Canon S450

A street price of £119 including VAT initially seems quite cheap, but Lexmark's Z52 is currently retailing for £116 and offers smoother colours and sharper black text. And while the Canon was slightly quicker at the latter task, the difference of 5.2ppm (pages per minute) against 5.5ppm is small enough to be negligible. The Lexmark was also substantially quicker on the colour printing tasks, completing the five-page DTP test 30 minutes, 55 seconds quicker than the Canon.

Maybe the S450 would have been a competitive printer a few years ago, but with today's demanding standards and stiff competition the S450 proved to be a disappointment in every area except the speed of black text printing. Even Epson's £89 Stylus Color 680 managed vastly superior colour fades and photo results, making the £119 Canon look significantly dated. The S450 will suffice as a quick text printer, but this negates the need for advantages like individual colour ink tanks. We're looking forward to seeing the photo results from the future S800, but in the meantime you'd be better off with a Lexmark Z52, and if you can find a few extra pennies, the £134 HP DeskJet 950C (see Labs, issue 77, p92) makes a great multipurpose mid-range printer. Unfortunately the Canon S450 just doesn't cut the mustard.

Author: Ben Hardwidge