Max sheet
17 x 22 in and 17 x 25 in (A2+)
Max print length
3,276.7 mm (about 129 in) per Canon
Ink set
LUCIA PRO II, 11 pigment inks plus Chroma Optimizer (12 tanks)
Tank size
80 ml (PFI-4100)
Black ink
Matte Black and Photo Black in separate tanks, no switching
Roll paper
Not supported
Paper paths
Top tray (0.1 to 0.3 mm, up to 300 gsm), rear manual feed (0.1 to 0.7 mm, up to 400 gsm)
Weight
About 71 lb (32.4 kg with head and inks)
Dimensions
About 28.5 x 17.1 x 11.2 in (723 x 435 x 285 mm)
Maintenance cartridge
MC-20
Pros
- Cheapest ink per ml of any printer on this page
- 80 ml tanks mean fewer swaps mid-edition
- Dedicated Matte Black and Photo Black tanks
- Rear manual feed takes 400 gsm fine art sheets
- Canon publishes per-tank yields, so you can do real cost math
Cons
- No roll paper option
- About 71 lb; plan where it lives before it arrives
- Thick board (over 0.7 mm) is out
The PRO-1100 is the printer we would buy to sell giclee prints from a home studio. It takes 12 Canon PFI-4100 tanks (11 pigment inks plus a Chroma Optimizer coat for gloss papers), and every tank holds 80 ml. Matte Black and Photo Black each have their own tank, so moving from a cotton rag edition to a baryta proof wastes no ink and no time.
The cost math is unusually transparent. Canon publishes an ISO/IEC 29103 yield for every tank on an A2 print on its Photo Paper Pro Platinum. Add up 80 ml divided by each tank's yield and you get about 3.2 ml of ink per A2 color print, which scales to about 2.0 ml on a 13 x 19 in sheet. At $0.84 per ml that is about $1.69 of ink per 13 x 19 print. The full arithmetic is in the cost section below.
Paper handling suits fine art. Canon rates the top tray for sheets 0.1 to 0.3 mm thick (up to 300 gsm specialty paper) and the rear manual feed for 0.1 to 0.7 mm (up to 400 gsm), which covers essentially every cotton rag and baryta sheet artists use. Red River Paper's setup guide recommends the manual feed for anything 14 mil (about 0.36 mm) and up, and turning on the thick paper head height setting above 12 mil.
Our Pick
The PRO-1100 wins for most artists selling prints because its ink is cheaper per milliliter, its tanks are bigger, and both blacks sit in their own tanks so you never swap anything. Canon's 80 ml PFI-4100 tanks were $67 each on Amazon at the time of writing, about $0.84 per ml against about $1.02 per ml for the P900's 50 ml cartridges. It was about $1,300 on Amazon when we checked.
Buy the PRO-1100 if you print editions on cut sheets up to 17 x 22 in (or 17 x 25 in), you switch between matte rag and glossy or baryta papers, and you have a sturdy table for a 71 lb machine. It is the best overall pick in our home printers for art guide.
What we don't like
No roll paper support at all, so long panoramas mean pre-cut sheets (up to about 129 in long per Canon). It weighs about 71 lb (32.4 kg per Canon) and is bigger in every direction than the P900. The rear manual feed tops out at 0.7 mm, so it cannot take posterboard.
