Canon's PIXMA iP2850 is somewhat of a rarity in today's
multifunction printer-obsessed market - a relatively compact single-function
colour inkjet printer aimed at the home office worker or casual user who wants
virtually no frills apart from basic printing.
Not surprisingly the printer itself is also single hue - a
sort of Apple white with occasional dashes of black lettering and icons. When
you take it out the box, you almost wonder if it's a toy printer as it weighs a
miniscule 2.3 kg; and all the plastic components feel decidedly flimsy. It
certainly won't take up much desktop space, measuring just 426 x 235 x 134 mm.
Setup is simple - flip up the 60-sheet input tray that acts
as part of the cover, pull down the panel that conceals the ink cartridge
holders, push the two cartridges into place and connect to your Windows PC or
Mac via a USB 2.0 connection round the back.
Use the supplied installation disk to load up the drivers
and software, fill up with paper and you're ready to go.
Obviously the sub-£40 price tag will be one of the main
attractions of the iP2850 but the first trade-off is the number of features
you'll have to forego. There is no USB port for flash drives, no controls apart
from the power button and no further connectivity options. Borderless printing
is not available either and the maximum photo print size is 13 x 18 cm, which
is what you can expect from much smaller compact printers.
Canon includes useful free software for Windows including My
Image Garden which lets you create some stylish calendars as well as
Easy-WebPrint EX which enables selective Web printing.
The irony is that the quality of the photos produced is of a
high standard, both in terms of detail and colour reproduction, although each
10 x 15 cm glossy print does take 40 seconds to create, and the image doesn't fully
fill the paper.
The same is also true of black text documents, mixed text
and graphics documents and even comic book pages - you won't achieve speeds of
more than 7 ppm on A4 plain paper but thickness of lettering and lines is
excellent and colour authenticity is impressive.
Unfortunately the iP2850 takes only one combined colour
cartridge so will have to replaced if any one of the individual Cyan, Magenta
or Yellow inks run out.
The standard colour cartridge allows up to 180 pages of A4
and costs 7.2p per page [£12.88 amazon.co.uk, 2014-07-06], while the standard
black cartridge of the same volume is very pricey at 6.1p per page [£11.02
amazon.co.uk, 2014-07-06].
High yield versions are also available which increase colour
usage to 300 pages and reduce costs to 5.3p per colour page [£16.02
amazon.co.uk, 2014-07-06], while black usage expands to 400 pages and halves
rates to 3.6p per page [£14.78 amazon.co.uk, 2014-07-06]. See also: best budget
printers of 2014.
Canon's stripped-down basic inkjet printer produces
high-quality print results and costs less than £40 but dearer ink costs, photo
restrictions and very limited functions might prove a deterrent.
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