13-inch printer, this one earns Canon’s range-topping imagePROGRAF stripes, with a 10-ink pigment-based ink system favored by the most demanding professional photographers.
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