Canon PIXMA iP4200 Photo Printer

My wife gave me one very important task....find a printer that delivered photo quality pictures. After much research on the web and reading a lot of user reviews, I came across the the Canon Pixma iP4200. It certainly seemed like this printer would do everything I wanted it to do.As soon as I received the package, I immediately opened the box. There is a very large color instruction sheet that steps you through the process of setting up the printer for the first time. It took me about 10 minutes to take off all the packing tape and install the print head and print cartridges. The printer comes with a CD that contains the printer drivers and some other software. Loading these were extremely easy and efficient. For those of you who do not already have a printer, you will need to purchase a USB cable, since this printer does not come with one. The printer supports USB 2.0, but I simply use my old USB 1.0 cable and it works just fine.Now that everything was ready, next came the nervous part of printing out a picture with my wife looking over my shoulder. 45 seconds later, I let out a sigh of relief as the picture came out of the printer. It looked great!! My wife couldn't believe the quality of the picture. I compared the print-out against a picture we had developed at Wal-Mart and you honestly can not tell the difference!!!Besides the great quality, the printer has 2 different paper trays. This is nice because we can load photo paper in one tray and regular paper in the other. All you do is push a button on the front of the printer to switch between the trays. A very convienent feature to have. The owner's manual says this printer can print on 2 sides of the paper, but I have not tried this yet.The design of this printer is very modern and sleek. I have no problem having it displayed on my desk. The noise level when printing is very comparable to other printers I've had. It is a tad loud though when pulling the paper from the tray. However, this only lasts half a second or so.This printer has 5 different print cartridges, so I'm a little concerned about the cost of replacing them. Overall though, based on the quality of the printing and the unique features of this printer, it is an exceptional value for the price.

I was a loyal Epson customer for years until my most recent purchase from them let me down.I researched what my next purchase would be, and was leaning towards the highly rated ip4000. I found that the ip4200 was out, but could not find any reviews whatsoever until I read the first review posted on this site. (As I learned via Epson, newer is not always better). I decided to take the chance, and I bought the ip4200.It is a fantastic printer. The quality of print for both documents and photographs is beyond belief. I love the design, the ease of installation, and the user-friendly functions. It is also a very quiet printer. The documentation is very thorough. As far as not coming with a USB cable, it was no big deal. I just used the one from the old printer. If this is your first USB 2.0, then I can see that lack of a cable as being annoying.One small thing I also found impressive is that Canon does not push their own papers on you. There are no statements implying that other papers would somehow harm the printer like some other manufacturers do with their printers. The manual even mentions that using general copy paper is fine. This is a very small thing, but it does stand out. (They do, of course, give a list of all their own papers, but they do need to make a profit too! lol)Overall, I think that this is the best home printer that I have had as of now, and would recommend it to anyone.

It's only a year old, I bought new cartridges and I still have no red ink printing. Cartridges are EXPENSIVE. It "rejected" one of the black cartridges. It tells me the paper isn't loaded correctly (it is, a MORON could load the paper).DO NOT BUY THIS PRINTER

Although I have been extremely pleased with past Cannon printers, I have had difficulty with the paper feed of this unit from the beginning of use. The paper consistently does not pass through the printer, in either the cassette or auto feed from above.When the paper feed does work, I am pleased with its performance in both text and photo printing.I have contacted cumtomer service at Canon via e-mail. I was given the option to take the printer to an authorized repair center or to mail it back to Canon for a replacement. I have chosen to replace the unit.So the situation at present is unresolved. I will update this review, reporting the eventual outcome.