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For
years a quiet battle has been raging among several
companies for domination of the home-printing
market. This competition has spawned a host of
affordable photo-quality printers from Canon,
Epson, HP, and Lexmark, and the best photo printers
now deliver truly amazing image quality for a
few hundred dollars. While most of the buzz among
photographers has
centered around Epson's line of six-color Photo
Stylus printers, we've always been impressed by
the image quality and six-color ThinkTank system
found in the top Canon printers. The ThinkTank
system uses separate ink cartridges for each color,
instead of combining several colors into one,
thus eliminating the wasted ink that results from
combo cartridges being tossed out when one color
runs dry. In our opinion, all inkjet printers
should use a system similar to ThinkTank's. But
one insurmountable problem we've had with Canon
(and similarly with HP and Lexmark) is the limited
display life of photo prints—estimated by
some experts to be less than three years!
Now Canon has finally stepped up to the display-life
challenge with the introduction of its newest
six-color printer, the S800 Bubble Jet Photo Printer
($299). It features 1200 x 2400-dpi resolution,
four-picoliter drop size, USB and parallel connectors,
and can print up to 8 x 65 2/3 -inch banners.
According to Canon's tests and to independent
accelerated tests performed by the Wilhelm Institute,
prints made with the S800 on Canon's Photo Paper
Pro media have a potential display life of nearly
25 years. That's up there with claims made by
Epson for several of its printers, including the
Stylus Photo 1280. Canon has finally tackled the
print-life problem with the S800, and sweetens
the deal by including a USB Zio CompactFlash card
reader and decent software bundle for your computer.
But
is this the printer to buy now if you're serious
about making great photo prints? We ran it through
some of our own tests to determine its color
accuracy, resolution, speed, and ease-of-use
to see how it really stacked up against the
competition.
Right
out of the starting gate, the Canon S800 is
the fastest photo printer we've ever tested.
We printed an 8 x 10-inch color photo (stored
at 300 ppi for a total file size of 19MB) in
under two minutes on its premium Photo Paper
Pro media (only available in 8 ½ x 11-inch
sheets). Of course, that was with the printer
hooked up to our test Mac G4 via a USB cable.
Expect slower print times when connected via
a parallel port. Another plus: this printer
is so quiet that you'll hardly be able to hear
printing from a few feet away, a real bonus
in an office environment. And it has an optical
sensor that keeps track of ink levels, which
are automatically displayed if you have background
printing turned on with a Mac, or if you choose
the Start Status Monitor on the PC.
Speed
isn't everything when it comes to making prints,
and many photographers are willing to wait for
premium-quality output. Ten or 20 minutes for
a print is still short compared to the time
it takes to run to a photolab for enlargements.
But fast speed is a nice touch when you're in
a hurry or need to make a ton of copies. (Unfortunately,
the Photo Paper Pro is so thick you can feed
only one sheet at time into the S800—so
you have to stick around when printing copies.)
The S800 is capable of delivering 49 gradation
levels per color, which translates into pleasing
skin tones, decent shadow and highlight detail,
and improved detail in saturated color areas.
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