Canon's S200SP touts itself as a low-cost, medium quality printer. We ran it through its paces to see if it produces waste paper or digital masterpieces.
The S200P is easy to install, and has clear set-up illustrations in the provided operating manuals. Canon's bundled software includes utilities like Monochrome Effects for managing prints as well as Deeper Cleaning for the printer.
The printer uses individual cartridges for colour and black, and connects via USB only. One of the best features is the replaceable print head on the Canon printer. Why a replaceable print head? Well, if the ink gets clogged in the print head and cannot be dislodged via the printer cleaning utilities, you can simply replace the print head rather than having to junk the entire printer.
Physically the S200SP is quite small, making it ideal for home or small office use.
Passing the print test
If black text printing is what you want from a printer, the S200SP makes a good showing. The quality of normal black text prints are relatively sharp, with very slight bleeding. In the fastest economy mode the Canon S200SP prints slightly darker than some of its competitors, which is good if you need professional looking prints at low cost.
Black printing isn't the only thing that people buy printers for, of course. The SP200's colour photo prints are quite sharp, with a print resolution of up to 2880 x 720 dpi. In our testing we found that some of the brighter colours tended to suffer from minor over-saturation and shades had poor tonal gradation. Still, at the price and resolution, the Canon S200SP is a good choice.
Canon claims the S200SP can print at up five ppm for black and three ppm for colour. This isn't exceptionally fast, but decent given its price bracket.
The Canon S200SP has an RRP of AU$189, which is slightly more than comparable printers on the market. However, the ink cartridges are often cheaper, at AU$14.95 for black and AU$35.95 for colour, which could make the S200SP a good deal for anyone looking to print frequently.
Overall, the Canon S200SP shows its mettle when cost, size and features are taken into account.
Canon S200SP
Company: Canon Australia
Price: AU$189
Distributor: Canon Presales
Phone: 1800 021 167
Product information in this review was taken from CNET Asia's Inkjet Shootout: Canon vs Epson.
The Epson printer mentioned in that review is not currently available in Australia.
7%
2%
No arguments about the ZDnet comments. I was unable to obtain a replacement head when my backup printer went faulty so I purchased a new printer for much cheaper than your recommended retail price