Canon i550

Digital cameras have changed the way that we take pictures. Now we can store all of our prints on a PC, throw away the bad shots and digitally enhance the rest to ensure every photograph we keep is worth keeping.

Once we have them on the PC, they can be transferred to a CD and sent to friends and family. This is all very convenient, but nothing beats having a photo print in your hand.

There's nothing quite like having a hard copy of the better shots to either frame or send to friends without PCs.

Canon's latest four-colour printer, the i550, shows that great quality is also affordable.

At £152, we were impressed by the results that we got on photo paper. The images were sharp and the colours vibrant.

It's difficult to tell the difference between a print and a photograph at a distance. Under scrutiny, very slight speckling can be seen but there are far worse printers on the market.

The specification of the printer manages to be every bit as impressive as the image quality. It has a maximum resolution of 4800 x 1200dpi on photo paper and unusually for a new printer, it offers a USB 2 connection and a parallel connection.

In line with Epson and HP models, the i550 can print borderless photos on A4 and 6 x 4in photo paper for that authentic photograph finish.

For a printer of this price, though, it's likely that you're going to want to use the i550 for more than just the odd bit of photo printing.

Fortunately it doesn't disappoint, and will happily act as your everyday printing workhorse.

Ordinary text and mono graphics look great on the page and it's no slouch either, delivering 18 pages of reasonable quality text every minute.

Canon claims that the black cartridge will last for 330 pages doing this kind of job, so it should be a while before you have to shell out for another cartridge.

Of course, photo printing is likely to deplete your cartridges a lot quicker, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be paying over the odds. The colour side of the printer actually comes from three separate cartridges: cyan, magenta and yellow.

This system means that if you run out of one colour you don't have to replace the whole cartridge, throwing away valuable unused ink in the process. Colour refills cost around £7 per colour, with the black costing £9.

Getting the most out of a printer like this is more than just throwing pictures at it, so Canon includes its Easy-PhotoPrint software. This employs a wizard to help you pick the best settings for printing a photo including paper size, image size and alignment.

The software comes with some default templates for laying pictures out on paper, which makes it simple to perform tasks such as printing four pictures on a single piece of A4. If nothing else, this should help you save on valuable photo paper.

It's simple to use but misses out on some of the high-end features that HP's software has, such as red-eye removal and image resize. This means that you'll still need a dedicated photo package to get the best quality prints.

It's hard to find fault with this printer. The image quality is great, the software is simple to use and the price is very reasonable for the performance on offer.

You should be able to find it cheaper still if you shop around.

DETAILS

Price: £179
Contact: Canon 0870 514 3723
www.canon.co.uk