Canon USA I320 Bubble JET Printer

WHAT'S HOT: Canon's $79 i320 is the least expensive ink jet we tested for our January 2003 roundup, yet it turns out brightly colored, subtly textured glossy photos and clean--if slightly grayish--text on ordinary paper. It prints narrow lines reasonably well--a challenging feat for most ink jets. Its performance doesn't set any records, but at 4.7 pages per minute on text--about 1 ppm slower than the average for the general-purpose printers we reviewed--you won't grow too impatient waiting for your letters and memos.

Canon provides an excellent set-up poster, a useful printed user's manual, and an extensive HTML manual on CD-ROM that covers details such as hand duplexing and improving print quality.

WHAT'S NOT: The i320's construction feels flimsy--the shell and paper trays seem likely to crack with little provocation. The paper feed has no bypass slot for an envelope or a single sheet of letterhead. And the i320 doesn't do well on gray-scale photos; we saw rough textures and moire patterns on our test samples. If printing black-and-white images is on your agenda, another printer would be a better choice.

WHAT ELSE: The i320 doesn't take up much desk space: With its paper trays folded, it's only 15 inches wide, 7 inches deep, and 6.5 inches high. At just 4 pounds, it's also easy to move or carry.

With such a low purchase price, you'd expect Canon to make its money on the ink cartridges, but we didn't find their cost to be out of line: A black cartridge with an estimated yield of 300 pages is priced at $7.50, and three-color BCI-24C cartridges are priced at $18.50, with estimated yields of 580 pages. That works out to 2.5 cents per black-only page, and about 5.7 cents per color page.

Another plus: The driver has a quiet mode--it's slower than the other settings, but it lets you print without bothering anyone nearby.

UPSHOT: If preserving desk space, saving some cash, and having a printer that can be seen and not heard matters to you, the i320 will fill the bill.

SUMMARY

Canon i320 Color Bubble Jet Printer Rated 7.9 ppm for text/3.6 ppm for graphics (normal mode), 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 50 output $79 800/652-2666 consumer.usa.canon.com