Canon imagePROGRAF iPF610
» $5,200
» Inks: Five ink tanks - matte black, black, cyan, magenta, yellow ($101.90 each)
» Buy from authorised Canon dealers

LIFE-sized posters, accurate architectural line drawings and construction plans are just some the large print jobs that the Canon iPF 610 can handle, and it does so quickly and beautifully.

The iPF610 can handle borderless images on 24-inch roll paper. It also has a paper cassette tray that accepts glossy or plain paper up to A2 size (about the size of The Straits Times' centrespread).

Manual loading is possible one sheet at a time. Caution: The printer doesn't have an auto-detect paper quality or paper size mechanism, so you could end up printing a small image on a large piece of paper.

Overall user experience was painless. From installation to loading of roll paper to replacing inks, almost everything was easy.

If you forget a step, there's a sticker on the printer that shows you how. The large LCD panel doubles up as an electronic manual that shows in animated diagrams how to change roll paper, for example.

For architectural drawings, computer-aided design (CAD) applications and construction plans where line accuracy is paramount, it can reproduce lines as thin as 0.02mm.

For business documents, promotional posters, the machine optimises Canon's Fine technology using over 15,000 ink-ejecting nozzles to produce beautiful banners at 2,400 x 1,200dpi.

There's also an image optimiser. This reproduces life-like posters. I printed several A1 posters, each one twice the size of The Straits Times centrespread, and the results were stunning. For example, the monochrome image of the Leaning Tower of Pisa had all the right ingredients that make a poster stand out.

The iPF610 is no laggard either: It took just 10 minutes to print a huge borderless A1 poster in colour or black and white; I have reviewed printers that took longer to print a smaller A4 image. One bugbear, though - the print borderless feature works only with roll paper, not with any other paper media.

In each tank is a smart chip that stores information on the amount of remaining ink, telling you if there's enough ink to finish a job.

Even if a tank empties mid-way during printing, you don't have to start over. Just replace the ink tank and the printer continues where you left off.

FINAL SAY

For companies, it's now easier to print big eye-catching marketing posters in-house with the Canon iPF610.