First Impressions - Citizen Printiva 1700

Citizen is one of the smaller players in the printer market. It makes colour printers using its own solid ink technology, unusual in a market dominated by inkjets, and its new Printiva 1700 is different in other respects, too. It can print in gold and silver. It can achieve up to 1200 x 600dpi in plain black text, and probably the oddest feature is that it has a built-in scanner. I've never been a fan of the all-in-one device. There's always the implicit danger that if one function fails, you'll instantly lose the rest. Operationally, the Printiva is vastly different from the average inkjet printer. The four ink cartridges resemble cassette tapes and fit into the front door of the machine. When a print job is sent to the printer it passes through the machine four times, each pass increasing the colour depth. Surprisingly, this had no impact on the printing time of one job compared to the average inkjet printer. One full-page colour photograph takes between six to eight minutes. Scanning is a slightly Heath Robinson process: the rear paper tray must be lowered into its "manual feed" position and your illustration must be placed inside a special paper holder and fed into the manual feed. The scanner driver allows a variety of options including scanning and printing in one process. The 1700 produced excellent-quality photorealistic results from our test files (good enough for proofing and pre-press work) but the scanner's crude operation and results were unconvincing. If you need to save space, the Printiva may serve your needs. But if quality is your main concern, spend the extra money on two devices. PCW Details Price: #599 excl. VAT (RRP) Contact: Citizen 01753 584111 Good Points: Excellent printer with stunning photorealistic output. Space-saving. Bad Points: Scanner operation is badly designed and results were poor. Conclusion: If quality and reliability are at the top of your list, then go for two separate devices. There's a better buy somewhere.