Product Reviews

Mac users seeking a high-quality inkjet no longer have to buy an Epson printer. There are now three manufacturers to choose from. Hot on the heels of Hewlett Packard's re-entry into the market with the DeskJet 970cxi, Canon has launched the BJC6100.

After receiving acclaim for the BJC 4550 three years ago, Canon seemed to have left the Mac market to Epson. But the advent of USB has brought the company, like HP, back, and in the process has given Mac users a wider range than ever of high-quality inkjets to choose from. And with the BJC6100, Canon has a couple of secret weapons up its sleeve.

Without doubt, the most significant benefit the device offers is individual ink tanks. Cyan, magenta, and yellow tanks can be removed individually from the colour cartridge and replaced, negating the need to replace an entire cartridge because one colour is empty. What's more, at around £6 per tank you won't be charged the earth for the privilege. The BJC 6100's other unique feature is its ability to function as a scanner, but more of that later.

The first impression the BJC6100 makes is a big one, literally. It has a footprint significantly larger than the 970cxi and Epson's A4 devices. This is due to its support for oversize A4 paper (355mm x 224mm) - useful if that's something you need, but if not you'll sacrifice a significant amount of desk space. Adding to its overall size is the layout of the paper trays. Like Epson's Stylus devices, the BJC6100 has its in-tray on the rear and the out-tray in front. Only HP uses the space-saving method of having both trays on the front, one above the other.

Setting up the printer and installing the software is simple, although you need to read the instructions before installing the ink cartridges. Once installed, the printer goes through the same noisy setup process as the Epsons. There are only two buttons on the BJC6100 - one for power and one to force-feed paper. As such, the ink cartridges automatically appear whenever you lift the printer's lid. Cartridge installation is dictated by the type of image you're printing. For text or low-quality images, a black cartridge and a colour cartridge are required. For high-quality photos, the colour cartridge is accompanied by a 'photo colour' cartridge which replaces the black ink. If you have the wrong cartridges installed for the job, the printer's driver will helpfully point this out.

However, this is about as helpful as the driver gets. The BJC6100's driver looks very similar to Epson's Stylus drivers and is scarcely more useful, lacking the colour profiling features of

ADVERTISEMENT

HP's software. Most annoyingly, the image type and paper type selectors reset themselves to their default after every run. So, to print several images of the same type onto the same type of paper, you have to set the driver each time.

In use, the BJC6100 is just as impressive as suggested by its resolution of 1440dpi and quoted print speeds of 9ppm (pages per minute) for mono and 6ppm for colour. Canon uses a proprietary technology called Drop Modulation to vary the size and frequency of ink drops in a given dot. As always, the quoted print speeds are pretty meaningless, as they refer to specific combinations of text and images and account for a relatively small amount of paper coverage.

Our tests, however, showed the Canon to be significantly faster than its rivals. An A4-sized colour photo took five minutes, 56 seconds to output on the BJC6100, compared with seven minutes, 18 seconds on HP's 970cxi. A page of A4 text needed just 24.9 seconds to complete, compared with one minute on the HP. Both of these figures are faster than Epson's comparable quality Photo Stylus devices.

Image quality is every bit as good as we've come to expect from colour inkjets. The addition of the 'photo colour' cartridge gives the Canon the same advantages as Epson's six-colour Photo Stylus printers. If anything, colours were slightly over-saturated when output to photo-quality paper, but this can be easily compensated for in any image-editing package. There really is very little to tell between the BJC6100, the HP 970cxi and Epson's Photo Stylus printers in terms of image quality - other considerations are likely to give one the edge over the others.

It's perhaps in recognition of this that the BJC6100 has one other unique feature - the ability to scan images by way of an optional scanning head, supplied in the form of a cartridge. The cartridge slots into the left-hand print cartridge bay and once the software's installed, you're ready to go. Unusually, the software isn't a Photoshop plug-in, but a standalone application. This removes the need to open Photoshop, or another image editor, if all you want to do is scan something and print it straight out.

The software is very limited, however, providing only the most basic pre-scan options. But we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of images scanned. While it's not a replacement for a desktop flatbed, the image quality was nevertheless impressive. Copying an image or document is a little convoluted: you need to scan the document in the scanning application, then Save it and open it in another application, such as QuickTime Picture Viewer to print it, remembering to swap the scanner cartridge for a print cartridge in the process. Nevertheless, it's an extremely useful option.

The Canon BJC6100 is a very capable printer. While not as quiet as the HP 970cxi and bigger than its competitors, it offers excellent print quality, is very fast and has a couple of unique features which will give it the edge for many users. If desk space isn't a premium and noise not a problem, then the BJC6100, for its individual ink tanks if nothing else, would make the ideal inkjet companion for any USB-enabled Mac.