The Canon BJC 4300 printer was my first inkjet. It was purchased around the time of the 1998 World Cup and came as a special pack with a World Cup print studio etc. It cost around £130. This was at the time a lower end printer, but above the budget grouping.
The printer itself was quite ... Read review
Advantages: Compact Disadvantages: Huge Running Costs, Only Average Print Quality, Questionable Reliability
The Canon BJC 4300 printer was my first inkjet. It was purchased around the time of the 1998 World Cup and came as a special pack with a World Cup print studio etc. It cost around £130. This was at the time a lower end printer, but above the budget grouping.
The printer itself was quite compact in design, taking up minimal desk space as the receiving paper tray pushed neatly into the body of the printer completely out of the way. ...installed reasonably easily, as did the 20 True type fonts also supplied. Two ink cartridges came with it, black and tri-colour. Both of these fitted into a separate print head and then placed complete into the printer cradle.
The print resolution is 720x360 dpi and should have given decent performance. However, print speed was not particularly fast and print quality was not great either.
Black text was generally reasonable ... more
The Canon BJC 4300 printer was my first inkjet. It was purchased around the time of the 1998 World Cup and came as a special pack with a World Cup print studio etc. It cost around £130. This was at the time a lower end printer, but above the budget grouping.
The printer itself was quite compact in design, taking up minimal desk space as the receiving paper tray pushed neatly into the body of the printer completely out of the way.
The drivers came on floppy disk and installed reasonably easily, as did the 20 True type fonts also supplied. Two ink cartridges came with it, black and tri-colour. Both of these fitted into a separate print head and then placed complete into the printer cradle.
The print resolution is 720x360 dpi and should have given decent performance. However, print speed was not particularly fast and print quality was not great either. Black text was generally reasonable but some lines on a page could be distorted and smudging could also occur. This was not all the time, but enough to make the print of final copy unreliable. Photographic print suffered from banding, but colouring was fairly good. The purchase of a photo print head complete with built in ink tanks is required for photo quality print.
Although the cost of the ink cartridges was quite reasonable, partially because of there low capacity compared to other brands, the printer stopped printing after about 18 months. It turned out that the print head degrades over a period of 12 – 18 months, regardless of use and has to be replaced at a cost of about £45.
Even though two new ink cartridges come with the print head, replacing it at these intervals makes it very expensive to run, especially as print quality is no more than average.
These days you can buy a complete printer for £45, which should give at least equal print quality, and definitely lower running costs and greater reliability than this model.
Advantages: err.... Disadvantages: Expensive to run, repair, prone to failure
...*seperate* print head on many Canon printers is very prone to failure, and at a cost of around £30 a time to replace this item (I believe it was called a BC21e), having to buy that and the replacement inks far outweighed the running cost of an equivalent printer from another manufacturer.
Part of the problem seems to be the ink "transport" method to the print head itself - it works on a capilliary system where ink is drawn towards the print head ... ...for a couple of weeks in some of the complaints I read), the ink dries in the system and buggers the print head. Bear in mind that any of the ink cartridges drying out could cause this problem, making it a very weak link in what otherwide might have been a decent printer.
Considering I have never seen a proper print from one of these printers, my marking will be below average for every category - except for manufacturer support - I emailed them ...
phoenixbbs 09.02.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Canon BJC 4300
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