Canon Pixma iP3600 Color Photo Printer

While there's nothing wrong at all with this printer, for a few dollars more you can get Canon's Pixma iP4600, which offers the same high-quality printer but adds built-in duplex printing. But for under $100, this printer is truly excellent.

Canon has again provided an excellent photo printer for under $100; in fact, a couple of them. This one, the Pixma iP3600, offers two paper input options (a paper tray in front and a feeder in back) but doesn't allow for duplex printing. While that may not be a serious drawback for you, consider that for a little more money you can get the iP4600 which includes duplex printing. That's money well spent, I think.

In terms of printing, there's absolutely nothing to complain about, except perhaps warm-up time, which seems to run about 45 seconds or so. But once it's warmed up, there's no problem with speed. PDFs came out in an average of 20 seconds per page; color graphics, from a PowerPoint presentation, took slightly more per page. And a 4x6 color photo came out in 1:19. For a small and cheap printer, these are all perfectly acceptable times.

In terms of quality, the iP3600 does a great job. The color graphics pages weren't oversaturated, as I've seen with some inkjet printers, even when using cheap copy paper. Viewed under a magnifying glass, 72-point type was sharp with no bleed, as good as I've seen with much more expensive printers.

Since it's a photo printer, the real proof was in the colorful photo printed at regular resolution on Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy II 4x6 paper (there's a sample pack included with the printer). As always, the photo came out dry to the touch. The colors were remarkably rich and the image sharp as a razor.

If there are any weak points to the iP series, it's that they're rather large for photo printers. They look as though they're going to be flatbed printers with scanners, but that's not the case. That's why I gave this printer only 4 stars; if it were a bit more compact or had duplex printing, it would've rated higher.