Product Reviews

Let's be frank for a second: once, budget printers were absolutely useless. Photos looked more like a Picasso than real life, text was so fuzzy only sharp eyesight and intuition could discern the letters, and print speeds so slow that you had to finish your essay a week early just so it was ready in time.

But now you can buy amazing machines like the Canon S300 (reviewed last month) for just £90 - and expect great photos, sharp text and a respectable turn of pace. So a printer costing £173 has to be something pretty special to be worth the extra money. Canon, as you would expect, talks the talk. It claims a stunning 20 page-per-minute speed, edge-to-edge printing and 2400x1200dpi photo quality thanks to a new high-resolution head.

It also talks excitedly of separate ink cartridges, and we share some of its enthusiasm here. It makes so much more sense to replace each colour when it runs out, especially when the S300's three-colour cartridge only lasted for 170 pages. Each of the S750's colour cartridges should last for 450 pages, working out a very reasonable 3.3p per page - almost a third of the S300's running costs. We're similarly impressed by the 1.9p per mono page, which is far superior to the S300 and most other inkjets.

One area where HP's inkjet printers beat the Canon is on ease of setup. When we're paying this much,

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we expect the printer to be able to align cartridges itself rather than force us to examine results on paper. The selection of paper thickness - you slide a lever to the left for standard 80gsm - is also rather basic.

But that's just us being grumpy. The most important aspect of any printer is its quality, and it's virtually impossible to criticise the S750 here. Take the most difficult test of all, photos. Considering this isn't a dedicated photo printer, its results are nothing short of amazing. Skin tones are expertly produced, excellent amounts of detail captured and - providing you don't look too close with a magnifying glass - there's little visible sign of dots.

It also performs brilliantly on coated paper, so if you have an important document that must look flawless, it won't disappoint. The only slight problem was with white text on black, which wasn't as sharply defined as we'd hope.

Most of the time, though, people just print on plain, 80gsm paper, and thankfully the S750 carries on its good form here. Text was sharp, blocks of colour solid (many printers suffer from a blotchy effect) and even photos looked passable.

So far, so good - as we'd expect from such an expensive printer. We'd also expect a great turn of pace, and again the S750 came up trumps. Although it couldn't come close to its claimed 20 page per minute speed at the normal settings, it managed 9.3ppm - good enough for us. Even better, our A4 photo emerged after just 150 seconds, while graphics-heavy documents beat the 3ppm marker - the S300 was half this speed.

It's clear, then, what advantages the S750 holds over all its sub-£100 rivals. Better all-round quality, significantly faster speeds and far lower running costs. However, Canon is hoist by its own petard in the S300 - this costs £90 yet offers a similar level of quality. Only if you plan to do a lot of printing, and you demand quality, is the S750 the one to buy.