Canon i850

Silver is fast becoming the new black (or perhaps the new beige), with most electronic goods getting a splash of shiny metal, be it sprayed plastic or real aluminium. So you'll want your printer to look the part too, and Canon's new i850 fits this bill with a stylish silver-grey chassis. Canon also claims to have quiet acoustic levels of 36dB. This much certainly works - the i850 is exceptionally quiet in action, and fast too. Our 25-page draft text test was completed in just one minute, 48 seconds, equating to 13.9ppm - way off Canon's claimed 22ppm, but fast enough nonetheless. The print quality is also reasonable and, while the characters are slightly shaky, they're printed in a deep black.

However, Canon says the i850 offers '100 per cent photo performance as well as 100 per cent business performance' - quite bold for a four-colour inkjet. We took the bait and printed our A4 photo montage on the highest settings to see what the i850 was really made of.

Things slow down when printing photos, but not to a ridiculous extent. A standard A4 print took six minutes, 40 seconds, while a borderless A4 print took seven minutes, 55 seconds. You can also print borderless photos on 4 x 6in media, which took two minutes, 56 seconds on our test and still had great print quality. There's visible banding on the i850's photo prints using Canon's PR-101 media, but the colour blends are smooth and there's little grain. It's impressive stuff for a four-colour inkjet, until you compare it to something like the HP Deskjet 5550 (see Labs, issue 100).

The HP is a four-colour inkjet by default, but can be boosted to six colours with an optional photo cartridge. Using this and PhotoREt IV, it produces outstanding results with hardly any banding - an improvement on the i850's prints. It's faster too. The HP only took four minutes, 23 seconds to print an A4 photo at these settings, although it will only do borderless prints on 4 x 6in media.

In Canon's defence, the HP was also slower on our draft text test at 13.2ppm, but only negligibly. Canon's individual ink tank system could prove to be more economic than HP's, and the i850's running costs are also slightly lower at 2.1p per mono page, although the HP replaces the print head with each cartridge.

However, the i850's graphics and photos on our high-resolution colour tests using Canon's HR-101 coated paper looked great, with gorgeous bright colours and virtually no grain or banding. The colour fades were also handled well, with smooth transitions and only occasional stepping, and the greyscales were a solid grey without green or brown tinges. The only disappointment was the black text, which was a victim of too much ink.

The Canon i850 succeeds as both a viable business and photo printer in one, offering fast print speeds and reasonable quality in both areas. The only problem is the HP Deskjet 5550, which only costs £106 from dabs.com and offers superior photo quality, comparable all-round business and colour printing and a host of other features like automatic paper detection and cartridge alignment.

Author: Ben Hardwidge