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The benefits of pigment printers? For a few hundred dollars more than the Canon PIXMA Pro9000, the PIXMA Pro9500 ($800, street) makes up for two of its shortcomings -- it can produce longer-lasting color prints and faster b&w prints.
Thanks to its 10 Lucia pigment inks, the Pro9500 produces prints on Canon's Photo Paper Plus that should last more than 100 years on display (according to preliminary tests by Wilhelm Imaging Research). But it takes forever to churn out a 13x19-inch color print (more than 18 minutes on Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss).
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Canon Pixma Pro9500 Test Results
Image quality: Excellent for color and b&w prints on Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss. Color accuracy: Excellent (7.4 Avg. Delta E). Color gamut: Large, with some saturated yellows and dark purple-reds outside the Adobe RGB color space (transparent blue area in graph). Max. black density: Extremely High (5.4 L). Print speed: Color: Extremely slow. 13x19-inch borderless, 18 min 27 sec; 8.5x11 borderless, 8 min 30 sec.
Black-and-white (using grayscale controls): Slow. 8x10 bordered print, 5 min 5 sec.
Canon Pixma Pro9500 Gamut
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As with the Pro9000, its color profiles work well with Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint Pro plug-in, but not so hot with Photoshop CS3's driver. Print quality is excellent, with a color gamut similar in size to the Pro9000's, although prints show very slight bronzing in some light. And it has a second path for thicker papers, a PictBridge USB connector in the front, and a Hi-Speed USB connector in back.
The Pro9500 competes with the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 and Hewlett-Packard B8190, both of which make long-life prints with excellent image quality. But these others print color much, much faster.
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