Canon SmartBase MP390

Designed with the same flair as Canon's slimline scanner range, the SmartBase MP390 even features the 'Z-lid' hinge for its scanning plate lid. This makes room for thick originals underneath. But as multifunction devices go, this model favours home users with digital cameras rather than business or home office workers.

The SmartBase MP390 incorporates a four-colour A4 inkjet printer, a 1,200dpi CCD flatbed scanner and a built-in 33.6Kb/sec fax modem with dedicated fax function keys. The control keypad itself is clearly laid out with four glowing mode buttons - Copy, Fax, Scan, Photo - along with a non-backlit two-line LCD status window. Paper is fed from a lean-back input tray on top, and printouts emerge from the front on an extending output tray raised above the desktop. Both trays can be collapsed and folded flush with the unit when not in use.

As a printer, the Canon performs somewhat inconsistently. Plain paper image quality is reasonably good but lacks saturation, while the results on glossy paper are very impressive indeed. The problem here is that glossy prints are sometimes excruciatingly slow to complete, with A4 sheets never emerging in less than six minutes in our tests. General office output such as word processing, spreadsheets and basic business graphics come out well on plain paper thanks to solid blacks, but again the SmartBase MP390 is too slow to make it worthwhile. A single black-only A4 page from Excel took 39 seconds to print, while the best speed we could achieve over extended print jobs of this kind was 18 seconds per sheet - equivalent to just 3ppm.

This speed challenge and lack of plain paper saturation leads to average performance as a copier too. Every A4 colour copy we tried took a minute-and-a-half to complete, mono copies took more than half-a-minute, and the image quality wasn't what we'd hoped for.

Fax quality gave no cause for complaint, though, and setting up faxes is straightforward. The only limitation here is that each outgoing fax sheet needs to be scanned separately because of the lack of an auto sheet feeder.

Scan quality was more disappointing: it's okay, but not what we expected from a device targeted at domestic photographers. There's some compensation in the form of a port for connecting Bubble Jet Direct (Canon) and PictBridge-compatible digital cameras. A pair of slots at the front also let you plug any of half-a-dozen types of storage card into the unit directly without having to upload them onto your PC first. Unfortunately, the hardware is a little fussy about the data formats on cards from non-Canon cameras, so while the SmartBase MP390 can recognise that you have images on the cards, it can't print them or even produce a thumbnail sheet of the JPEG files it sees.

There's still plenty to argue about in favour of the product, not least its photo output quality on glossy paper, and in particular how easy it is to use when combined with a Canon digital camera. But it isn't quite versatile enough to impress at home and too slow to impress in the office. Ultimately, the main selling point is price, but watch out for ink costs, as the cartridges run out a little too quickly.

Author: Alistair Dabbs