Canon Pixma MX455

Canon's PIXMA MX455 is a small inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) for home offices. It can scan, print, copy and send and receive faxes. It doesn’t have a wired Ethernet port, but it can connect to a wireless network for sharing among several users. The only feature we miss is automatic duplex (double-sided) printing, but the driver will help you do it manually.
The MX455 isn't as flashy as some PIXMA models, but we like its refreshingly no-fuss design. There's no memory card reader and no colour display, but we found the simple LCD screen and dedicated function buttons less confusing than the context-sensitive screen-and-button system found on many mid-range PIXMAs. The scanner lid incorporates a 30-sheet automatic document feeder, and is secured by hinges that extend upwards to let the lid close flat when scanning thick originals on the platen. Initially, the single paper input tray seems longer than necessary and the output tray too short, until you discover that printed pages come to rest across both. It’s an odd arrangement, but it works perfectly well.

Canon claims a 9.7ppm maximum speed for this printer, and it came very close in our tests; reaching 9.3ppm over 25 pages of black text at the default quality. Oddly, switching to the driver's Fast mode actually slowed the performance slightly to 9ppm. Text was crisp and dark black on both settings, but not quite perfect, with a very subtle horizontal tear on a couple of lines.
Graphical prints on plain paper were excellent, with strong colours and no obvious grain or banding, but they didn't print quickly; Canon claims a 5.5ppm colour speed, but we measured just 2.2ppm over 24 pages. Photocopies seemed slow, too. A 10-page mono copy using the ADF took three minutes and 36 seconds. We waited nearly eight minutes for the same job in colour, but at least the results were good. Photos were quicker, with good quality, glossy borderless postcard prints taking a minute and a half each.

Canon's print interface uses quick settings for simplicity, but more options are available
We experienced slow scanning over a wireless connection: a 300dpi A4 scan took 51 seconds and a 1,200dpi photo scan almost four minutes. Over a USB connection the same jobs took just 19 seconds and one minute. Fortunately, scan quality was up to Canon's usual high standard.

Canon's scan interface hasn't changed in years, but it's one of the best
This MFP gave consistently very good, albeit slow, results, but its running costs should be around 6.7p per page if you use the larger of two available sizes. That isn’t the lowest cost, but it’s an excellent figure for a cheap device, which helps make the MX455 a convincing Budget Buy.

Canon Pixma Pro-100

The Canon Pixma Pro-100 is the entry-level model in Canon's Pro range of A3+ printers, aimed at semi-professional and professional photographers and printers. It uses the same ChromaLife 100 inks as many of Canon's smaller A4 inkjet printers and MFPs, which have always done well in our photo quality assessments. The Pro-100 uses eight ink cartridges, including Grey, Light Grey, Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta in addition to the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. The ‘Photo’ colours are paler versions of the standard inks, allowing for more subtle shading, accurate tones and a wider colour gamut.

ChromaLife inks are dye-based, as opposed to the pigment inks used by most serious A3+ printers such as Canon’s Pro-10 and Pro-1 or Epson’s R2000. Although dye-based ink, for a long time the default option for inkjet photo printing, lacks the longevity and anti-bleeding properties of pigment, it has its benefits. Dye-based ink, which soaks into the paper rather than leaving solid particles of pigment on top of it, tends to look brighter, smoother and glossier than pigment. This is definitely the case here, with the Pro-100’s photos immediately popping with vibrant colour at even default print settings.


While the level of fine detail and subtle shading isn’t quite as accurate as that produced by high-end pigment ink printers, our photos looked fantastic, with a glossy finish that highlighted delicate areas of contrast and really grabbed the eye. Skin tones look great and dark areas in particular appear rich and intense. The reflectiveness of the gloss finish won’t be to everyone’s taste, but our sample panel preferred it to the semi-lustre effect of the pigment-based Canon Pro-10 on the same glossy Canon Platinum Pro paper. Fine art photos, particularly in black and white, often benefit from the semi-gloss finish that goes hand in hand with pigmented ink, but if you’re looking to print bright and exciting personal snaps and posters, this printer does a brilliant job without requiring any editing or tweaking to optimise your image's colour.

Epson Stylus Photo R2000

The Stylus Photo R2000 is one of the cheapest printers in Epson's A3 range, although at £434, it still represents a substantial investment. It uses Epson's UltraChrome Hi-Gloss 2 inks and takes eight individual ink cartridges. This includes both matt and photo black, plus the usual cyan, magenta and yellow inks, with the addition of red, orange and grey cartridges.

The inks are pigment-based, which means they work by leaving particles on the surface of the paper, as opposed to dye-based inks, which are absorbed into the surface you print on. Prints made with pigmented inks typically last longer and don’t bleed, ensuring plenty of sharp detail. However, they can also look a little dull. Older types of pigment ink were susceptible to bronzing, which means that they reflected light in bands of iridescent colour that gave the photos an unnatural appearance. Epson’s UltraChrome inks suffer no visible trace of bronzing and, unlike Canon’s professional pigment inkjets, they don’t use a clear overcoat to give them a glossier finish.
Despite this lack of a sealing layer, the R2000’s prints on Epson Premium Glossy photo paper were a bit glossier than those produced by Canon’s pigment-based printers. If you want something a little more traditionally artistic, our prints on Epson’s lustre paper had a similar semi-matt quality to Canon's pigment prints.

Although it’s not suited to all types of photo, particularly monochrome ones, we really liked the finish we got from glossy papers and the way this made our pictures' colour and contrast really pop out. Default settings didn’t produce as much detail and contrast in shadowy areas as we saw in prints from Canon’s comparably-priced Pixma Pro-10, but light colours were a little brighter. Natural tones and a range of skin colours were accurately reproduced and there’s plenty of detail in all our prints. Our black and white test print was a little murky, but again highly detailed.
The R2000 can take paper sizes up to A3+. It has a primary rear paper tray with a capacity of 120 sheets of 75gsm paper, as well as a front-fed single sheet-feeder which you can fit with the supplied adaptor to connect a roll of speciality paper to the front of the printer. The printer can handle the thickest Epson-branded papers at 255gsm, while the sheet feeder can handle fine art papers of up to 1.3mm in thickness (approximately 750gsm). We found the R2000’s main rear paper feed sometimes picked up two instead of one sheet of photo paper, but jams were easy to clear and damaged neither printer nor paper.
Unlike Epson's more expensive photo printers, the R2000 doesn't have an integrated screen. This means that you have to carry out tasks such as nozzle cleaning via the options built into the driver, rather than the printer's control panel. There are a few physical controls, including a Wi-Fi button for easy connection to routers which support Wireless Protected Setup (WPS). When connected to a network via either a wired or wireless network connection, you can print from a mobile device using Epson’s Android or iOS apps. There’s also a PictBridge port, so you can print directly from compatible digital cameras.

When you're printing on plain paper, you only get to choose between draft and fine quality settings, but the driver lets you choose from five different quality settings for photos. We carried out all our photo tests at the very highest setting. It’s certainly quick, spitting out an A3 print in just five minutes and 40 seconds. Two 10x8 prints took 5m 22s and six 6x4in prints emerged in 8m 55s.
We don’t advise using this printer for plain text documents as it’s a waste of expensive ink and a very slow process, too; illustrated documents printed at 1.6ppm and mono text at 2.3ppm. The driver’s fastest print mode only improves speeds slightly and really isn’t worth it, given how jagged draft quality lettering proved to be. When printed on 100gsm paper, our text documents looked good. We particularly liked the appearance of our illustrated colour documents and, unlike similarly priced Canon A3+ printers, we encountered no problems feeding 75gsm paper through the R2000.
Epson was not prepared to disclose detailed page yield and ink consumption figures to us, so we’ve had to approximate print costs based on best-guess data derived from an older printer, the R1900, which has a similar ink system. Our photo costs are extrapolated from plain paper costs, and thus do not include accurate consumption figures for a couple of the printer's cartridges which are primarily used in photo printing.
Each 17ml cartridge costs around £16. Based on that, a page of mono text works out at 3p, while a mixed-colour document adds up to 12.4p. Including the cost of Epson Premium Glossy photo paper, a 6x4in print should cost around 45p, with the ink accounting for around 16p of that. Meanwhile, an A4 print works out at roughly £1.22 and an A3 print should cost about £2.86. Cheaper photo papers are available, but it’s important to make sure you get good quality paper for which appropriate ICC profiles are available.
Although we’re none too happy about the lack of reliable page yield data and the high estimated print costs, we can’t help but like the R2000. Its print quality is astonishingly good for the price and the option of fitting paper rolls is an extra feature that’ll appeal to some print-makers. It’s a brilliant buy if you want a pigment-based A3+ printer and comes very close to winning our Best Buy award. In the end, though, it just loses out to the vibrant colour, surprisingly low price and cheaper print costs of the Canon Pixma Pro-100.

HP Photosmart 5520

The HP Photosmart 5530 is a neat-looking and relatively low-cost option for photo printing. It has just four ink colours, and although it’s one of HP’s cheaper printers, there are individual cartridges for each. These slot into the print head, which has integrated print nozzles. The combination of individual tanks and a print head that's built into the printer rather than the ink cartridges means that you don't have to worry about replacing ink unnecessarily simply because one colour has run out or the nozzles have clogged. If the nozzles on the printer do block up, you can run cleaning cycles or, in extreme cases, get a replacement print head.

With the ink installed and the printer switched on, you're ready to configure it using the integrated touchscreen display. On-screen instructions can take you through loading paper into the surprisingly flimsy tray at the bottom of the printer. The tray lacks a cover and there's no output tray - printed pages are spat out just above the stack of fresh paper, with only a thin bit of plastic to prevent them from falling off onto the table. To our surprise, however, this worked reasonably well to keep our multi-page print jobs in order, at least up to the 20-sheet mark. Loading 6x4in paper requires you to push it a long way into the depths of the printer's input tray with only the paper guides to go on, or you can pull the tray out completely to load it. It's awkward and uncomfortable, but everything stayed properly aligned.
With both paper and ink in place, the printer will align its print heads for optimal quality. After the alignment page has been printed, all you need do it place it on the platen of the integrated scanner and the MFP will do the rest of the job itself. You can also configure its wireless connection, which is essential if you want to take advantage of HP's ePrint features to send documents to the printer via email.


When you install the drivers, you're given the option of either installing them from the disc or going online to get the latest version of the software. Annoyingly, the default software installation includes junk apps such as a Bing search bar for your browsers and software which feeds back information about how you use the product. The HP Photo Creations tool lets you use templates to turn photos into calendars and cards which you can either print or order online, but this is also of limited use. We recommend using the custom software selection option to deselect unwanted applications.
The driver has only a handful of basic settings, but if you want to configure even something as simple as borderless photo printing, you'll have to open the Advanced tab in the paper/qualities screen. This is not very pretty to look at, but there are plenty of handy options, including a greyscale printing mode and a choice of profiles in the Colour Management pull-down. We'd have appreciated a clearer layout and more information about all the options presented.

Canon Pixma Pro-1

Canon's Pixma Pro-1 is a large but surprisingly sleek-looking A3+ photo printer aimed squarely at the professional end of the market. At over £600, it's one of the most expensive A3+ printers around, although it's still a snip compared to A2 printers such as Epson's Stylus Pro 4900.

The Pixma Pro-1 uses Canon's Lucia inks which, unlike more traditional photo printing ink systems, are pigment-based rather than dye-based. Dye-based inks are designed to soak into the paper while pigment inks contain suspended crystalline particles of pigment which sit on top of the print surface. Pigment ink can display an iridescent sheen under direct light, although this is rarely an issue with the best and latest pigmented compounds. It's also popularly believed that dye-based inks produce more intense colours and subtle blending of shades, but again, technology has worked to minimise the differences. Meanwhile, pigmented inks have a proven track record of durability and faster drying times.
The Pro-1 takes 12 ink tanks, including a chroma optimiser coating that helps to seal and enhance the glossy finish of your photos. As well as the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black cartridges, there are also lighter photo magenta, photo cyan, light grey, grey, dark grey and matte black inks to help produce a wide colour gamut and realistic shading even on challenging black and white images.
Configuring the printer is a fairly simple process. Although you can connect it to either your local network or via USB, we opted for the latter to ensure that our print times were directly comparable with other, USB-only, photo printers we've tested. Being able to connect the printer via your LAN is extremely useful, though, whether you're working from a home studio or equipping a small business or print shop, as multiple computers can all have easy access to the same device.

Whether you plan on using USB or Ethernet to connect the printer, you'll have to install drivers either from an accompanying disc or, to ensure they're up-to-date, from Canon's website. As well as a standard printer driver, there's an XPS driver which can install as an additional component. While the standard driver supports 8 bits per channel colour, the XPS one supports 16 bits per channel. Essentially, it means the printer can understand and produce a wider range of colours, assuming you're working with an image format which supports them, such as 16-bit TIFF. Not all image-editing software can cope with 16-bit colour images, while some programs require additional plugins to handle them.
Other optional driver components include Adobe RGB ICC colour profiles, which allow you to install specific profiles for different paper types, and a variety of tools to help you manage and monitor your printer's settings. These are particularly helpful, as the printer doesn't have much by way of built-in status indicators or configuration buttons.
Printing our reference A3 photo took seven minutes and 28 seconds. The result was well worth the wait, with true-to-life colour and a pleasing lustre. Six 6x4in prints emerged in 13 minutes 29 seconds and two 10x8in photos took just under nine and a half minutes. We were particularly pleased with the excellent contrast and detail visible in dark colour and true black and white prints, which clearly benefit from the Pro-1’s dedicated grey cartridges.
We occasionally ran into problems with the printer's paper feed failing to pick up even thick sheets of A3. This is an issue we've encountered with other rear-tray-loading Canon photo printers, but it only crops up here if you've just got one or two sheets of paper in the tray; a full tray produced no such problems.

The Pixma Pro-1’s print quality is nothing short of stunning. Canon's pigment inks don't have the same level of glossy sheen we've seen from other inkjets, but nonetheless produced vibrant and attractive colours. Both pale and dark low-contrast areas are reproduced with stunning accuracy, making it easy to pick out tonal shifts that are often lost amid shadows and highlights. Fine detail is absolutely stunning, too, and is at its most impressive when it appears in conjunction with delicate variations in shading. However, although professional and serious hobbyist photographers, designers and print-makers could all make an argument to justify the printer’s over-£600 purchase price, its running costs are harder to come to terms with over the long term.
Including the cost of appropriately-sized Canon Platinum Pro photo paper, a 6x4in print costs a whopping 56.4p. That’s significantly more expensive than going to your local branch of Snappy Snaps, let alone using web-based printing services, which typically charge around 5p per photo. Admittedly, the Pro-1’s photos look better than those from online services and you get hands-on control over reproduction settings, but it’s still a painful jump. However, an A4 print on the same paper will cost £1.77, while A3 prints cost £3.87, both of which prices are significantly lower than having the prints made for you. You can also save money by using Canon’s lower-cost papers – the ink-only cost of a 6x4in print is 27p. Still expensive, but not quite as painful.
While some professionals may explicitly require the massive colour gamut and fine detail of the Pro-1, its sister models are not only cheaper but also cost a lot less to run, while sharing the Pro-1’s ease of use and excellent support for heavy duty papers. For most users, we think the Canon Pro-100 hits the sweet spot between print costs, quality and ease of use, although it lacks the grey cartridges which contribute to the Pro-1’s black and white print quality, while the Pro-10 gives you almost as much detail for significantly lower running costs.

Epson Stylus Pro 4900

If you're a professional photographer or print-maker, you no longer need be dependent on third-party labs and equipment, even if your requirements are as exacting as they are ambitious. The Epson Stylus Pro 4900 is massive by the standards of any printer we’ve ever reviewed before, at 430x840x770mm. It has a full colour display which allows you to monitor ink levels and configure paper settings. It can take paper sizes of up to A2 and down to 10x8in and can handle a variety of roll papers, from glossy photo media to fine art stock. It even has an integrated cutter to slice your finished prints off the roll.

While most large format printers have only a rear paper tray, the Pro 4900's main tray is a cartridge at the bottom of the printer, capable of holding 250 sheets of 75gsm paper or 100 sheets of photo paper. When printing on A3 or larger paper, you'll have to pull the tray out and extend it to its full length. Its position and the plastic guides mean that it's possible to accidentally push your paper too far into the printer, which can cause a minor jam. However, this was the only paper feed problem we encountered at any point during testing. The printer can also handle papers of weights up to 1000gsm via its front sheet feeder.
The 4900 takes 11 massive ultra-high-capacity UltraChrome HDR cartridges with 200ml of ink in each, including both matt and photo black, plus light black and light light black for added detail in black and white images. Note that although the printer has both photo and matt black inks, the process of switching between them takes the printer a couple of minutes and expends a little ink, as both blacks share the same print head.


You also get the usual cyan, magenta and yellow, with the addition of green, light cyan, very light magenta and orange. It's an unusual combination of colours, but they contribute to the printer's claimed ability to reproduce 98% of the Pantone colour palette. If your software can create it, the odds are very good that this printer will be able to print it with complete accuracy. The 4900 can also handle 16-bit-per-channel colour spaces, as supported by professional image editing software and some digital cameras.


The inks are pigment-based, which means that they lay small particles of colour on the surface of the paper rather than soaking in like dye-based inks. While dye inks are traditionally regarded as brighter and used to be the favoured medium for subtle shading, pigments are now the industry standard for professional and semi-professional photo printing. They’re bleed-resistant, leading to ultra-sharp detail, and tests show them to have greater longevity under most storage conditions. While some pigment-based printers, notably those in Canon’s Pro range, use a clear overcoat to give a glossy finish to their photos, Epson’s pigmented inks do not require any such coating. If you print on glossy paper, you’ll get glossy prints, although we noticed that these can be inadvertently scratched if not handled with great care.
The 4000's print quality is astonishing, with brilliantly accurate colour and every bit of detail we’d hope for in our photo prints. In side-by-side comparisons at default settings, we slightly preferred the contrast and light tone reproduction of Canon’s Pixma Pro-1, but the differences are just that: differences rather than identifiable faults. Meanwhile, our glossy photos displayed brilliantly accurate colour and outstanding reproduction of subtle low-contrast details. Print speeds are impressive, with an A3 photo emerging in six minutes and 38 seconds. Two 10x8in photos printed in four minutes, 58 seconds.


We’re troubled by Epson’s unwillingness to release ink consumption figures. We were also not provided with a full set of cartridges, which would have allowed us to carry out our own run-down test. It’s obvious that the 200ml cartridges are likely to go a long way, but equally apparent that you can easily use a great deal of ink when printing even a single borderless full-colour A2 image. At £86 per cartridge, you’d certainly hope to get a fair bit of use out of a set, but we were unable to calculate even vaguely realistic yield figures based on available data.
For our purposes, the Stylus Pro 4900 represents the high water-mark of premium quality printing. Although its price of £1,787 is prohibitively expensive for even many professional photographers and print-makers, it certainly has features that will be useful to those who make a living from their prints. For the rest of us, its high quality printing provides a useful point of comparison for less expensive printers.
Both the £551 Epson Stylus Photo R3000 and the £615 Canon Pixma Pro-1 produce A3 photo prints that come surprisingly close to the quality of the Pro 4900. The R3000 even has support for some roll papers, but given the choice, we’d go for the Canon Pixma Pro-1 as the best A3+ printer to buy if your budget doesn’t stretch to A2 monsters like Epson's Pro 4900.

Canon Pixma Pro-10

The Canon Pixma Pro-10 is the mid-priced model in Canon’s outstanding range of professional A3+ inkjet photo and fine art printers. It takes ten ink cartridges with separate matt and photo black pigments, the usual cyan, magenta and yellow, paler photo cyan and photo magenta cartridges, red and grey inks as well as a chroma optimiser cartridge. This last cartridge coats your photos in a clear protective layer, which negates the tendency of pigmented inks to reflect light oddly and gives your photos a smooth, glossy finish by filling in the microscopic gaps between droplets of ink.

The addition of a grey ink tank means the Pro-10 is fairly well equipped when it comes to printing high-quality black and white photos, although it lacks the more expensive Canon Pro-1 and Epson Stylus Photo R3000’s extra pale grey tanks, which makes those printers the first choice for black and white photographers who have the money to spend.
The printer uses colour profiles to ensure the best possible results on different paper types, and we were impressed by its natural rendering of subtle colour variations. You can also fine-tune these ICC profiles to produce images that look exactly the way you want them. In common with most other professional and semi-professional pigment printers, the Pro-10’s prints lack the hyper-vivid oversaturation that’s common to many consumer photo printers, but this can result in photos that look a little dull unless you take advantage of tweakable print profiles or post-produce your photos in an appropriate manner. However, even at default settings, we loved the fine detail and broad colour range of our prints.


Print speeds are a bit slower than the printers’ more expensive sibling, the Canon Pro-1, and quite a lot slower than the similarly-priced Epson Stylus Photo R2000. An A3 print emerged in ten minutes and 35 seconds, while six 6x4in prints took ten minutes and five seconds and two 10x8in photos took 15 minutes and 10 seconds.
You can connect the printer to your PC via USB, Wi-Fi or Ethernet network connections. Unlike Epson’s A3 printers, the Pro-10 lacks a screen, so you’ll have to use the configuration utility on the supplied CD to set up your wireless connection via USB. With the printer connected to your network, you can also use Android and iOS mobile devices to print to it via Canon’s apps.


Although the Pro-10 has only two fewer ink cartridges than the Pro-1, it’s significantly cheaper to run. If you include the price of Canon’s top-grade Platinum Pro photo paper, a 6x4in print costs 34p (5p without the paper), an A4 print costs 89p and an A3 print £2.11. The various cartridges will last for between 165 6x4in photos, in the case of the clear colour optimiser, and 710 photos in the case of Magenta. Most are rated to last for around 350 6x4in prints, although the matt black and red cartridges are primarily used in plain paper printing.
The printer has a 150 sheet rear-loading paper tray. Unfortunately, like most of the current generation of Canon A3 printers, it’s not very friendly when it comes to thinner papers. It can handle all sorts of thick photo paper, fine art paper and card stock, but cheap photocopier paper doesn’t agree with it at all, causing paper jams which, although easy to clear, can be annoying. It’s not really expected that anyone will use an A3+ photo printer for documents, but if you do need to quickly print off a receipt, its plain text quality is fantastic. We had to switch to 100gsm inkjet paper to get around the paper feeding issue, though, and plain paper A4 print speeds are slow, which makes this a poor choice for document printing.
At £500, the Pro-10 isn’t as painfully expensive as the Canon Pro-1, but it’s only a little cheaper than Epson’s excellent R3000, which has better black and white printing capabilities – worth bearing in mind if your photography leans that way. If you’re more into colour, then the vast majority of users will do as well with the cheaper Canon Pro-100, our Best Buy winner, which costs less to run and around £125 less to buy.