Canon PIXMA PRO-200
£449/$599 This A3+/13-inch dye-based photo printer is simply epic for photo quality output
Canon’s PIXMA PRO-100S had long been our favourite A3+/13-inch pro-grade printer for creating photo prints on glossy and lustre papers. Running on eight dye-based inks, including black, grey and light grey, it delivered sumptuously smooth glossy prints, with immaculate colour rendition and very good tonal expression for black-and-white photographic images.
The replacement PRO-200 brings with it a number of enhancements. It has a new and improved range of inks that deliver a greater colour space, superior vibrancy and deeper reds, blues and blacks. Paper handling is intuitive, as in the PRO-300 on test, with an upright rear feeder and a secondary manual feeder that enables custom print lengths of up to 39 inches (99.1cm). Other similarities with the PRO-300 are the addition of a threeinch colour LCD screen and compatibility with Canon’s excellent Professional Print & Layout software, which is available as a free download. The printers are also fully compatible with top-quality fine-art media from the likes of Canson and Hahnemühle.
Performance
As you’d expect, print speeds from this dye-based printer are faster than from the pigmentbased PRO-300 model. As is often the case these days, the difference in print quality between standard and highest quality modes can be negligible, unless you’re viewing photo prints with a high-magnification loupe. The PRO-200 delivers fabulous photo print quality; it’s the best in the group on glossy photo paper, although the PRO-300 has the edge for black-and-white prints.