PIXMA iP4000

Whether the Canon PIXMA iP4000 prints every day or fires up for weekend photo batches, ink is nearly the whole running cost of keeping it in service. Its shelf: the BCI-3E Black pigment tank, rated at about 420 pages for documents, and eight dye tanks — BCI-6 Black, BCI-6 Cyan, BCI-6 Magenta, BCI-6 Yellow, BCI-6 Photo Cyan, BCI-6 Photo Magenta, BCI-6 Red and BCI-6 Green — at about 280 pages each. The compatible range below matches the original yields, so the saving comes from price rather than from smaller fills.

Daily use is the thread through this family: the photo models run six colors at a time from this shelf, the tanks are swapped one by one as they fall, and the printer asks for nothing else — no drums, no maintenance kits, no service counters. An iP4000 that is still on a desk today is there because that arithmetic never stopped working: feed it the tank it flags, and it keeps producing the documents and photographs it was bought for.

Ink Cartridges for PIXMA iP4000

Sets and multipacks sold for this printer:

Which cartridge should you buy?

There is no standard-versus-XL puzzle on this page: every BCI-6 tank carries the same rated fill, so the choice is singles against sets. Replace singly while only one color is low — that is most of the time. When a full restock is due, the BCI-6 Set of 14 is the photo-oriented box, with spares of black, the core colors and both photo colors; the BCI-3E / BCI-6 Set of 11 tilts toward mixed use with extra blacks on both sides. If your iP4000 is really a document printer that occasionally prints a photo, the BCI-3E Set of 10 is the honest bulk buy.

Chip, ink and everyday use

Gaps between jobs are the only real hazard in this printer's rhythm. Level sensing is optical, so there are no chip errors, reset tools or firmware surprises — fit the tank until it clicks and print. But a printer left unused for weeks can dry ink at the nozzles; a cleaning cycle and a test print bring them back in almost every case. Keep a spare of your fastest color sealed at room temperature, and every compatible cartridge here is covered by a 1-year warranty with 1-year returns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a high-yield version of these cartridges?

Not in the XL sense: the BCI-6 colors are one rated size, about 280 pages each. The longer-life tank on this page is the BCI-3E Black at about 420 pages — but it is a pigment document black, not a bigger version of the dye colors, so it extends your text printing rather than your photo printing.

My iP4000 sat unused for a month and now prints pale — is the cartridge dead?

Almost certainly not: idle weeks dry ink at the nozzles, which pales output long before a tank is empty. Run the printer's cleaning cycle, print a nozzle check, and repeat once if bands remain. Only suspect the cartridge if a fresh tank — or a cleaning cycle on a known-full tank — changes nothing.

Do these cartridges carry a chip?

No chip at all. The iP4000 reads ink levels optically through the tank, which is why compatible cartridges for it need no reset procedure and trigger no recognition warnings.

Which set suits a mostly-document household?

The BCI-3E Set of 10 for the black you actually consume, plus single BCI-6 colors bought as they fall. Buying a big color set for a document household mostly parks ink on the shelf.

More printers that use the same cartridges

One ink shelf serves this whole generation of Canon printers; the models below all take the same BCI-6 and BCI-3E tanks: MultiPass F50, MultiPass F60, MultiPass F80, MultiPass MP700, MultiPass MP730, Multipass C755, Multipass F30, PIXMA MP750, PIXMA MP760, PIXMA MP780, PIXMA iP3000, PIXMA iP4000R, PIXMA iP5000, PIXMA iP6000D, PIXMA iP8500, i550, i560, i850, i860, i865, i900D, i950, i960, i9900, S400, S450, S500, S520, S530D, S600, S630, S750, S800, S820D, S830D, S900, S9000, BJC-3000, BJC-6000, BJC-6100, BJC-8200.