Canon S630 Color Bubble Jet

WHAT'S HOT: We retested the S630 using its USB interface; as a result, text speed increased from 3.9 pages per minute to 6.3 ppm, and graphics speed jumped from 0.3 ppm to 0.7 ppm. The Canon S630 Bubble Jet closely resembles its sibling, the less expensive S500, but ultimately comes out ahead in print quality. On text documents, the S630 produces clean letters and evenly spaced and textured serifs. Like the S500, the S630 prints slightly dark graphics with sharp details and even textures. Another shared advantage of both models is low ink costs: At 2.0 cents per page for text and 10.7 cents for graphics, the inks are a bargain. Canon provides a clear setup guide along with a more extensive and well-illustrated online user manual.

WHAT'S NOT: Although photo output looked good, the colors were a bit off: Skin tones appeared slightly ruddy. If you're planning to print photos, your $200 would be better spent on a model like the Epson Stylus 785EPX. Like the S500, the S630 has poorly attached paper-feed and output trays that fall off easily when you move or bump them.

WHAT ELSE: Generally, the S630 is almost identical to the S500--it has the same dimensions, the same purple shell and silver-speckled lid, and the same connectivity options (a USB port for new PCs and a parallel port for older PCs). Canon bundles the same useful software, too, including PhotoRecord, for designing documents using photographic images, and PhotoStitch, for joining several side-by-side photos into a single panoramic image.

As on the S500, drivers bundled with the S630 include lots of features, but you may have to do some exploring to feel comfortable with them. For example, the S630 lets you create watermarks or superimpose an external file on the printed document (such as adding a letterhead image to a document), and it even lets you convert an image into a duotone using black and any color on the color wheel.

UPSHOT: Though it's no home-office dynamo, the S630 provides better text quality than the S500 and does a nice job on low-resolution snapshots. The fast text speed and good text quality make it a good choice for a home office.

SUMMARY

Canon S630 Color Bubble Jet Rated 17 ppm monochrome/12 ppm color; 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 50 output. $199 800/652-2666 consumer.usa.canon.com/index.shtml