Who Should Buy the PIXMA Pro-200
This printer is aimed squarely at enthusiast and semi-professional photographers who want to produce high-quality prints at home or in a studio environment. It is not a sensible choice for everyday document printing — the ink costs are significant for text and graphics work, and the printer lacks scanning or copying functionality. But if print quality is your priority and you are specifically printing photographs, it is exceptional value at its price tier.
The Eight-Ink Dye System
Canon's ChromaLife100+ eight-ink system is the heart of this printer. The ink set includes Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, Photo Cyan, Photo Magenta, Red, and Gray — a palette that enables smooth transitions in skies, accurate skin tones, and a notably wide color gamut that covers a significant portion of the Adobe RGB color space. This is why the Pro-200 is the clear choice for photographers over a general inkjet printer that uses four or six inks.
The dye-based inks are optimized for glossy and semi-gloss photo papers and produce vibrant, saturated results. The trade-off against pigment-based systems (like those in Canon's own Pro-300) is that dye inks are less resistant to UV fading and water damage — though for gallery-framed prints under glass, this is rarely a practical concern.
Print Quality in Practice
In our testing using Canon's own Pro Luster and Pro Platinum photo papers, the results were consistently outstanding. Landscape photographs rendered with excellent depth, crisp shadows, and accurate highlight detail. Portrait shots handled skin tones without the orange-shift that plagues lesser printers. Black-and-white conversions — especially with the dedicated gray ink — showed genuine tonal subtlety and depth.
Fine art papers were also handled well. Canson Infinity and Hahnemuhle papers fed reliably through the rear feed slot, and ink saturation adjusted appropriately to the different paper coatings. The borderless printing mode up to 13x19 in was clean with no streaking at the edges in our tests.
Speed and Connectivity
An 8x10 photo print at best quality took approximately 2 minutes 45 seconds in our testing — not fast, but reasonable for a high-quality photo printer. A 13x19 print took just over 5 minutes. The printer connects via USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. Canon's Print Studio Pro plugin for Lightroom Classic is a genuine highlight and significantly simplifies color management for Lightroom users.