Product Reviews

While notebooks occupy a large section of the PC market, portable printers have been slow to catch on. This is partly due to their limited usage - you're unlikely to print documents on the train, and portability has been favoured over price and quality. However, if you do travel a lot, a portable printer will fit in any suitcase, so if, like the Canon BJC-85, you have an internationally compatible adaptor you'll be able to print from anywhere in the world.

Canon has led the market in the portable inkjet market for a while now, retaining the same shape with backwards mono cartridge compatibility. Sadly though, another unchanged thing is the annoying noise Canon's units make cleaning themselves when initially switched on, replacing a cartridge and when they think you're inactive.

The driver is similar to that supplied with the Canon BJC-8200 (reviewed issue 66, p163). The modes available are draft, standard, DTP, photo and super-photo if you have the photo cartridge. The driver explains that the standard mode is best for text, DTP is best for text and graphics, and photo is best for photos, but gives you little control over the print options. Too many questions are left unanswered, such as which mode you'd use for DTP with text and photos, or better-quality black text. Simple options such as a dpi slider or print quality for each mode would have been better.

Apart from the normal supply of drivers, the printer is also compatible with Windows CE 2.1 giving it ultimate portability. This, along with USB and infrared compatibility, will make it ideal for notebook users. There's also an optional scanner cartridge for £59, which replaces the print-head cartridge, making the BJC-85 a viable and fully portable multifunction device.

Photo printing seems an unfair expectation of a portable printer, but Canon provides an optional photo cartridge for £50 including three colour and black ink tanks, using the same four-colour system but with lighter-density inks. Without using the photo cartridge, photo results were impressive for a portable but nothing spectacular. The colours were rich and

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deep, but the picture was very grainy with noticeable track marks and bad banding. When using the photo cartridge, the picture was smoother with less grain and the banding was still there but not as prominent. However, the photo cartridge lost the rich colour depth from the original colour cartridge, looking bleached and stark with very little red, and less detail in dark areas. It's also worth noting that after printing two full-size A4 photos, the black photo cartridge had completely run out. This is no surprise considering the size of the ink tanks.

Colour tests improved dramatically using the photo cartridge, with smoother fading and blending and very little grain, all of which were impressive for the size of the printer. These tests were significantly worse with the colour cartridge, being grainy with obvious stepping. This suggests that the photo cartridge is better suited for graphics and DTP printing than photo printing. Pantones had the right balance and colour consistency, although they looked washed out when compared to the originals, and their make-up was also gritty when viewed close up. With a limited resolution of 720 x 360dpi you can't expect exceptional results, but the fine resolution tests were the worst we've seen yet, with fine straight lines being broken up where they should be solid, and they weren't even consistently straight.

The main issue with this printer is its initial price of £219, but the running costs are also high. The cartridge lifespan is exceptionally poor, meaning more expense continually changing cartridges, which could become an issue when travelling abroad without spare ink tanks. On the positive side, you can replace the ink tanks relatively cheaply without having to replace the whole print head. However, despite getting three ink tanks for the price of one normal refill, their combined lifespan is only half of what you'd expect from a desktop printer.

For simple text printing, the BJC-85 proved much more economical. The original full-size mono cartridge gives you a reasonable 2.4p per page at five per cent coverage, and one ink tank should do about 170 pages. The quality isn't bad either, being sharper and blacker than the Epson 750 (reviewed issue 56, p128) and Canon BJC-8200, although it was a bit uneven with occasional scratchiness. Averaging 2.7ppm, it's also reasonably quick when compared to the Epson 750's 1.7ppm.

There's no doubt this is the most impressive portable on the market, but its appeal is limited and not worth a second look unless you really need a portable printer. For less money you can choose from a number of desktop printers that would offer superior performance and a more economical cartridge system.