Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Reviews

Canon Pixma Pro-100 review

Ted Needleman
By
Canon Pixma Pro 100 front angle
Canon Pixma Pro-100
MSRP $499.99
Score Details
DT Editors' Choice
“Excellent quality prints and an affordable price are what makes the Canon Pixma Pro-100 a terrific photo printer.”
Pros
  • Print size up to 13x19
  • Excellent output quality
  • Black inks generate excellent monochrome prints
Cons
  • Large and heavy
  • Slower print times

With smartphone photography, an ordinary consumer photo printer will do a decent job printing out selfies or photos from Facebook, in 4 x 6. But if you’re using a more advanced camera, like a DSLR with a bag full of lenses, the typical home photo printer won’t do you justice if you want to take advantage of all that high resolution.

The Canon Pixma Pro-100 ($499) is a serious photo printer for those serious about their photography. It probably won’t give you the same quality as one of the prosumer photo printers in the $1,000 price range, but someone would have to look very closely to see any difference. And, the price will appeal to pro photographers on a budget or home users looking to add some oomph to their printed images.

Related

Keep in mind that the Pro-100 is a specialized printer designed to turn out great looking photos from high-resolution files. It’s not for churning out pages and pages of homework.

Features and design

The printer has very few noticeable controls on its attractive (well, we think so) silver and dark gray case. There are three buttons: Power, Cancel/Resume, and Wi-Fi, the latter of which is used to set up a Wi-Fi connection with a router that supports one-button setup (also known as WPS). Below this is a USB port that’s only used for direct printing from a PictBridge-enabled camera.

The front panel folds down, doubling as the output tray and the straight-through path for printing on a CD/DVD. Another panel on top opens to expose the printhead and ink cartridges. The Pro-100 uses an eight-color ink system: black, gray, light gray, magenta, photo magenta, cyan, photo cyan, and yellow.

A second panel on the top opens to expose the main paper input tray. This tray can accommodate up to 120 sheets of plain paper or 20 sheets of thicker stock, such as photo paper. A single-sheet input at the rear accommodates very heavy stock, such as most fine art papers. The maximum media size that the Pro-100 can handle is 13 x 19 inches and the printer does not have the capability of using roll paper.

What’s in the box

The Pixma Pro-100 is a large printer, measuring 27.2 x 15.2 x 8.5 inches and weighing in at a bit over 43 pounds, so it comes in a large heavy box.

Along with the printer are a power cord, setup guide, software installation discs (one for Windows, a second for Mac), printhead, and one set of ink cartridges. A USB cord is included (a rarity) if you want to connect the printer via USB rather than Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

All Canon Pixma Pro printers come with the same software utilities. These include My Image Garden; Print Studio Pro; plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom; and Canon Digital Photo Professional. Since the Pixma Pro-100 is capable of printing onto printable blank CDs and DVDs, a special tray as well as CD printing software is also included.

Warranty

Canon includes a one-year limited warranty. Click here for more details.

Setup and performance

Setup is simple, but time consuming. The software takes about 15 to 20 minutes if you’re installing all the utilities. Installing the printhead and cartridges is quicker, but after that’s done, the printer needs to prime for several minutes, followed by a head alignment.

If you’re looking for an affordable entry-level professional photo printer, the Pro-100 fits the bill.

The Pro-100 connects to your computer either through USB, Wi-Fi (via network), or Ethernet. The printer also supports wireless printing through Apple’s AirPrint protocol.

Normally with most printers, we perform both speed tests and image quality tests. But we don’t bother with the speed tests when testing pro graphics printers because something like the Pro-100 isn’t meant to be an everyday printer. It’s a dedicated photo printer so speed is really irrelevant. It’s going to be slower than a regular inkjet printer, because what really matters is image quality.

And in this area, the Pro-100 proved outstanding. We printed our test files on Canon’s Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss. We used mostly default settings, and our test prints were almost indistinguishable from the reference prints we compare against, except for two slightly darker panels on the image of the X-Rite Color Checker. These differences aren’t noticeable unless you do a side-by-side comparison with the reference print.

Just out of curiosity, we also made several monochrome prints. These were also excellent. The three monochrome ink colors (black, gray, and light gray) do a great job.

Canon Pixma Pro 100 front left macro
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Canon’s website has a page where it rates the capacity of the cartridges, but these figures are pretty much meaningless as they were calculated using a method other than that developed by the ISO (International Standards Organization), which almost all printer vendors use. Also, every print uses an unpredictable amount of ink. The page yields given vary from a low of 37 to a high of 111, so don’t plan on printing large amounts without fairly frequent cartridge changes. That’s true for all prosumer and professional photo printers, however, not just Canon’s. The individual cartridges cost about $17 each.

Conclusion

In general, stepping up from a home/consumer photo printer to one that is capable of doing justice to true photography is a large and expensive leap. The paradox is, while the Pro-100 is considerably more expensive than a consumer model, it’s actually affordable for a wide-format prosumer printer capable of turning out professional quality output.

The Pro-100 may be Canon’s least expensive prosumer wide-format photo printer, but you certainly can’t tell that from the excellent quality of the prints it produces. If you’re looking for an affordable entry-level pro-level photo printer, the Pro-100 fits the bill. Doy you have a flexible budget? Check out the Pixma Pro-10 and Pixma Pro-1.

Highs

  • Print size up to 13×19
  • Excellent output quality
  • Black inks generate excellent monochrome prints

Lows

  • Large and heavy
  • Slower print times

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Ted Needleman
Ted Needleman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ted Needleman has been covering the world of technology for more than 30 years. Although his experience in reviewing products…
Snag a year’s access to Norton’s ‘Secure VPN’ while it’s 75% off
A close-up of a computer monitor displaying a generic VPN.

For one of the best VPN deals today, check out Stack Social which currently has Norton Secure VPN available for just $20 for a one-year subscription instead of the usual price of $80. Protecting up to five devices including all your iOS and Android devices, as well as your laptop or desktop, it’s fantastic value for such strong peace of mind. If you’re in the market for a new VPN, keep reading while we explain why it’s worth buying Norton Secure VPN.

Why you should buy Norton Secure VPN
You won’t see Norton Secure VPN in our look at the best VPNs, but don’t fret as it’s still a major name in the security world featuring prominently in looks at the best antivirus software. With Norton Secure VPN, you get real-time threat protection for up to five of your devices along with online privacy.

Read more
Save $400 on this Razer gaming laptop with an RTX 4060
A game playing on the Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop.

For a gaming laptop that will be able to handle the most demanding games, you're going to want a machine that's as powerful as the Razer Blade 14 with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card. It's understandably expensive, but you can currently get it with a $400 discount from Razer that drops its price to an even $2,000 from $2,400 originally. We're not sure how much time is remaining before this offer ends though, so if you want the savings, you're going to have to complete your purchase as soon as you can.

Why you should buy the Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop
The Razer Blade 14 is capable of challenging the best gaming laptops with the help of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, which offers excellent efficiency and strong ray tracing performance. Combined with the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor and 16GB of RAM that's good for gaming, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need, not only will you be able to play the best PC games without any issues, but you'll also be prepared for the upcoming PC games of the next few years.

Read more
Get this Asus laptop with a year of Microsoft Office for $199
asus vivobook go laptop deal amazon march 2024 lifestyle

You don't need to spend several hundreds of dollars on a new laptop that you'll use as a productivity tool because there are budget-friendly options like the Asus Vivobook Go L510MA. It's actually currently even cheaper from Walmart after an $80 discount, which brings its price down to just $199 from $279 originally. There's no telling how much time is remaining before the offer expires though, so if you want to take advantage of it, you're going to have to proceed with the purchase as soon as possible.

Why you should buy the Asus Vivobook Go L510MA
For a laptop that will be able to handle basic activities like doing online research, building reports, and browsing social media, you can't go wrong with the Asus Vivobook Go L510MA. It's equipped with the Intel Pentium Silver N5030 processor and 4GB of RAM, which are a far cry from the specifications of the best laptops, but it will be enough for simple tasks. The device also comes with a 15.6-inch screen with Full HD resolution, which is pretty large and sharp for its price, but it's still portable as it only weights about 3.5 pounds with a thickness of just 0.72 of an inch.

Read more