A Sad Tale
I have been looking for a fairly affordable printer that will last for more than a couple of months. I have had such terrible luck with almost every major brand out there. I have been through an Epson, Xerox and an HP in the last year and a half. Admittedly, each of these models were in the $80 to $125 range. I have had almost every imaginable problem with each of them, but the most annoying had to be the fact that if I didn't use them at least twice a week, the inks would dry out and require several cleaning cycles to get them to print evenly again. This is not only very frustrating but can get extremely expensive.

I was willing to spend more money to get something that would perform consistently, however the $200 - $300 range printers didn't usually add to the resolution, they just added features I didn't need such as memory card readers and spool paper feeds. So I did some research (Consumer Reports) and decided on the Canon i550 inkjet. I am extremely happy that I did.

Quality of Prints
The printer produces fantastic color prints, even on lower grade papers and very close to photolab quality prints when using premium photo papers. It also produces sharp text and line art. The advertised "MicroFine Droplet Technology" really seems to make text very sharp and maintains details in photos. Also, I haven't had to 'clean' the print head to fix the spotty ink problem I have had with other printers.

Speed
Out of the 4 printers I have had lately, this produces high quality color prints the fastest. It isn't lightning fast but I can print a borderless 4x6 photo at the highest quality settings in less than a minute. Text, of course, prints very quickly (18 ppm according to the specs). I read one review that said the black ink smudges if touched right after printing. I haven't had that problem at all.

Cost
While the i550 is fairly inexpensive, the inks are the most affordable I have seen. There are four tanks: one for black and 3 separate smaller tanks for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. The black goes for about $14 and the individual colors are only about $11. The individual color ink tanks are a great advantage! I was used to paying almost $40 just for a black cartridge, and even more for an all-in-one color cart.

Misc
The software makes installation a snap and the print options menus are full of interesting features not found in other printer software, including such things as a quiet print mode that can be set to activate after a certain time of the night. Also, the printer can be set to auto power on or off. An ink levels monitor is also part of the print interface.

The sheet feeder holds up to 150 pages of plain paper which feeds from the top. I have yet to run into any paper jams or instances where the printer grabs several sheets of paper at once.

The printer will accept either a USB or parallel cable, neither of which are included. I am using the parallel port and the speed is great, though the USB might be a bit faster.

The printer has rather nice styling and looks fairly sturdy. It has a fairly large footprint (about 16 1/2" x 11") but it is reasonable. It is also quieter than every other printer I have owned.

Update
Thrifty Use of Ink: After printing 60 full color CD labels and 60 full color CD covers the ink cartridges have not yet run dry. Very economical! One thing to note, the ink monitoring software only shows 3 different levels: ink full, ink low and ink depleted.So at some point, the graph will jump from showing a full cartridge to an almost empty one.

Another great thing I have found is that when you hit the button on the printer to cancel a print, it stops printing instantly. I don't mean after it finishes the current page, or after it prints several pages of PostScript (like my HP at work), it stops dead in it's tracks the second you hit the cancel button.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 120
Operating System: Windows