Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon i960 Photo Printer

I've mainly used Epson and HP Printers at work and at home; however, after reading the reviews of this Canon printer I decided to give Canon a shot. I have never been as blown away by a product before as I was with this one!

I printed over 100 photos at 4x6 without using all of the ink that came with the printer. The photos look like actual photos from a film camera. A friend at work wanted to know where I got my digital pictures developed.

The software which comes with this printer is amazing. You can instantly make a complete package of photos, including wallets, 5x7, and 8x10.

One amazing feature of this printer that I've never seen on the other brands is the ability to print full bleed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. I tried this and it worked perfectly.

I use a Sony F707 5 megapixel digital camera and have really been impressed with the results the "little Canon that could" have given me. If you use Canon's paper, the photos look perfect. Cheaper paper will still look better than HP/Epson photos, but not as perfect as the Canon paper photos.

Another reason to buy this printer: Check out the prices of Canon's replacement inks vs. HP's or Epson's. That alone is worth buying this printer...not to mention the fact that the 2 picoliter drops result in higher quality prints than HP or Epson can offer.

The "bumps" in the ink mentioned in the previous reviewer's friend's i950 were from using incompatible paper, not the printer itself (I know this the hard way)--if not that, then a setting was wrong, but Canon settings are so easy that it's probably not that. There should be no ink pooling or imperfection whatsoever if both the user & printer are functioning properly. Further testament is that the i950 & newer i960 have exactly the same printing mechanism, so there should be no difference in print quality. 3rd-party papers which work great in one printer may work horribly in another, & vice versa. Use Canon products & get consistent great results, or do your homework; I actually exchanged a Canon printer because of ink pooling on a particular 3rd-party paper which worked great in my Epson, not realizing the mistake was mine.

I do agree with the previous reviewer's decision to buy bulk ink & refill for medium & heavy users. There is a particular 3rd-party ink mfr which is best for Canon; I may or may not be allowed to say it here, but it can be found in archived newsgroup posts (i.e. google groups) if you search. You can also search which are the best 3rd-party papers, too. There are a number of good paper brands, but I would only recommend one 3rd-party mfr of ink, often sold under 4th-party rebranding. Otherwise, OEM Ink will cost about as much as paper in photo printing (yikes!).

If you want consistent great results with no homework, stick with OEM Canon stuff, but if you print a lot, judiciously-selected 3rd-party products results can be awesome, low-cost, and you really feel like you are getting away with something. When you see prints coming out of your own printer which are actually BETTER than your local "Mart" photo printing (be it 1-hour or 3-day), the enthusiasm bubbles. Plus, the degree of control you have doesn't have a price. The "Mart" places artificially jack up the color saturation for a "vivid" effect; with home printing, esp with the very easy Canon drivers, it becomes your choice. Power-user driver features are unintimidating and easily-available. Canon does FAR better on drivers than Epson! The other included softwares range from extremely useful to embarrassingly pathetic.

Updates/differences in the i960 vs i950: the i960 has the manual 4x6 paper tray, 2 USB ports, an updated PictBridge standard, different cosmetics, and a driver which permits viewing print details in Print Preview (which most wouldn't care about, but is the only thing I miss in my own i950). I see too many newbies looking for a printer with an LCD and I wince when I see that. Direct printing to me is a gimmick and I'm glad to not pay extra for an LCD.

Canon is the way to go in printers; the closest competitor is Epson, and having owned 4 Epsons and now 1 Canon, I have given away (2) or thrown away (2) all my Epsons, no kidding, and will never go back. Canon cartridges are also TTBOMK the easiest to refill. Canons are quieter, too (extremely quiet). Canon will eventually bring their 7- or 8-color widebody printer mechanism (i960 has 6) to the consumer market, but quality is starting to increase with diminishing returns. Even if you upgrade, your ink will still be useful; they have recently been adding extra colors but have kept the original BCI-6 colors/tanks the same.

My own tests show that this printer prints at LEAST at 20 Megapixel resolution on 8.5x11 paper. Print a 5-Megapixel photo on a quarter-8.5x11-sheet and you will notice that every single detail visible on your monitor will be visible on the print (both may require magnification).

I did an OEM fade test, and in 6+ months of bright indirect sunlight, I see no fading of the ink, and the back of the paper is slightly yellowed (noticeable side-by-side), being exposed to air & pollutants, not under glass (which is why you put prints under glass). PPP is not as "white" as cheaper papers--that's a good thing, as those brighteners break down & yellow even faster. Still, a wet chem print will be more resilient over years of exposure.

The i960's price is a little above half what I paid for the i950, which even then was a good deal for what it did. You now truly can have photolab quality prints (I mean good photolab quality, not those cheap laser-exposed prints most of us [used to] get) in your home for a great price, and IMO the new low cost makes people not appreciate how special a piece of hardware this is.

Before you go figuring out price per print, something which may surprise you is the amount of FUN you will (hopefully) have which adds to the value, as does the privacy & immediacy. Prints can be much cheaper than wet chem (depending), but you will spend far more in updating your digital camera, as that is where technology really lags behind. 5 MP prints do 8.5x11 with no visible pixellation, but as I said, the printer is at least capable of 20 MP resolution, something most won't have for years.

Despite the absence of a "light black" color, you can also get better-than-potolab results in B&W, too, with the added advantage of being able to control tone. Professional digital headshots can print in "actual" pro quality or better with top paper, so the printer can actually pay for itself for models & actors. No one will notice a difference, except that they're better, and there's no paper branding on the back.

Printing text on plain paper is good, but not quite like a laser (you have to look up close to see). This is due to the paper & ink, not the printer's ability to do "letter" quality or real straight lines, which it truly can on the right (i.e. photo) paper. Though quality paper helps greatly, toner doesn't seep into plain paper the way ink does, and it is beyond me why they include a plain paper black (pigment) cartridge in the i8x0 series and not in the more-expensive i9x0, which only has dye ink. I have not compared the i860's text printing. For light text duty, the i960 does well, but serious text printers will need a fast laser printer or perhaps ironically an i860, which also does great photo prints--I couldn't tell i8/960 samples apart in a store with poor lighting. Canon will mail you a sample from each upon request; request the same image for both.

Canon is also the least money-grubbing of the printer makers: first to come out with separate ink tanks, not making refill-proof designs, better cost per print. The good karma flows beautifully into every other superior aspect of Canon printers, gaining my patronage & word of mouth.

I have done mad amounts of research, as you may tell, and this is the one to go with. There is little reason to wait for a more-refined printer, and even when there is one, it will be a Canon.

I'm a serious amateur photographer and a professional writer. The i960 is great for photos and text. The photo quality is excellent, comparable in quality and price to a photo lab. I shoot digitally and get better results from the i960, because there's no telling what settings the lab is using in its machine.

Individual ink cartridges is great, and supposedly this printer wastes less ink than its predecessors by skipping ink-consuming calibration processes at startup. At any rate, I've had the printer for about a month, have printed lots of photos and haven't started running low on ink.

Some have said this printer suffers in the text department, but I haven't been disappointed. My pages look just fine, at least as good as any inkjet I've used. Other benefits are the 4x6 paper feeder, the folding paper catcher in front, and man, this thing looks cool on the shelf (hey, it helps).

Overall, the i960 is a fantastic printer and very affordable at its sub-$200 price. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I was in need of a second photo quality printer. last Fall I bought a Canon i850 printer to replace my old Epson Stylus Photo EX. I was tremendously impressed with that printer's ability to make economical, lab quality photographic prints. The i850 only uses Cyan, Magenta, & Yellow color inks.
That printer is now on my daughter's iMac DV and still chugging along.
I very nearly bought the Epson 1280 photo printer, but when my students use it at college, I noticed several things that annoyed me:

The Epson guzzles color ink like Kool Ade! Although very high in quality, I get sick of tossing perfectly good ink carts when only one color is depleted.
Every 5-10 prints we have to run deep nozzle cleaning on the Epson 1280 which wasted even more ink. In the 8 months I've had the i850, it only required a nozzle check once.
So I looked at the newer Canon i960, and after reading several reputable reviews and talking to people who actually own it, I took the plunge....
No regrets. Set up on my OS X Mac was a breeze, and I really appreciate Canon's well drawn step by step set up poster included in the box.
I did not think that the i960 could match the Espon Photo 1280 for color fidelity-was I wrong! This printer can churn out an 8x10 that looks like a real photograph. The first thing I printed (after the alignment patterns-which you MUST DO to get top output...) was a scan from a 120 medium format Ektachrome slide. The 120 chrome is the standard for excellence. Lens was a Carl Zeiss Planar....the i960 print really did this German lens justice. The color and contrast were spot-on when printed from Photoshop CS.
Translation: This is a PRO quality color printer.
There is a lot of misinformation going around the web that Canon inks don't last as long as Epson's. NOT true. When printed on Canon Photo Matte paper, the print is guaranteed for 25 years.
EPSON, READ THIS: I will NEVER buy another Epson printer again! Canon's individual ink tanks have saved me $300.00 already....plus Canon lets me replace the printhead at home if there is a problem.
The i960 is super quiet. You can stack two paper sizes at the same time. It's amazingly fast, and can direct print from most Canon digital cameras.
A Superb product from a truly innovative company...what else do you need to know?

This is my second Canon printer; I upgraded to the i960 after using the S520 for a year. The S520 was an excellent, all-around printer, good at both text and photos, but I wanted something optimized just for photo quality, without regard to text output. Since I've only printed photos on the i960, and not text, that's all I can comment on. On that score, it's been outstanding. The S520 was pretty good, but the colors are even truer in the i960. I've printed approximately 150-175 photos on it so far, in 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8.5 x 11 sizes, in both color and black and white. I've had great results with Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy, Canon's Photo Paper Pro, as well as Epson's matte heavyweight paper, but haven't tried any other papers yet. My only complaint is that the photos sometimes come out with fine, hairline scratches on the paper - more noticeable on areas of the photo that are heavily inked. They aren't obvious when you look at the photo straight on, but if you tilt it sideways under good light, you can see them. In fairness, I recently noticed that there is an option called "Prevent Paper Abrasion" (click Properties, then Maintenance, then Custom Settings, and you'll see it), but I haven't tried that yet. The printer comes with one full set of inks (6 separate tanks - black [BCI-6BK], cyan [BCI-6C], photo cyan [BCI-6PC], yellow [BCI-6Y], magenta [BCI-6M], and photo magenta [BCI-6PM]), but no USB cable, so you'll have to supply that. Overall, I have been very pleased with this printer, and if it got stolen, hit by lightning, or otherwise removed from my service, I'd go out and buy the same thing again.