Customer Reviews for Canon - PIXMA TS9120 Wireless All-In-One Printer
Customer Rating
1
Great for photos - not for DVD/CDs
on December 28, 2018
Posted by: CarlW
from Wisconsin
I bought this printer primarily for it's ability to print directly to CD/DVDs. While printing photos on paper is great, printing to DVDs not so much. The included "My Image Garden" software is, at best, anemic in features for formatting. And, 3rd party software is not supported - no setup on my mac could access the DVD tray. But the printer for photo printing - not for direct to DVD/CD printing.
I bought this new printer when my old canon printer died of printer header failure. I do not do a lot of printing so this type of printer is best for me to do photo prints and docuemets. It is a compact printer very stylish for printers and very easy to set up in my wifi network.
This printer replaced my ip6600d aging printer. This TS9120 prints as well as the old Canon. The photos are exquisite and the text prints are crisp down to 8 points. I also appreciate all of the modern functions such as wireless connectivity and mobile printing. An additional benefit is the size and weight. If there is one downside, this printer appears to slightly use more ink in printing photos. Hats off to Canon once again.
This printer was a bargain and provides excellent printing. However, there are several things I do not care for. The power saving feature turns off the printer after it hasn't been used awhile. This has resulted in having to reprint things because the printer was off. The print speed for a single page is fine but multiple page documents take awhile.
I've been using this printer for a few weeks now. I am by no means a pro photog but I know quality and appreciate it. I use high end post processing software and have a good grasp of photo technology. This printer replaced a very old model, so of course it has improved my home printing capability. I use it mostly for photo prints, but also use copy/scan/document print on occasion. Bought through Canon online, which was easy, shipped fast. Printer was super simple and straight forward to set up on my Mac.
Although this is a entry level printer I had read reviews of excellent photo print quality and based my purchase mostly on that. I have a canon camera and have been very satisfied with their imaging products, so I felt reasonably safe buying this without any personal experience.
My first prints were lacking (as expected). I was using quality paper but not Canon and colors were muddled and the tones were way off. I worked with calibrating color and print management with some success. When I got Canon Pro Paper the color and print quality improved greatly. However, the prints still did not accurately represent the digital image. The prints come out significantly darker, and with higher contrast than they should. This is annoying, in part because I process my photos to be high contrast and with deep blacks, and then the printer adds to that. This flaw can be compensated for by making the digital image lighter, but it's still a crapshoot because the printer isn't consistent with it's darkening across the board.
Black and white printing leaves a lot to be desired. The tones are not rich, come out with a purple tint on many occasions, and are not very true to the image. I think it is poor design when these "entry level" or "amateur grade" printers ignore black and white quality. This printer has a 6th ink that is "photo blue", whereas older models used a 6th ink that was a gray tone. It would seem to me the gray tone was a better use of a sixth ink and I wish Canon still offered that option in printers of this grade. I'm not a print engineer, but I don't see why I need two blue inks more than a grayscale tone. If the B&W prints were of comparable quality to the color ones I would give this printer a much higher rating. Pros are not the only people who enjoy B&W images and that should be given more consideration by designers in my opinion.
Ink for this printer is very expensive, and gets used up very fast. I've already started to blow through a few of the standard ink cartridges it came with in less than 3 weeks, printing mostly bordered 5x7 sizes. ~50 prints, mostly standard quality, nothing crazy. This is an across the board problem with printers and to me is a very poor style of business. Ink is not expensive to produce, and it is deliberate business strategy to price gouge customers on ink. The XL cartridges from Canon are the same size as the normal ones, which means all that Canon would have to do is put a tiny bit more ink in all their cartridges at the factory to provide a better product at no additional cost. It is a racket, but one with no good alternatives at the moment. I would give Canon an F for ink value.
Overall this printer is probably what one should expect from a printer under $100 (on sale). If I had paid the full retail price ($200) I would be very disappointed. But it does print totally acceptable color photos, and if you work by trial and error with a lot of image post processing you can get a decent black and white image. I kind of wish I had spent a bit more money for a more pro model, but then again I didn't have that type of cash to put into a printer and then buy tons of expensive ink on top. I'm going to start saving though, and will be looking at pro level printers with ink tanks instead of cartridges.