Great Print, Great Price

When my old 3 in one Lexmark conked out, we needed a replacement, ASAP. I ran up to the nearest supermarket, and sure enough, they had printers on sale. I got this Canon for $39.95, with a bonus pack of 2 ink cartridges and 50 sheets of photo paper. Not a bad deal, considering the ink cartridge pack was selling for $40 alone.

In the box, there is an installation disc, along with the printer, manual, and sample ink cartridges. One color, and one black. USB cable was not included, but I had the one from the old Lexmark, so no big deal.

Printer is an okay size, about 16" deep X 17" wide X 8" high. The paper tray opens out in the front of the printer, and if you forget to open it, the paper will bunch up inside, something I have done a couple of times. The paper feeder holds about 50 sheets of good quality paper with no feeding problems, but too much paper causes it to feed poorly.

The control panel is easy to use. Some of the features on the panel are a fit to page button, SCAN button, ink level indicators, paper size and type selections, as well as start, stop, and power buttons. The scanner is easy to access, of course, as the cover lifts right up and is hinged to accommodate bulkier items such as books, etc.

Scan and copy quality is very good, and it scans quickly. You can then opt to edit, print, etc, whatever it is you scanned. Print quality is excellent; photo is pristine, and I have the default set to quick print for regular printing to save on ink consumption. Even at the quick print setting, quality is excellent. Printing is quick, but the printer is somewhat noisy.

The printer is a bit noisy when its first turned on, but to me that doesn't matter. Some might find it annoying though. But its a nice looking printer, and it doesn't take up a lot of space.

This printer does seem to drink the ink though. It gobbled up the sample cartridges pretty quickly, after printing 4" X 6" photos and about 30 pages of typing. I am about to change the cartridges, and I will update with how long the regular size cartridges last.

I have not used the pictbridge feature yet, but it allows the user to connect their digital camera directly to the printer rather than download to the computer first. I will give it a try and update!