Big brother
Canon's bigger Pixma shows off
In many ways, the MP180 is the bigger (better) brother of the multi-purpose MP160 printer. Case in point, Canon's MP180 has an LCD screen, unlike the MP160's retro LED screen. Some buyers may gravitate towards other brands that sport more impressive displays within the same price range, but at least the MP180 has one.
The MP180 also allows direct printing from a memory card. Problem is, it's now common to have a 1GB card or bigger. How do you tell the printer which photo to print? Canon's solution is to make an index sheet of all photos in the card. Each sheet has some, err, things to shade. Kinda like those entrance tests you took to get into college. You shade in what paper you'll be using to print, what photo you want and whether you want one, two, or three copies. Then you put that sheet on the scanner and it determines what to print. Finally, it just goes ahead and does it. Neat, eh?
At first it seemed cute until we realized that we were wasting a ton of ink. This is Canon's Chromalife100 ink, mind you, and we doubt you really want to waste it on index prints. Do yourself a favor and connect the printer to a computer and let it control printing or just control it using your camera.
Another feature this scanner/printer has over the MP160 is the better scanning resolution – at twice the number of pixels per inch – though you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference. Still, 1200 dpi is the standard for print quality.
Are the card reader, LCD, and double the scanning resolution good enough reasons for you to buy this over the little guy? Maybe. The MP160 is a very good buy given what it can do, but the MP180 may be worth the upgrade if you plan to do a lot of printing away from your computer. Erick Lirios
CANON MP180 | P6,595
www.canon.com.ph
TECH 2 pico-liter droplets. 4800x1200 maximum resolution. 1200-dpi scanning. Color copying. 52-second printing for borderless 4x6 photos. Canon FINE Chromalife 100 ink cartridges. Pictbridge compatible. Direct printing from digital cameras via USB. Direct printing from memory cards. LCD screen. Selective printing via scanned index prints. 181 x 443 x 381mm. 6.5kg
LOVE Excellent printing performance. Good value.
HATE Its LCD screen is so last year, but at least it has one.
WE SAY Excellent all-arounder with a few doodads to boot.
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T3 Magazine Philippines - January-February 2007 Issue
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 CANON MP180
Shady logic
The index print style of printing harks back to the days when you took entrance exams and had to shade some circle or oblong to indicate your answers.
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