WHAT'S HOT: The I550 is the sibling of Canon's I320, but at $149, it's almost twice as expensive. That extra cost is worth it if you're looking for a speed boost: The I550 is almost twice as fast on graphics as the I320 is, at 1.3 pages per minute. The unit spits out text at 7.3 ppm--it's the fastest of the general-purpose printers we tested for our January 2003 roundup, and it's 35 percent faster than the I320. The I550 prints clear black text, renders narrow lines adequately, and delivers glossy photos with sharp detail and smooth textures.

The I550 has the lowest ink cartridge costs of any printer on the general-purpose chart: A black cartridge is only $14, and color cartridges are $12 each (the printer uses three). Canon reports that black cartridges yield about 740 pages of text each and color cartridges average 490 pages. Based on those figures, a color print should run about 9.2 cents, while black-only prints will cost around 1.9 cents.

WHAT'S NOT: The I550 lacks a bypass feed for envelopes and letterhead. In addition, it renders poor gray-scale images, with a grainy texture and heavy banding that obscures detail.

WHAT ELSE: Like the I320, the I550's quiet mode may come in handy when you need to print without disturbing anyone nearby.

Canon's documentation includes an excellent set-up poster, a useful printed user's manual, and an extensive on-screen manual that covers details such as hand duplexing and improving print quality. Canon provides a useful printed manual and an extensive on-screen help file.

UPSHOT: Zippy performance, good text quality, and low operating costs make the I550 a good family or home-office printer.

SUMMARY

Canon I550 Color Bubble Jet Printer Rated 13 ppm for text/7 ppm for graphics (normal mode), 4800-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 150 sheets input, 50 output $149 800/652-2666 consumer.usa.canon.com