Canon S520
With the S520, Canon continues to blur the line between true photo printer and high-quality desktop inkjet for the average viewer. No, you don't get the additional inks and nozzles that come with an actual photo printer, such as the stunning but pricey Canon S900. But the reasonably priced S520 is a downright bargain for people who want fast, high-quality photo output and can live with adequate text printing.
Flexible for home or office
The AU$399 S520 is your standard inkjet printer. It comes with an illustrated Start
The S520's paper-handling capabilities are standard. The top-loading input tray can hold 100 sheets of plain paper and various amounts of envelopes, photo paper, banner paper, transparencies, and T-shirt transfers. Paper exits into the bottom-front output tray, which feels a bit flimsy.
The S520's print driver is fairly intuitive and easy to use. You can print booklets, two-sided prints, posters, borderless prints, or up to 16 pages on a single sheet. Interesting extras include a Photo Optimizer, which compensates for jagged edges when you enlarge a low- resolution digital image, and Vivid Photo, which boosts blues and greens in landscape shots. A Print Advisor button helps beginners by choosing the correct media and print-quality settings for you automatically.
Photo-printing machine
The Canon S520 performed superbly in our labs' speed tests. It printed text at an incredible 6.9ppm (pages per minute), beating both the Epson Stylus C80 and the Lexmark Z65 by comfortable margins. It also printed a full-page color photo in just 1.7 minutes, more than three times as fast as the Stylus C80.
For the most part, the S520's quality matched its speed. Its major weakness is plain-paper text printing, which showed fuzzy edges around letters. Text improved on coated paper, but the black ink was imbued with a distinct reddish hue, making letters look purplish in color. Both plain- and coated-paper graphics looked good, with smooth colors; however, greens, purples, and blues were slightly dark. Our 8x10 test photo, printed on Canon Photo Paper Pro, showed accurate skin tones, but it lacked detail and crispness. Still, if you're milking an older, midrange inkjet, you're liable to be blown away by the results.
A good investment
The news gets better when you factor in the S520's ultralow cost per page. At around 4 cents per page of text and 35 cents per color page, the S520 is among the cheapest inkjets currently available.
With its affordable price, fast print speeds, and ease of use, the S520 is a good fit for families who print lots of color photos. In the long run, the extra money you spend on the S520 compared to a real bargain basement printer will pay off in ink costs alone.
Canon S520
Company: Canon Australia
Price: AU$399
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 021 167
