Printers square off: i250 vs. i350
Written: Oct 17 '03 (Updated Oct 17 '03)
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Pros: Separate black/colour ink cartridges, excellent head alignment, cheap and effective.
Cons: No paper out tray or USB cable included.
The Bottom Line: Cheap and cheerful printer with excellent colour reproduction and very simple to use. Perfect for home and small business users.
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| ultrahi's Full Review: Canon i250 Bubble jet Printer |
The last time I bought a printer was back in 2001, but all things must end and I needed something cheap and cheerful, mostly for quick printing of web based documents (yes - I do like trees really), with some digital photo printing from my Canon S30. Simple enough, but the sheer number of manufacturers and the subtle differences even within one range soon started to make my head spin. Thankfully I came across the i250 and have been happily printing for the last few weeks.
The first thing you notice about the i250 is that it is a squarish box, or a cuboid to be more accurate, highly reminiscent of old 80s printers but not in a bad way. Besides this strange shape meant my eye was drawn to it away from all the other curvey, cylindrical printers it sat next to. Again, this is not strictly accurate.. I really noticed an i350 - a completely different beast in every way except that they are in fact identical. Twins. The i250 and i350 are the same printer. Ask yourself, have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time? Just like Batman and Bruce Wayne, and where Batman had a handy cape to inform us he wasn't Bruce Wayne, the i350 has a little paper out tray at the front - the only visible difference.
At this point my quest to make a final printer decision got harder. None of the shops I went to sold both the i250 and i350, so it was very hard to get anyone to tell me the differences and why I should pay x dollars more. The Canon website was slightly more helpful, explaining the i350 prints about 16 black pages per minute, the i250 only 12, with 9 and 11 being the respective outputs for colour. Strangely attention isn't even drawn to the handy little paper out tray. Oh, and the i350 has borderless printing, but both printers offer the same resolution - 4800 x 1200 dpi.
For these slight differences you pay a fair bit more - so I decided to get the i250 as there was a chance I wouldn't be keeping the printer very long anyway, and I have to say I'm glad I did. It's a lovely little printer. Not the fastest kid on the block, but quick and effective with black and white. The set-up was dreamily simple with good diagrams and well written explanations and came along with Canon's little browser extension (Easy-WebPrint) that actually prints web pages properly. Not only that but having done the head alignment setup I have yet to notice any gap between solid colours - it really is immaculately lined up! This is something I've never really experienced on bubble jet printers before, there is always a visible slight white line.
One thing to note now - the i250 does not come with a USB cable! If you have one sitting around from your last printer this is a great way to save money, otherwise expect to pay a bit more.
And now onto my environmental self-redemption. I do like trees, they're very nice indeed and often have cute animals living in them not to mention that whole leaf thing they have going on. Smashing. So one of my criteria for buying a printer was good support of double sided printing to save paper. Plus I wanted a good draft mode. Again, neither the Canon site nor the shop assistants could help me out. Luckily the Canon i250 has pretty much every option you could want and then some - reduced page printing, double sided (with manual re-feeding of the paper), grayscale, draft modes and everything. It even has more advanced colourspace matching settings for getting those digital prints looking just the way you like them.
So, in summary, the i250 is an excellent buy if you need something for personal or light work use and especially if you're a bit of a technophobe as it really is very helpful indeed. The colours are excellent, it's not too loud and has a handy 'quieter' mode that you can set to go on automatically at certain hours of the day but makes printing a bit slower. It also likes trees as much as me when it's not out fighting crime...
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 70
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
ultrahi
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Location: The World
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Bon viveur, photographer and tech geek.
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