Product Reviews

When Epson released the Stylus Photo 750 (reviewed issue 56, p128) it set a new standard for photo printing that has never been matched by its inkjet rivals. However, Canon is now fighting back with a new range of Bubble Jet printers. The BJC-8200 is both Canon's flagship model and the company's most likely contender for taking the 750's crown.

In terms of specification, the BJC-8200 is impressive: its 1,200 x 1,200dpi resolution gives it an immediate numerical advantage over the 750's 1,440 x 720dpi. Not content with this, Canon's printer also boasts one of the company's most important new weapons, Microfine Droplet Technology. This uses a star-shaped nozzle in order to keep ink droplets round and sharp with an even density. This may seem like a gimmick, but Canon claims that both colour graduation and sharpness are improved.

Whether the results are due to Microfine Droplet Technology is difficult to say, but the BJC-8200 photo results are the best I've seen so far, with an incredibly sharp picture even on smaller and less focused details. In comparison, the same photo on the Epson 750 looks quite grainy in these areas, and the Bubble Jet's colour blending was also much smoother. The only fly in the Canon's ointment is picking out nuances in dark areas, where it shows up slightly less detail than the Epson, but this is only a minor criticism.

The BJC-8200 is also incredibly fast - in our tests it produced an A4-sized photo on glossy paper in just under four minutes. The quality at this speed outperformed the Epson 750, which took 11 minutes, 26 seconds on the same task, although there were noticeable marks from the Canon's print mechanism. However, you can take the quality one step further in the Canon driver's advanced options; this doesn't noticeably increase the print quality, but it eradicates these marks and still prints the page in seven minutes, 20 seconds.

The colour tests were impressive, showing highlights and shadows previously invisible on the Epson 750 print-outs. The colour blending was excellent, showing a smooth transition between colours that made the Epson 750 look quite coarse in comparison. The only disappointment in these tests were on diagonal lines, which were jagged in places where they should have been smooth.

Text printing on the default setting on plain paper was below our expectations as well, with letters looking fuzzy and lacking the sharp precision and deep black of the HP PhotoSmart

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P1100 (reviewed issue 65, p161). However, even in default mode the text results were sharper and quicker than those produced on the Epson 750 - the Canon produced 25 pages of text at an average of 1.8ppm against the Epson's 1.7ppm. The BJC-8200 is primarily a photo printer, so if you need to produce professional-looking documents you can sacrifice speed for quality.

In terms of design, the first thing you notice about this printer is the cartridge layout. Canon has opted for a six-colour mechanism with separate ink tanks of identical size. This sets it apart from the competition, and is a wise decision for a printer that's designed for photo printing. It means that if you run short of one colour, you only have to replace that ink tank without buying a new cartridge. The downfall of this system is that if you also want to use the BJC-8200 for text printing, you'll be constantly replacing the black ink tank.

Canon has also thought carefully about ease of use and installation. The latter was straightforward, especially as you have the choice of parallel or USB connections, but as usual Windows 98 is necessary for USB support. Once installed, the printer's utilities include two soft head-cleaning options and the additional function of roller cleaning, using a sheet of paper and the supplied cleaning plate. The printing options themselves are somewhat disguised in an attempt to be user-friendly. There are five main options - standard text, photo, DTP, camera and draft - but I'd have liked an option for adjusting the resolution in dpi as well as an optimised setting for printing graphics on their own. Having said that, there are numerous advanced features to the driver as well, including a fast-to-fine slider, colour balance, intensity and monochrome special effects such as sepia.

The final key aspect of any printer's performance is its running cost. In general use, you'll only need to replace each colour's particular ink tanks as and when they run out, and on this basis running costs are 7.5p per colour page and 2.5p per mono page. The sting comes in the form of the print head, which needs to be replaced every 5,000 pages and costs £75, although this does include fresh ink cartridges as well. Factoring this into the costs, the running costs are 8.5p per colour page and 3.8p per mono, which on the surface doesn't compare too well to the 4.6p and 3p of the Stylus Photo 750. However, the Epson's figure assumes equal consumption of each colour, which is never true in practice, and the 750's print head is non-replaceable, so when this wears out you'll have to buy a new printer.

The BJC-8200 is better and faster than the Epson Stylus Photo 750. However, at £299 the BJC-8200 is expensive compared to the £148 street price of the Photo 750, while for non-photographic performance it's beaten by HP's PhotoSmart P1100. Nevertheless, this is a strong debut for Canon's new range of Bubble Jets, and it will be fascinating to see how its sister models fare against the best of the rest in next month's inkjet printer Labs.