Canon PIXMA iX7000 A3 inkjet printer

Canon's PIXMA iX7000 is the company's second business-focussed A3 inkjet printer, and it's one of the most expensive on the market. It is big, slow and noisy but offers automatic duplex and network connectivity, and it produces great quality A4 and A3 output.

The Canon PIXMA iX7000 is a behemoth. At 410mm high and 710mm deep with trays fully extended, this A3+ inkjet printer takes up a substantial amount of desk space.

The PIXMA iX7000 offers three media input options: a cassette, a rear tray and a single-sheet manual feed. The input cassette lacks adjustable guides to suit media of different widths, and the height adjustment won't suit anything smaller than A4. The rear paper tray can only be chosen as a paper source when printing photos and isn't available using the standard print dialogue. There is no way to change the paper source directly from the printer either (this makes it difficult to choose your desired input source when printing over a network, unless you install the printer drivers).

The printer has both USB 2.0 and Ethernet connections. Its other standout feature is automatic duplexer, which can print double-sided A3 documents as well as A4. The other A3 inkjet to offer an automatic duplexer, Brother's MFC-6890CDW, can only print double-sided A4 documents.

The PIXMA iX7000 uses pigment-based inks, which provides vibrant colours for both documents and photos. A clear ink is layered on top of printouts to prevent water damage and fading. You can expect a running cost of 18.6c per A4 page.

Though the Canon PIXMA iX7000 can put ink to page quickly, it tends to pause between pages. It is important to note that draft documents from the PIXMA iX7000 aren't the faded rush jobs that other printers produce. In fact, draft documents are readable and may even usable for quickly producing documents for your office. Overall the A3 inkjet printer prints comparatively slowly, but can still spit out three to four A3 documents per minute, which is more than what some competitors can claim.

Unfortunately, the Canon PIXMA iX7000 is particularly noisy. It makes a noticeable bang whenever it retrieves a page from the cassette, which will become annoying in a quiet office environment.

At its best, the Canon PIXMA iX7000 A3 inkjet printer produces vibrant colours that are better suited to glossy media than matte paper. Standard A4 documents can appear inky and over-saturated, though they are still readable. This isn't as noticeable when documents are scaled to A3 (using the print drivers); text is accurate and easily readable across various font sizes. The Canon PIXMA iX7000 truly stands out when producing A4 photos: it produces very deep blacks and vibrant, accurate colours without any aberrations. Unfortunately, A3 photos are somewhat lacking in detail, which could be attributed to the comparatively low 4800x1200 dpi print resolution.

Canon's PIXMA iX7000 A3 inkjet printer isn't the best option for producing business documents on matte media. Though automatic duplexing and Ethernet connectivity are certainly handy, restrictions with media input as well as its print speeds and overall output quality hamper this printer. Nevertheless, those looking for a networked printer solely for glossy presentation documents and the odd A4 photo should benefit.

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