Canon S820 Bubble Jet Photo Printer

May 2002

After getting our S820 loaded up on the six pack of ink that came with it, we connected it, calibrated it and were ready to roll. We started off with images at 1280x960. As the first few prints slid out onto the S820's output tray, we were immediately swept up in a maelstrom of giddiness. At 4x6, our prints (which only took about a minute to execute, by the way) were really something to behold. The colors were vivid, the images were crisp and much to our surprise, the S820's results really were almost as good as something you get back from a 1-hour photo processor. At 8.5x11, we found the printed images' skintones looking a little bit like a corpse after the mortician's makeover, but with some minor adjustments in PhotoShop, we were able to get healthy looking results even with such relatively low-resolution images.

While computer stores are loaded with good inkjet printers for about $100, the S820 is worth the extra attention for its excellent six-color cartridge system, fast printing speeds and intuitive software.