Canon PIXMA MP980 Review

Printer Type: All-in-One, Inkjet 

Overall Rating:  

This new all-in-one printer, the Canon Pixma MP980, is the replacement for the MP970 and it comes crammed with features. It's an all-in-one in the strict sense of the phrase. It prints scans and copies with a click of a button or mouse. It has a large LCD screen situated on top of the printer and a six peice ink system, which prints exceptionally attractive photo prints. It also has built-in networking with wireless capabilities.

The size of the Canon Pixma MP980 is large to say the least, but doesn’t need a forklift to move it around! The device measures 8 x 15 x 19 inches and has a smooth look that should fit into any home office. Installation is reasonably straight forward. Just place it on your desk, connect the power and USB cords, install the print cartridges. the software and print.

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Situated on top of the MP980 is a 3.5 inch colour LCD display for previewing and reviewing photos as well as having the option to adjust printer settings. There is a USB port which allows printing straight from your digital Camera, though they did not include the option to print from a USB thumb drives. The printer allows you to scan and print directly from film and 35mm slides, which is a plus for people who want to scan photos to preserve them in a digital format. For the reasonable price of this printer, that's a good little feature to have. There's a built-in duplexer which can print both sides of the paper automatically. I found this to be a very handy feature.

The Wireless option for the Canon Pixma MP980 is also another feature, but it's a little odd to set up. In order to enable and configure the network for the printer, you have to connect it to your PC via the USB cable and then enter the installation program. You then select the option to configure it for wireless network use. Once you have done this the printer can be unplugged from the USB and then moved to wherever desired. You cant enable both wireless and USB connections at the same time. This is a downfall as I would prefer to have a USB connection for one computer and a wireless connection for another.

The ink setup on the Canon MP980 is the standard setup for an all-in-one Canon, in the sense that it uses individual ink cartridges for each colour. This is a good thing as it is more cost efficient because you don't have to replace a entire cartridge, if only one colour runs out. The Canon MP980 uses six different cartridges in total which are cyan, yellow, magenta, dye-based gray, dye-based black, and pigment-based black

Print speed with the MP980 is a little slower than expected for text considering the price, but far from terrible. Photo printing is much better and well above average. To print a high quality 8x10 photo, it took 1:30. The photos that are printed look very nice and of store-printed quality. The colour representation is almost exact and incredibly impressive - in particular for an all-in-one printer. Black and White photos look astounding as well, which is due to the dual black cartridges. Canon claims that photos printed with the MP980 will last 300 years in storage. The photos are water-resistant as well as scratch-resistant to a extent, so they can handle some coarse handling. Printing photos with Glossy photo sheets, made a huge difference to the overall look and is recommended you use these for any photo printer.

Text printing was decent, but not as impressive as with photo prints. If you print any font smaller than 8 point distortion is apparent and can cause issues with the readability. Normal and larger size fonts had no issues. 

Canon MP980 Specifications

Print Speed (up to)
Color Photo: 4" x 6" borderless photo: approximately 20 seconds3
Black: Up to 26 ppm (as fast as 2.3 seconds per page)3
Color: Up to 21 ppm (approximately 2.9 seconds per page)3

Number of Nozzles
Black: 512
Color: 5,632
Total: 6,144
Picoliter Size:1, 2 and 5

Print Resolution (up to)
Black: 600 x 600 dpi2
Color: 9600 x 2400 dpi2
Output Tray Capacity
Letter, Legal, 4" x 6", 5" x 7", 8" x 10", U.S. #10 Envelopes

Automatic Sheet Feeder
150 Pages (Cassette:150 pages)

Copier Copy Speed (up to)
Black: Up to 24 cpm (as fast as 2.5 seconds per page)
Color: Up to 19 cpm (as fast as 3.2 seconds per page)

Reductions Enlargement
25%-400%
Copy Features
4 in 1 / 2 in 1, Auto Duplex Copy, Auto Exposure/Intensity Copy, Continuous Copy, Face Brightener/ Fading Correction, Film Copy, Fit-to-Page, Image Repeat, Manual Color Adjustment, Masking Copy, Multiple Copy: 1-99 Pages, Photo Reprint, Preset Copy Ratios, Trimming Copy, Zoom

Scanner Scanner Element
Charged-Coupled Device (CCD)
Max. Resolutions
Optical: 4800 x 9600 dpi
Interpolated: 19,200 x 19,200 dpi
Scanner Features
Auto Scan Mode, Film Scan, Gutter Shadow Correction, Network Scan, Push Scan, Scan to Memory, White LED
Color Depth
48-bit internal/24-bit external
Max. Document Size
Print: 8.5" x 11.7"

Photo Card Support Media
SD™ Memory Card, SDHC™ MultiMedia CardCard,® (v4.1), MultiMediaCard® Plus (v4.1), miniSD™ Card, miniSDHC™, microSD™ Card, microSDHC™, RS-MMC™ (v4.1), Compact Flash® Card, Microdrive®, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick Pro™ Memory Stick Duo™, Memory Stick PRO Duo™, Memory Stick Micro, xD-Picture Card™, xD-Picture Card™ Type M, xD-Picture Card™ Type H 5

General Specifications Other Features
Auto Duplex Print, Auto Photo Fix, Borderless Printing9, Calendar Print, Direct Print, Document Printing, Grayscale Printing, ID Photo Print, Photo Index Sheet, Photo Printing, Template Print, 1.8" LCD, Dual Color Gamut Processing Technology, PictBridge, Quick Start,Self Opening Tray

OS Compatibility
Windows Vista™, Windows XP/2000 and Mac OS®X v. 10.3.9 to 10.5x12

Standard Interface
Wireless LAN (IEEE802.11b/g)4, Bluetooth® v2.07 (Optional), Card Slots, Ethernet, IrDA IR6, PictBridge, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

Software Included
Setup Software & User’s Guide CD-ROM, PIXMA MP980 Printer Driver, Easy-PhotoPrint EX, Easy-PhotoPrint Pro, MP Navigator EX, ArcSoft® PhotoStudio®, Solution Menu

Dimension (W x D x H)
15.2" x 18.5" x 7.9"

Weight
23.6 lbs

Warranty
Toll-free technical phone support plus 1-year limited warranty with InstantExchange program

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