The Canon Pixma MP970 is a monster of a printer and requires enough desk space. MP970 measures 18.5 inches wide, 15.6 inches deep, and 8.4 inches tall, and weighs just over 26 pounds. The body of this cheap printer is silver with black highlights. Hidden behind a door are two memory card slots, and a PictBridge USB port resides beneath the slots.
The control panel of Canon Pixma MP970 is embedded in the scanner lid, hidden under a fold-up panel. Embedded on the underside of the panel is a large, 3.5-inch LCD. The MP970 has a very simple control panel, due in part to the fact that most of the functionality is accessed via the onscreen menu. The MP970 offers two paper input sources: a rear input and a cassette. Both hold up to 150 sheets of plain paper. Canon’s Pixma cheap MP970 also contain seven-ink print system with individual ink cartridges. The pigment-based black ink is ideal for text prints, while the six dye-based inks (including a dye-based black and photo magenta and photo cyan) make for better photo prints. Aside from printing standard 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 photos, the MP970 also offers various multi-image layouts and sticker prints.
The speed of Canon Pixma MP970 is fairly good as compared to MP960. This cheap printer prints 7.85 pages per minute (ppm) for text prints and 2.07pages per minute when printing color graphics. This printer prints1.61 pages per minute for 4×6 photos. The text print is nicely dark and graphics print showed pleasing color saturation and sharp detail in photo elements. The 4×6 photo also showed sharp details.