Product Reviews

Canon's newest top-of-the-range printer regained kudos for the brand name for quality, if not price, when first reviewed last month. Now, at a lower street price, it's worthy of a second look.

Photo quality remains very good, with the A4 photo being produced in only seven minutes, 20 seconds. The result featured balanced colours without any oversaturation to render it too light or dark, and the only grain detected was with a magnifying glass on the faded cyan patches of the painting on the church ceiling. The BJC-8200 was also one of the few to tackle the resolution test with competency, with fine vertical lines more than adequately reproduced.

The BJC-8200 finished third in the colour fades test, behind both HP printers but beating all the Epsons, exhibiting excellent blending of shades and only the smallest degree of warmth to greys. The colour accuracy test, however, proved too much. The

The BJC-8200 was also no slouch in terms of print speed; seventh place, or 21 minutes, 46 seconds, in the DTP test was its only performance drop. Plain text was dispatched in 14 minutes, 31 seconds, averaging 1.7ppm in standard mode. The Corel vector test took six minutes, 45 seconds to place it fourth and, while there was little bleed, blacks were washed-out, though not to such effect as the BJC-5100.

To round off the colour quality features, Canon has included its separately replaceable ink tanks. This means that, unlike other printers whose colour cartridges must be ditched when one colour runs out, single component colours can be replaced individually. The cases are transparent so you can actually see how much ink is left, and replacement heads are priced at £75.

Unfortunately, despite excellent photographic reproduction and an efficient ink cartridge system, the BJC-8200 just isn't good enough this month. The Quality award-winning HP PhotoSmart P1100 is a better all-rounder and costs just £25 more on the street, while the Epson Stylus Color 860 produces the same quality results for £53 less.