Canon Pixma Pro 100

[Stephen G]

I have not been a home printer in many years, and instead been a longtime mpix customer.
Annually, I seem to reconsider this when the usual Canon printer rebate season pops up.

Currently, I can get- Canon Pixma Pro 100 + 50 sheets of 13x19 luster + 50 sheets of 13x19 glossy, all-in for under $200 after rebates.

I have read some reviews. Many seem to be imply its performance is very close to the Pixma Pro 1, for half the price (or in this case, 1/5th the price).

Some inadequacies indicated:
* Its not so good for matte
* Its got 8 inks instead of 10 or 12
* Its got dye instead of pigment ink (shorter life, but more glossy color)
* Less printer nozzles per ink (though smaller droplets..)

Am I missing a glaring flaw here, or is this essentially a great buy at the moment?
I'm happy to keep using Mpix if I am going to get inferior results home printing with this printer.
Do dye prints, or inkjet prints in general, still require more care when handling than a standard lab print?
Not sure how big a deal dye vs pigment really is for life span in real life usage.. (considering I have lab prints that faded/stained due to poor lab handling).

My use case-
* Not a terribly frequent printer, though if I had one in-home, I'd print say.. at least monthly as I know printers need exercise.
* Printing smaller size by the dozen for my wife regularly.
* Frequent printer of 12x18 size for my walls & give away
* Similarly like to print other non-standard sizes like 8x12 or 6x9 for give away
* Kind of excited by the idea of more iterative printing if I have my own printer

 

[gavinlg]

dpreview just reviewed the pro-10 if that's any help to you?

pro-10 review

I have a cheapo ip4850 and I really like it.

edit: Just realised I rambled for a bit in my original post - sorry, tired.

 

[Jockos]

I used to work at Canon and got to try out their top of the line consumer printers a lot. I mostly used the 9000 mk II and the 9500 mk II, both were equally good except they took different paper, where the dye printer wants to be fed with glossy and the pigment one prefers the matte.

If glossy papers are your thing, the Pro 100 should be a great choice, especially at that price (which would barely buy you a full set of inks here in Sweden).
If you prefer printing on matte (I know I do), then I think you'd be better off waiting for a good offer on the pigment printer instead.

 

[Stephen G]

I tend to print on Lustre which seems to be categorized with Glossy rather than Matte..
If I read the reviews right, Lustre prints good on this one too.

 

[Jockos]

We didn't have that one when I worked there, but the "Semi-gloss" (SG 201) worked pretty well with both ink types to!