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Canon SmartBase MP390 review

7.5

Editors' Rating

Service & support		7.0
Design		8.0
Features		8.0
Performance		7.0

Jeffrey Fuchs CNET

Published: 23 Mar 2004

Although it excels at photo printing, the Canon SmartBase MP390 multifunction inkjet printer also copies, faxes and scans. As a standalone device, the MP390 prints photos directly from any digital camera or camera memory card, and it scans, sends faxes and copies in both black-and-white and colour. Small ink tanks and the lack of an automatic document feeder limit the MP390's potential for busy medium-size office use, however, and this machine doesn't scan slides or film, so digital photographers should turn instead to the six-ink Epson Stylus Photo RX500. Similarly, bargain hunters should consider the inexpensive and frugal Lexmark P3150 first. That said, most small or home offices looking for affordable faxing, scanning, and photo-printing capabilities will be pleased with the £214 (inc. VAT) SmartBase MP390.

Design

The SmartBase MP390 is surprisingly stylish. Unlike some unwieldy-looking multifunction printers we've seen lately, the MP390 sports well-integrated and very high-tech details, including a faux brushed-aluminium scanner lid and clear black plastic sides with matte-finish, battleship-grey detailing. The front output tray unfolds from the centre and a rear-mounted, 100-sheet feeder tray opens from the back. Should you forget to open the front output tray before copying or printing, the MP390 thoughtfully opens it for you, smoothly and quietly. With both paper trays open and fully extended, the printer measures 45.4cm wide by 35.8cm deep by 24.9cm high -- about average for a multifunction printer these days.

The flatbed scanner sits on top, alongside a two-line, 20-character LCD panel and button-filled control panel to the right of the scanner lid. The LCD displays functions and menus; the buttons control copying, faxing, scanning, and printing photos and photo indexes. A ring of four additional buttons cancels operations in progress, initiates black-and-white or colour scanning, or reboots the printer. There is also a full numeric telephone keypad for standalone fax functions. The control key layout is both clean and functional.

Canon handily tucks away built-in camera card memory slots behind a curved plastic door on the lower-right side of the SmartBase MP390. One slot takes Memory Stick, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard and Secure Digital memory cards; the other takes CompactFlash, xD-Picture Card, and Microdrive cards. For printing directly from a BubbleJet Direct or PictBridge digital camera or camcorder, a USB 2.0 port resides beneath the memory card slots.

On the rear you'll find a USB 2.0 connection port for your PC (note that to obtain true USB 2.0 speed, you'll need a USB 2.0 port on the PC as well as Windows XP SP1 or Windows 2000 SP 4). There are also two phone jacks, one for a direct telephone line and the other for a telephone or an answering machine.

The printer's only design flaw is Canon's use of two cartridges, one tricolour (£11.75 inc. VAT) and one black ink (£7.05 inc. VAT), each rated at only 300 sheets or so. Other vendors offer individual cartridges for each colour, thus reducing the cost of consumables over the lifetime of the printer.

Features

The SmartBase MP390 prints photos well, either from your PC desktop or directly from a digital camera. When printing from a PictBridge-compatible digital camera or camcorder, you simply connect the camera to the MP390's DirectPrint port and use the camera's own print menu to make selections. When using a digital camera memory card, insert the card into the appropriate slot and create a contact sheet using the Photo Index Sheet button. Then mark the images and sizes you want, scan the completed Index Sheet, and wait for the MP390 to print your photos. This feature brings the MP390 up to speed with current multifunction printers from HP and Epson.

Standalone fax capabilities set the SmartBase MP390 apart from its competitors. The MP390 uses a fast G3 33.6Kbps fax modem with a full range of options, including up to 40 speed-dial numbers, automatic redialling, storage for up to 200 pages and five different settings for receiving faxes and incoming calls. Too many multifunction printers these days use only Windows-based fax software, so the MP390 is a good value if faxes are important to your business.

As a scanner, the SmartBase MP390 scans documents one at a time from its glass flatbed, and can be controlled either by the control panel or the PC in conjunction with Canon's MP Toolbox 4.1 scanning software. The MP390 comes with Canon's ScanGear MP, a TWAIN scanning utility for use with the included image-editing and photo-printing software, ArcSoft's PhotoStudio. For converting scanned text into editable form, the MP390 comes with the optical character recognition (OCR) program, ScanSoft's OmniPage SE. In our informal testing, this proved to be a winning software combination.

Using the SmartBase MP390 as a standalone copier is easy. Just place a document on the glass, set the size and paper type on the control panel, and press the Copy button. To make book and magazine scanning equally easy, the MP390's lid has a raised hinge.

Additional software includes Easy-PhotoPrint Plus, a web-printing tool called Easy-WebPrint, and Adobe's Acrobat Reader, which all install along with the print drivers.

Performance

Printing performance

In our performance tests, the SmartBase MP390 proved itself reasonably fast, although nowhere near the vendor's claims. On monochrome text, it printed our test document at 5.4 pages per minute (ppm) -- well below the vendor's claim of 18ppm, but faster than the 4.2ppm from the Epson Stylus CX6400. It printed an 8in. by 10in. photograph in 3.2 minutes per page (mpp), a little faster than the 3mpp from the Epson Stylus CX6400.

As for print quality, the SmartBase MP390's text looked good, exhibiting excellent density but not completely crisp edges. On photos, the MP390 printed vibrant, highly saturated colours and outstanding detail.

Scanning and copying performance

As a scanner, the Canon SmartBase MP390 performed faster than the Epson Stylus CX6400 scanning monochrome black images at 6ppm, just a little faster than the CX6400's 3.5ppm. It scanned colour documents at 2.8ppm, much faster than the Epson product's 1.5ppm.

Both the colour and monochrome scans produced by the SmartBase MP390 were good but not spectacular. The colour scan showed good colour-matching ability, though it was grainy and blotchy in places. The monochrome scan reproduced a photograph smoothly but could not re-create sharp-looking text, especially in font sizes smaller than 10 points.

As a standup copier, the SmartBase MP390 made 2.6 monochrome copies per minute, slower than the Epson Stylus CX6400's 3.2ppm. Also, the copier quality was not great. Text came out dark and illegible, and the graphics were much too dark and blurry. By contrast, colour copies were clear and sharp on text, graphics and photos.

Service & support

The Canon SmartBase MP390 comes with the industry-standard one-year limited warranty. Telephone support is available between 9am and 5.30pm Monday to Friday. The SmartBase MP390 also comes with a foldout setup sheet and a printed, 184-page user guide -- something you don't often see. Canon does offer free help on its Web site, where you can email questions to technical support, download drivers and read answers to basic questions.