Canon Pixma iP4500

The Canon Pixma iP4500 arrives in a large box, and as it turns out it needed the space. This is a larger printer than one might expect, so be prepared to rearrange your desktop to make room for it.  The printer itself is an unassuming-looking box of a machine, Not looking like a printer at all until you add the paper trays.

Setting Up the Canon Pixma iP4500

Setup is easy and straightforward, though it is recommend that you use the "getting started" brochure accompanying the printer. It is relatively easy to set up, it does help to have the illustrations handy.  Overall, setup takes approximately 20-30 minutes once the parts have been emptied from the box.

After configuring, installing the drivers is simple. You just pop the CD in and  follow the prompts.  Make sure you don't turn the printer on until requested to do so.

Once you have the Canon Pixma iP4500 set up and powered on, it is ready to go to work. Most of my printing is done in duplex mode so I tweaked configuration to make it the default, after this the setting is more or less invisible. Everything in the driver configuration is very easy to find, and is simple.

The Canon Pixma iP4500 Printer Paper Feed

There are two ways to feed paper into the Canon iP4500. The top-loader  is the default paper source and the front-loading paper tray (”cassette” according to Canon’s documentation). Heavier papers such as card stock should be loaded from the top-loader.

Canon Pixma iP4500 Performance

So, you ask, how does this printer perform? Let me lay it out in two parts, speed and quality.

Speed - this is a relatively fast printer! Feeding it a print job that consists of a two-sided black and white printed text, this printer can churn out the pages, including the dry time for the front page, in about 20 seconds. Granted, this is what I obtained, just remember, your experience and your mileage may vary depending on your system configuration, but it’s a good starting point from which to base your evaluation of the speed. My older printer would take at least a minute to print these very same documents, and it still couldn’t keep up when in draft mode. For photo printing it churns out a full-page 8.5″x11″ borderless photo in roughly 45 seconds.

Quality - Speed is no good if the quality isn't there.  The Canon Pixma iP4500 printer provides the quality. The text and basic image quality is acceptable, though it could be a touch better. You won't notice this in day-to-day print jobs. On photo printing, though, this printer is an absolute showstopper. The photos it prints, on photo paper, are better than most magazine prints and could easily be used for photo studio gallery shots.  All in all, Canon has a winner in the Pixma iP4500.