PRINTER REVIEW

Canon i560 review

8.0

Editors' Rating

Service & support		7.0
Design		8.0
Features		8.0
Performance		9.0

Kristina Blachere CNET

Published: 05 Nov 2003

Canon's i560 desktop photo printer shows that quality and economy can go together. Its excellent text quality reminds us of another inkjet we tested many years ago, except that one guzzled ink like a 4-by-4 off-roader consumes fuel. The i560, on the other hand, demonstrates the sensible consumption style of a Nissan Micra, and it's speedy, too -- although nowhere near Canon's claim of 22 pages per minute (as usual). Families, students and photo enthusiasts who've been hit with high ink costs in the past should take a close look at this inexpensive and cost-effective Editors' Choice. Can't decide between the i560 and the slightly cheaper Epson Stylus C84? Let your digital camera decide. Only the i560 uses the PictBridge digital camera standard for direct, non-PC printing.

Design

The i560 is a good-looking inkjet. Its compact, rectangular form measures 41.8cm wide by 17.2cm deep by 27.4cm high and has a slightly pillowy shape to it, making it look less like a bread box and more like the loaf you'd put into it. The 150-sheet input and output trays tuck into the body of the printer, creating a neat and discreet package when the printer is not in use. The power button is on the top left. Next to it is the paper advance button. In the middle is the alarm indicator light.

Like the Epson Stylus C84, the i560 uses four separate cartridges: one for each process colour (cyan, magenta, yellow) plus black. Cartridges cost £8.22 each, and because you can replace each colour individually as it runs out, you should save money on ink over time.

Installing the i560 is as seamless as can be. The printer supports both PCs and Macs and has USB and parallel ports on the back. A setup poster walks you through the process. The included CD contains the bundled software and drivers for Windows 95 and up and Mac OS 8.6 and up.

Features

Most of the i560's features reside within its driver. A series of colourful tabs choose paper type and print quality, add effects such as monochrome, and provide maintenance functions such as cleaning the print-heads. Most of the tabs include a photo of the printer that reflects any settings changes, and the Main tab has a Print Advisor that walks you through various printing tasks. The Profiles tab offers advanced features, such as customizable print settings and individual colour calibration.

The printer is PictBridge compatible, meaning you can print directly from any PictBridge-compatible digital camera or digital camcorder by connecting it to the second USB port on the front of the i560. Until now, most direct-print inkjets have worked only with same-brand cameras; at this early stage, however, only a few manufacturers support this standard.

The CD includes a handful of basic printing applications. ZoomBrowser EX/Photo Record imports, edits and prints photos from a digital camera. PhotoStitch creates photo panoramas. Easy-PhotoPrint helps you print borderless photos and do simple editing, such as trimming and image rotation. And Easy-WebPrint autoadjusts the layouts of Web pages for painless printing.

Performance

The i560's 22-page-per-minute (ppm) engine speed should be taken with a grain of salt, as usual, but the printer is still surprisingly fast. In our tests, it printed text at 6.8ppm and an 8-by-10in. test photo at 0.53ppm The Epson Stylus C84 is cheaper but slower, at 4.6ppm for text and 0.38ppm for photos.

The i560 is economical with ink. According to our drain tests, the i560 averaged 36 pence per print with our high-resolution, graphics-packed 8.5-by-11in. photo. You can divide this cost by approximately four to get a sense of how much it'll cost to print 4-by-6in. photos.

The Canon i560's overall image quality was good. Text quality on inkjet paper looked excellent -- it's been years since we've seen this kind of near-laser-sharp text from an inkjet. Graphics on inkjet paper was fair; shading in colours and blacks looked excellent, and there was no visible banding. Our test photo looked smooth. All of the photographic elements that required black ink, however, were oversaturated and extremely fuzzy at the edges before we deep-cleaned the print-heads. After the cleaning, colours became truer, and skin tones looked smoother and more lifelike. In the end, the photo prints were just a step below those of pricier inkjets, such as the HP Photosmart 7960 and the more bargain-priced Epson Stylus C84.

Performance

Canon's support for the i560 is adequate. Telephone support is available, and lines are open 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday. When we called, the representative answered the phone almost immediately and solved our problem quickly.

Canon's Web site offers a multitude of resources, including driver and documentation downloads, FAQs, an interactive troubleshooting engine, email support, a knowledge base and supply ordering. In the printer's box, there's a setup poster, a thorough paper manual and a CD-only manual that has slightly more information.