Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've had the new Pro-1000 for a week now and so far I love it - by far the best quality prints that I have gotten either from a personal photo printer or from my local photo lab. Pros: - The printer itself is well designed with an elegant build and stylish finish - The output from the printer is exceptional across all media I have tried (glossy, art, matte papers from Canon and others) and the software plugin for Lightroom is very easy to use. I am getting far better prints (more accurate color rendition, details, contrast) with this setup that I was getting from my local photo lab - Set-up and operations are a breeze. I had it from the box to my first print in under 30 minutes. The machine is quieter than I expected and faster as well - probably due to the new technologies at use in the printer. It is capable of putting down more than 30million drops of color per second! I also like the airflow technology to feed paper - this solves a fairly common problem I used to have (with Canon printers especially) of slightly crooked paper feeds. - The printer works well with non-Canon photo papers. I've tried Moab, Hahnemuhle, Canson and haven't gotten a bad print once the ICC profiles are installed. The printer comes with some of these profiles already installed. I had to experiment a bit with Matte paper to avoid very dark shadows but Canon's Print Studio Pro made this pretty easy to correct. And the flip side is that the shadows and darks on glossy paper look absolutely amazing. My first glossy print was like seeing HD TV for the first time. Cons: - I expected a large footprint from a printer that does 17" prints, but just from looking at the product specs it's hard to appreciate the size and weight of the Pro-1000. Not a big deal once you have it installed in the right location, but don't plan on moving this thing by yourself. - Would be nice for this price range if the printer did not limit length to 22". The comparable Epson has a paper roll option which would be ideal, but hopefully a driver upgrade will allow users to set a customized paper length beyond 22". - Minor point, but the buttons on the printer feel cheaply manufactured compared to the rest of the printer and have more play than I would expect. To be determined: - Is this an expensive printer? At $1300 yes, but to properly assess the value of the printer, more data is needed on the average life of the ink cartridges. At $60 each to replace the 12 ink cartridges, the print efficiency is the major factor in the overall value. It's too soon to say, but I compared the very simply ink level image that the printer provides at Photo 1 and Photo 15 (13xA4, 2xA3), and there is very little change. Ink levels are well under 70% but as another reviewed has noted, this is due to the initial charging process. Will be helpful as more experienced accumulates with this printer to get a more accurate sense of the printing capacity.