Canon S820D review

At one point, we thought Canon might have missed the boat, but then the award-winning S800 turned up and blew away every other photo printer. Its smooth results, with gorgeous and realistic colours, could be generated in less than three minutes, and its only notable omissions were a media reader for standalone functions and edge-to-edge printing. But now the S820D has been unleashed with all of the above, plus improved print speeds.

Things get off to a good start once you look at the revised driver options. The uninformative icon-driven presets are replaced by an Epson-esque system where you simply select your paper type and print quality, and then go into the advanced options for a slider to take things a step further.

Like the S800, the S820D's photo results were stunning, and a full-size A4 print on the non-advanced settings was churned out in just two minutes, 18 seconds. Even a borderless print on the highest settings took only five minutes, 28 seconds on Canon's PR-101 photo paper - a lot quicker than the 23 minutes, 23 seconds taken by the Epson Stylus Photo 895 (see Reviews, issue 83, p152). Plus, with no white edges, the printout looks and feels like a real photograph. Printing from the media reader, however, slowed things down a bit. On the highest settings, an A4 borderless photo took 14 minutes, 57 seconds.

Unlike the HP Photosmart 1315's multiple slots (see Reviews, issue 87, p163), the S820D sports just a PC Card reader with a CompactFlash adaptor. This may seem limiting, but you can easily buy another PC Card adaptor for current and future media types. The best thing about the media reader is its ease of use. The LCD menu system has a four-way navigation selector and is extremely intuitive. Just scroll down and select the star-rated quality, the layout denoted by squares and the paper size, which has the codes detailed on the right, then hit Print - it couldn't be simpler. And if you want previews, you can add a 1.5in LCD monitor for an extra £76.

Unfortunately, the same simplicity isn't a feature of Canon's direct-print solution for its PowerShot S30 and S40 digital cameras, which can be directly linked to the S820D with the supplied cable. It took us the best part of 20 minutes to work out how to print a whole photo rather than a cropped section. With a bit of study, it can be mastered, but we'd prefer a more accessible interface. Once you're up and running, though, a full-size borderless print can be run off in a mere four minutes, 21 seconds. However, it interestingly produced a lighter and more realistic colour balance than just printing from the media, implying that perhaps the camera is doing its own image enhancement.

Unlike the Epson, the Canon doesn't utilise PIM (Print Image Matching), which ensures accurate colour reproduction of the digital image, provided it's taken from a PIM-compatible camera. This is hardly surprising, as PIM is an Epson technology, but the S820D makes up for it in other areas, mainly significantly faster print speeds. Our four-page DTP document, for example, was completed in 12 minutes, 24 seconds compared to 25 minutes from the Epson. Not only that, but the quality on Canon's HR-101 high-resolution paper was superb, with sharp, clear text and beautifully reproduced photos and graphics. These, along with the photo results, put the grainy and banded results from HP's Photosmart 1315 to shame, and the same could be said for the incredibly smooth colour fade test.

As was expected, the only downfall was black text printing. The quality was actually better than the HP DeskJet 990Cxi (see Labs, issue 77, p92) in draft mode, but strangely dropped in quality in the normal mode where, despite being darker, the characters became slightly shaky and spidery, although still better than those from the Epson. In draft mode, the print speed worked out at 3.9ppm, which is still usable.