Labs

This is an entry-level inkjet printer, but it certainly doesn't feel like one. Decked out in high-gloss black plastic, the paper feed tray folds up from its closed position on top of the printer's cover and the output tray folds down from the front, with a paper support swinging out from the tray's edge. It has a straight-through paper path and, if you forget to open the front cover before printing, a reminder pops up and it only continues when you've flipped it down.

There are just two control buttons: one for power and another for paper feed and errors. The power

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supply is internal, so there's no ugly power block kicking around under the desk. There's also no way of connecting a PictBridge camera, though, so the only way to print is directly from your Mac. There are two ink cartridges, one black and one tri-colour, which clip easily into place in the head carrier. The driver and Easy-PhotoPrint EX software installs from the CD and adds the printer as the default device to your printer list.

Even though Canon quoted normal mode print speeds of 13.3ppm for black and 7.8ppm for colour print we couldn't match them. Our 10-page text document took 100 seconds, a real-world speed of 6ppm. The five-page colour text and graphics test took 168 seconds, equivalent to 1.8ppm. Output from the Canon Pixma iP2600 is good. Black text is clean and shows little feathering and colours are solid, with no banding. Reversed text looks a little thin, but photo prints show good shadow detail and smooth colour variations.

The cheapest prices we could find for the two ink cartridges, both from Amazon, give cost per page figures of 2.2p for black and 6.7p for colour. Both of these are good for an entry-level printer like this.