Canon announce four new PIXMA printers: iP4000, iP5000, iP6000D, and iP8500

31 August 2004 10:45 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Canon has announced four new PIXMA printers ready for the back to school rush. The four models include the iP4000, iP5000, iP6000D, and iP8500. All the models come in a stylish black casing the breaks away from the beige box look and feel.

The flagship of the range is the PIXMA iP8500, offering an 8-ink solution (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Black, Red and Green) that is capable of working up to 4800x 2400 dpi. Canon's ChromaPLUS technology adds additional red and green inks for what it hopes will produce more vibrant, highly saturated colours. Combined with a FINE (Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology print head, which generates permanent 2-picolitre ink droplets, this new PIXMA can print an A4 photo print in just 34 seconds and 21seconds to print borderless 4x6in photos. The PIXMA iP8500 will be available from October 2004 for around £329.

The PIXMA iP4000R starts the range of new printers and adds Wireless G connectivity all within the £199 price point. Based on the 5-ink, 25 ppm iP4000 personal photo and document printer, the iP4000R allows you to connect to any available network. The new printer connect to a computer via USB and offers borderless 4x6in prints in 36 seconds.

The iP5000, comes in a black casing and will cost £169 and offer two industry firsts: a 1-picolitre droplet size and 9600 x 2400 dpi resolution. The 25 page per minute printer offers PictBridge for digital photographers and borderless 4x6in photo prints.

The iP6000D opts to offer six colour printing although drops the dpi resolution to 4800 x 12000. As well as PictBridge, the iP6000D offers a memory card slot supporting CompactFlash, Microdrive, Sony Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, and Multimedia card. A 2.5” colour LCD screen on the top of the printer displays image thumbnails from memory cards and provides an easy to use interface for cropping, paper size selection, photo effects and image orientation. Like the iP5000 the printer support 4x6in borderless printing however rather than 36 seconds like the iP5000 the iP6000D takes 75. Available from October 2004 the unit will cost £199