Product Reviews

As in all aspects of computing, in the inkjet arena speed costs money. Witness the 12ppm Epson Stylus Color 900 (reviewed issue 56, p126), originally selling for an excessive £342, compared to the 6ppm Epson Stylus Photo 750 (reviewed issue 56, p128) for £110 less. With the BJC-5100, Canon claims to rewrite the rules, producing a nominally 10ppm printer for a price of just £159.

First impressions confirm that you're buying a lot of printer for the money. Fully loaded with paper, and with all of its trays extended, the BJC-5100 stretches to a foreboding 505 x 620 x 320mm (W x D x H), although its actual footprint is a more reasonable 498 x 280 x 222mm. Part of the reason for its girth is the BJC-5100's ability to print at A3 - an amazing feature at this price.

Before you can start printing at full speed, Canon suggests setting the printer port to ECP for 'optimum performance'. We would hope for the installation software to detect this requirement and ideally alter the settings itself, but instead Canon relies on you manually changing the BIOS setting. Instructions are relayed in the Getting Started manual and it's well worth the trouble, as our tests showed an increase of around 15 per cent at the printer's default mono printing speed.

Even with the ECP setting, you'll never reach the BJC-5100's maximum claimed speed of 10ppm. The closest we managed with a Pentium II/266 was 6ppm in draft mode, using the black-only print option on plain-text documents. This is faster than other sub-£200 printers, but it can't match the 7.5ppm that Epson's Stylus Color 900 achieved at the default setting. Switching the Canon to its own default setting reduced speeds to 4.8ppm, but to its credit this is still 0.9ppm faster than the HP DeskJet 880C (reviewed issue 56, p130), and 1.3ppm faster than the allegedly 10ppm Lexmark Z51 (reviewed issue 58, p162). If you're going to use the BJC-5100's highest quality setting - 1,440 x 720dpi - Canon recommends using coated paper, but if you use this setting be prepared to wait nearly two minutes for each page to be printed.

In order to break into the SoHo market, Canon is placing a lot of emphasis on the printer's abilities

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at producing high-quality mono text quickly. There's no denying that the standard mono print is quick, but if you're expecting laser-sharp print you'll be disappointed. Close examination reveals a certain amount of bleeding around the letters and, although the output quality is good enough for general business use, the Lexmark Z51 produces superior results.

Inevitably, moving to colour slows the printer down even further. In its draft setting the BJC-5100 managed our test document at 1.4ppm, while switching to standard slowed it down to 1.1ppm. Using the printer's highest quality settings - again on coated paper - reduced speeds to around one page every four minutes, so you'd better be sure the benefit is worth the wait. This is only one-third of the Epson Stylus Color 900's speed, but around the same as the HP DeskJet 880C and the Lexmark Z51.

When it comes to the quality of colour print, the Canon falls behind its rivals. In our demanding solid-colour test, the BJC-5100 showed distinct stepping between different shades; none of the smooth gradation Epson printers excel at. There was also obvious poor colour registration, with the supposedly solid blocks of grey showing patches of green and red. In everyday use, though, this shouldn't cause too much of a problem. At its default setting, colour charts were reproduced cleanly and there was no sign of the banding on solid blocks of colour that can mar lesser printers.

As you might expect from the colour tests, the BJC-5100 doesn't excel as a photo printer either. High-contrast areas suffered from dithering, and details in shadows were lost. You can buy a photo cartridge for £30, which helps to pick up more detail and makes colours more realistic, but unfortunately the printer then had problems with banding. If photos are important to you, either sacrifice speed for the excellent but slower Epson Stylus Photo 750, or save a few extra pounds and buy the Epson Stylus Color 900.

So should you buy it? Admittedly, the Epson Stylus 900 produces better all-round quality output, but you pay for the difference. In fact, the HP DeskJet 880C and Lexmark Z51 are the BJC-5100's biggest threat. They're both nearly as fast as the Canon, similarly priced, and the HP is a better colour image printer, while the Lexmark produces superior text.

However, there's a lot to like about the BJC-5100. Although it can't always match the output quality of the top printers, it's the fastest printer we've seen for the money. Many users will also appreciate the reassurance of Canon's one-year, on-site warranty. But the only feature that sets the BJC-5100 truly apart is the option of A3 printing - useful, but not enough to make us recommend it over either the Lexmark Z51 or the HP DeskJet 880C.