Dan Littman

Canon S820 Photo Printer

Designed as a photo printer, the S820 uses six inks--the typical cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black, plus light tints of cyan and magenta for fine-tuning colors. The result is a reasonably priced ($199) printer that produces breathtaking glossy photos with excellent detail, accurate colors, and lifelike textures. In addition, the S820 prints gray-scale graphics as duotones, so even on plain paper they convey depth and fine detail. Canon provides excellent printed and on-screen documentation covering every facet of setting up and using the printer.
The S820 didn't print well on plain paper: Narrow parallel lines smudged together, and color images looked foggy. Text, which prints at a very poky 2.2 pages per minute, looked rough and had a bluish-gray cast. Though that's no surprise in a photo printer, it limits the S820's versatility. Text looked better on glossy photo paper, but that isn't a typical printing scenario.
Text printing is economical, at 1.9 cents per page (based on Canon's estimates of yield per ink cartridge.) Canon's photo-oriented software bundle includes its own Easy-PhotoPrint, for creating documents that use photos, and PhotoStitch, for combining photos of adjacent scenes into panoramic images. Like many Canon ink jets, the S820 has paper supports that don't attach snugly, but at least the ones on this model are made of very sturdy plastic.
For digital camera fans who want a machine exclusively to print photos, the S820 is a great choice.

Buying Information

Canon S820 Photo Printer Ink jet, 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input and output. $ 199 Ink jet, 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input and output. http://www.usa.canon.com 800/652-2666