Canon S900 Photo Inkjet Printer

The Canon S900 is awesome with color photo prints. It is very fast with great detail. At the highest print setting, it is very difficult to find any pixels like you would normally find on cheap printers. Prints look like they were purchased from a photo lab. I have had this printer for almost two years but the print head went out on me recently. Canon sells a replacement print head for $70.00 but you also need to include tax and shipping which will make it over $80.00. At this price, it makes sense to purchase a new printer since you can get a decent printer these days for $100.00. If you are considering this printer, you should check out newer models especially the HPs since they are now receiving some of the highest ratings from Consumer Reports and Cnet.

I have had my S900 for more that a year and during that time I have printed over 2000 8.5 x 11 color photos with this printer. The print head will clog from time to time , but running it under warm tap water and allowing it to dry has always fixed the problem. I love this printer, Ink cost about $2.00 a color. For a cost of about $12.00 you can replace all the ink cartridges in this printer, try that with other brands. I have had good results using Kodak Photo Paper in this printer.

I have had this printer for well over a year. So far, the only single complaint I could possibly make of it is that it chews threw ink cartridges like gumballs. I don't print all that much, but when I do, I print a lot. It seems like I am getting five to seven full-page ultra-high resolution prints from a set of cartridges before they run dry. The images themselves are absolutely breathtaking (if you have a good source and mod the internal printer setting to optimize your medium). However, the unit seems to use quiet a bit of ink just turning on. Even setting it to print grayscale seems to use color ink (? shading perhaps ?).

Outside of the expense of a new set of six ink cartridges, the printing quality of this unit is absolutely magnificent! Even using small "web samples", the printer produces beautiful 4x6 prints. Given a suitably high-resolution source image, and if it is set properly, the image quality, especially the blues, is staggering. While not a professional model, and hence, slower than one would hope, the unit itself is very effective for the home user. As an added bonus, the unit prints nice text [though not the equal of many laser printers, which excel at text], but again, it uses color ink to shade and hint when printing, and this consumes a lot of ink. The text itself is very legible and easy on the eyes (make sure to set your lines properly in the printer setting section - otherwise, after installing new ink cartridges, the print and image quality will degrade significantly).

Thanks - TechE

Keep in mind this is a consumer printer. It is not going to hold up long if you print hundreds of pages per month. I had mine for almost two years before it started acting up. I've probably printed between 300-500 full page (letter size or 8x10) prints with some smaller prints mixed in. It has now started clogging (one or more colors stop coming out) and doesn't appear to be as sharp as it used to be.

Using the cleaning or deep cleaning feature helped at first but it clogged again last night very soon after cleaning it. Using the cleaning feature seems to waste a lot of ink and this will fill up or saturate the waste ink pads inside the printer. Once the waste ink pads are full, the printer will not print any more and you have to have the printer serviced if you ever want to use it again. Mine hasn't stopped working yet but I'm sure the waste ink is getting full and I'm tired of wasting ink anyway by trying to "clean" it.

From reading up on this printer on the Web, it appears the print head is the weak link. Some people have had it replaced several times. A new print head is around $85 and the waste ink pads are about $25 just for the parts. I was quoted $135 to replace the head and pads. Since I did like the printer when it was working and because I already have extra ink for it, I was going to get it fixed. I then found a refurbished S900 here on Amazon for $99. It supposedly comes in the box from Canon and has a 90 day warranty and comes with ink! If it comes with all six colors of Cannon ink, that is worth $72 alone! I just bought the refurbished printer and wrote this review to help those of you who are having similar issues. I hope the refurbished printer works. If not, I'm going to find the nearest Canon office and throw both printers through the front window.

One more thing, don't waste your time, money or ink by using non-Canon paper. Kodak paper in particular (even their best paper) does NOT work well in this printer. I understand there are some 3rd party papers that work well in this printer but I have yet to use one. I have tried Kodak, HP, Epson, and a few other brands and they all stink. I prefer the Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy. It seems to look as good as the Photo Paper Pro and costs a little less. Namaste and Good luck!

I had the S900 for over a year and everything worked perfectly. Then the print head broke, horrible banding that simply couldn't be fixed. So I inquired and ordered a new one - $85 thank you very much. I got it home and within 5 minutes it too had broken. I took the (new) broken printhead back to the store and they replaced it free. That was in December 2003.

Now, March 2004, the print head has broken down - AGAIN. I love the quality of the prints, absolutely terrific. But the continuing technical problems make this printer a lemon.

I paid $350 in early 2002 when this printer came out and I feel I overpaid given the recurring problems. Canon should be punished for releasing a sub-standard printer like this on to the market.

JAN 2005: I discovered the source of my printing problems - non-OEM inks. I got sick of paying $11/cartridge for genuine ink so I opted for the cheap stuff. Well, I hate to admit it, but there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between OEM and everything else. I replaced my S900 with the i960 and I use only OEM inks, never had a problem, not one, ever. The color gamut of OEM inks is, in my opinion, better too.