Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Photo Printer Review

The Pixma Pro 9000 Mark II is a serious photo printer for serious photographers. Priced at about $450, this update to the Pro 9000 can produce prints at sizes from 4 x 6 inches right up to 13 x 19 inches, with borderless prints available at all sizes. It uses 8 ink cartridges, which can be individually swapped, and Canon claims that the prints will last up to 100 years in an album. But with this large print size comes the size of the printer itself: at 16 inches wide an 14 inches deep with the paper trays closed, it is not a small printer.

It is fairly flexible, though; the main paper tray at the back of the printer can hold up to 150 sheets of plain paper,. There are two additional ways to feed the paper in: a straight-through paper path at the back and an additional paper input on the front. The back tray means that the Pro 9000 Mark II can handle thick paper that can't be bent (such as thick card or other treated media that might crack if bent), and the front tray can handle thick media such fabric based paper that tends to choke other paper feed mechanisms.


Performance (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
We found that the Pro 9000 Mark II had very decent performance in our tests, producing accurate colors and deep blacks. It was not a top performer in these tests, though; the Epson R1900 had a slight edge in color accuracy and could reproduce a wider range of colors (called the color gamut). The R1900 also had deeper blacks, which helps to make prints look more realistic and vivid. But although the R1900 was a better performer overall, the Pro 9000 Mark II wasn't bad, and it did do a nice job in accurately reproducing fine detail.

Like most high-end photo printers, the Pro 9000 Mark II is not a fast printer: we measured the time to do a 4 x 6 inch print at 46 seconds, and the time to produce a 13 x 19 inch printer at 4 minutes and 37 seconds. This is for a normal print with borders; if you want a borderless print, they take longer as the printer has to slow down the printing process. But although the Pro 9000 Mark II is no speed machine, it's not bad for this class of printer, and is significantly faster than the Pro 9000, which took about a minute to produce a 4 x 6 print. It's also much faster than the Epson R1900, which took about a minute and 10 seconds to do a 4 x 6 in its highest quality print mode, and a rather ling 6 minutes and 5 seconds to do a 13 x 19 print.

Comparisons (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
There are a lot of printers available that can produce half-decent photo prints at sizes of up to 10 x 8 inches. Most general purpose printers can do this, and many offer scanning and faxing capabilities that the Pro 9000 Mark II lacks. But they can't produce the large prints that the Pro 9000 Mark II can produce, and they typically produce prints that don't have the level of color accuracy or the deep blacks that the prints from this printer have. However, the Epson R1900 did better overall in color accuracy and depth of blacks, and it can produce the same size of prints. The Epson is a little more expensive though, at about $550; $100 more than the Canon, so the Pro 9000 Mark II is a good pick for a serious photographer who wants big prints without laying out big amounts of cash.

For a more in-depth review, visit the Canon Pixma Pro 9000 Mark II Review at our partner PrinterInfo.com