Canon S800 Colour Bubble Jet Photo Printer Review - PAGE 1

Snappy Features

Now that digital cameras are such a big thing, more and more amateur and do-it-yourself photographers are looking into their own, digital studio. And why not? It’s relatively easy, it’s fun, and it gives you a lot more creative and qualititative control over your pictures.

The S800 is Canon’s top of the line colour inkjet printer, just released in early April. The 1526 nozzles in the printhead allows the S800 to deliver true 2400x1200 prints. Print quality is enhanced by Canon’s MicroFine Droplet Technology and built-in Photo Optimizer Pro, which gives the printer the ability to produce 49 colour gradation levels.

The S800 also sports a silky smooth 37dBA noise level, which, Canon is quick to note, is the quietest Bubble Jet to date. In our tests this low noise level translated to somewhat inobtrusive operation, with the occasional bumps, rattles, and quirky noises that all inkjets exhibit. We have a couple of other inkjets in the lab right now which are noticeably louder, so Canon’s claims are well justified.

Installation of the printer is straightforward, and Canon includes an easy to read foldout guide for quick start. Both USB and parallel connections are supported, though neither a USB or parallel cable are included in the package. Even though Canon’s “Think Tank” technology means that there are 6 individual ink cartridges, each of these cartridges installs painlessly and without mess – you can actually pull out any of the 6 cartridges at anytime for replacement or to quickly assess exactly how much ink is left. This 6 individual cartridge system also means that if you run low on a particular ink type, you only replace that cartridge. This saves from the frustration of other, single tank systems which require you to replace an entire cartridge just because one of the colours have run dry.

The Proof is In the Printing

Plain paper colour printing was extremely fast and produced respectable results. Canon’s claim of 2 minutes for a full 8x10” printout is not exaggerated – in the default quality setting, we clocked nearly all of our such prints at under a minute and half, with only 2 prints ever topping the 2 minute mark. Quality was fairly good on plain paper, but as we tested the other current generation inkjets, we only found the S800 to be about middle of the road in plain paper printout quality.

Where the S800 really shines is in specialty paper printing. Canon includes a sample pack of their 4x6” perforated Photo Paper Pro as part of the package, and our prints on this paper were simply breathtaking. With Photo Paper Pro, you get high gloss results that have the weight and feel of real photos. In fact, when framed, our 4x6” printouts were indistinguishable from professional photo developed prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper.

The speed of printing on photo quality paper is also quite good. We were spitting out picture after picture in less that 1 minute 30 seconds a print. On the larger 8x10” glossy pages, our test prints took around 3:11 seconds, which is faster than the Epson 890 (being tested still).