Canon has scooped the Buyer’s Laboratory (BLI) award for ‘2014 Wide-Format Graphic Arts Printer Line of the Year’ thanks to the overall strength of its imagePrograf series of printers. Also, Canon’s iPF6400S, iPF8400S and iPF765 MFP M40 printers were recognised with three BLI Winter 2014 ‘Pick’ awards in the wide-format category.
The BLI ‘Wide-format Graphics Printer Line of the Year’ accolade is awarded to vendors whose product lines are judged to be the best overall in their respective categories based on a two-month evaluation process. Products in the wide-format category are assessed on reliability, image quality, ease of use, colour management, productivity and connectivity. Also taken into consideration is the breadth of the product line and its ability to produce quality products that cater to a broad range of customer needs.
The BLI said that its testing of the iPF6400S and iPF8400S printers – both of which were selected as BLI ‘Picks’ in their respective categories – showed exceptional colour consistency, with ‘amazingly low’ Delta E values of 0.92 and 0.79 in output on two non-Canon media types.
Joe Tischner, wide-format analyst at BLI, said: “The comprehensiveness of Canon’s offerings, satisfying the production/proofing print markets with the eight-colour models and the high-end graphics markets with the 12-colour models, across all the common size ranges, together with the outstanding lab performance of all the models tested, have justly earned Canon the 2014 Line of the Year award for its wide-format graphic arts printers. Canon’s imagePrograf models go a long way in satisfying the needs of the customers by providing numerous capabilities and outstanding overall quality.”
In this year’s BLI Winter 2014 wide-format ‘Pick’ awards three Canon products were recognised: the iPF6400S printer was named the ‘Outstanding 24in eight-colour wide-format graphic arts printer’; the iPF8400S printer won the award for ‘Outstanding 44in eight-colour wide-format graphic arts printer’; and the iPF765 MFP M40 was named the ‘Outstanding Colour Wide-Format Technical MFP’.