Canon Pixma IP2702

Canon’s Pixma IP2702 is a cheap printer for home users.

Its smoothly curved body is particularly neat when closed, with the high-gloss back of its paper tray folding down to complete the lines of its top cover.

There are two buttons, each with inset lights, to the right of the paper tray, which control power and feeding of paper into the printer.

There is a single USB socket at the back, which is the only data connection. It does not work with wireless networks. The mains cable plugs straight in, without the need for the external power supply block some printers use, which keeps things tidy.

Up to 100 sheets of paper can be loaded into the rear tray. However, they feed straight out of the front of the printer onto your desk (or the floor) as there is no output tray - you may need to be careful where you position the printer so pages do not just float away.

Drivers are provided for Windows and Mac, and Canon’s Easy-Photo Print, Easy-Web Print and Easy Photo-Fix II applications are included on the CD.

One thing you will have to put up with is the noise. Being an inkjet, printing itself is quiet, but when feeding a sheet of paper, it generated noise that peaked at 80 decibels. This is a similar level to a motorbike or light aircraft passing by and makes it difficult, for example, to have it printing on a desk while making a phone call.

Canon claims speeds of seven pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 4.8ppm for colour. Our tests gave results of six ppm and 2.4ppm, respectively. These speeds are reasonable for a printer in this price bracket, though the colour speed could be higher.

Print quality was good: photos printed clearly, with no sign of colour mismatching and with smooth colour transitions. Plain paper prints were also clear and sharp and ink bleed from the was minimal.

The two cartridges (one black and one with three colours) are each available in two sizes. Page costs using the larger cartridges (which obviously contain more ink) are 3.8p for a standard page of text and 6.5p for colour prints. These are a bit higher than from, for example, Epson’s Stylus S21.