Canon on Monday marked its entry into the field of ink tank printers with the launch of 4 products as part of the new Pixma G series of printers. The Pixma G Series range starts at Rs. 9,595 for the basic model (Pixma G1000) and goes up to Rs. 16,795 for the model (Pixma G3000) with Wi-Fi connectivity. The replacement ink bottles are priced at Rs. 499 per unit, for colour as well as black. The printers will be available across the country later this month.
Regular inkjet printers come with a design where the ink tank is situated on the printhead, which means the ink volume in such tanks is usually pretty low and has to be replaced frequently. Ink tank printers - which have been available from the likes of HP and Epson until now - solve this problem by moving the ink tanks to a separate physical location, which means you can now have bigger, independent ink tanks. This design also minimises the wastage associated with tank-on-printhead design in terms of head-cleaning cycles, with the additional advantage that ink tanks can be replaced or refilled even as you are using the printer.
The Canon Pixma G 1000 is a basic printer that costs Rs. 9,595. The Pixma G 2000, which costs Rs. 10,900 can print, scan, and copy. The Pixma G 2002 (Rs. 11,900) is the Pixa G 2000, with two additional black bottles of ink thrown in for 'free'. The top of the line Pixma G 3000 comes with wireless (802.11 b/g/n) print, scan, and copy and is Google Cloud print ready. Canon is claiming the blank tank can print up to 6,000 pages, while you can print up to 7,000 pages in colour out of the box. All printers come with support for borderless printing and 1-year on-site warranty.
Canon says the new range offers a print cost as low as 8-paise per print for black prints and 21-paise per colour print. The target market for this series is photo centres, copy shops, and SOHO customers.
