Canon i 450 > Reviews (4)

*** The End ***

“Ah well, nothing lasts forever,” I told myself sadly, packaging up my faithful old Epson Stylus Photo 700 printer and passing it on to my son. It was still good for printing text but, with its heads showing signs of wear (a bit like mine, really), not much use for printing out digital photos. So it had to go. It had been given to me as a leaving present by parents and children of the little Lincolnshire village school where I’d been Acting Head four years ago and had done me proud over that time. At least it was going to stay in the family.

*** The Search ***

Not being particularly flush with money I decided to shop around and ask many questions before buying a replacement. I wanted something cheap and reliable (contradiction in terms!) with the ability to print high quality, preferably borderless photos.

Looking in the usual places I found a bewildering range of options, running from the Cheapo-of-Cheapos (Lexmark) to the Out-Of-Reach-On-Grounds-Of-Cost (top spec Epsons, HP and Canon). I ruled out Lexmark on account of the high cost of replacement cartridges (almost the cost of the printer, I kid you not!) and, more reluctantly, HP for similar reasons, though the quality of their prints is astonishingly
High and I like their design.

I decided against all-in-one machines as providing features I probably wouldn’t use – and anyway, I’m convinced that unless you pay a huge whack for one of these, quality has to be compromised to some extent. I also decided against a dedicated photo printer (with card-readers built in) on grounds of cost and because I prefer to edit my pictures via the computer before printing.

My head still spinning with the range of options left open, I phoned a friend who runs a computer business and asked his advice. “Epson Stylus Photo 830,” he said confidently. “Brilliant! We use them here all the time.” Unfortunately, he didn’t have one in stock but he quoted £82 or so when they did arrive.

I checked on the Internet and found that the 830 has been supplanted by the 830U which simply means that the parallel / USB connectivity has been replaced by USB only. I also found that I could buy one at around £75 via the Net. However, I’m reluctant to pay that amount of money out for an Internet purchase – as a grumpy Old Man, I remember a time when money meant big chunks of metal in your pocket making you walk with a list to starboard; it was precious stuff and the idea of letting it vanish into cyber-space still bothers me!

I therefore phoned all the Lincoln stores that might sell the beast in question. A couple of them said the 830 / 830U was about to be phased out to make way for something even better. Others had them in stock at about £80. The bloke at Staples said they were out of them but reckoned that the Canon i450 was just as good and cost £79.99.

I looked up Choice Stationery’s website (see my op on them). They used to provide me with ink cartridges for the aforementioned Epson at ridiculously low prices. Could they do the same for either the 830U or the i450?

And indeed they could (and can). For the 830U the price of a twin pack (i.e. one black, one colour) is £7.99 and considerably less if you buy more. For the i450 the cost of a black cartridge is £2.49 and a colour £3.49.

So that’s all right then.

I decided to take trip to Staples and have a look for myself.

*** Interlude ***

As this saga seems to be of Biblical proportions I’ll give you five minutes break for a coffee and / or a smoke. But please remember the health warnings.

*** The Decision ***

The Canon i450 may be a reliable, even high quality printer, I told myself; but good-looking it ain’t. Still, that wasn’t in my list of criteria and no-one in a normal frame of mind sits and admires the aesthetics of a printer or indeed any other machine – do they? (Flashback to my teen years spent train-spotting and drooling over the Coronation Class locomotives. But what’s that got to do with it?).

The Canon uses a three-colour cartridge and a black one to produce its range of colours – as does the Epson in question. However, one big plus is the fact that the Canon print-head is replaceable; on an Epson printer the cost of replacing the heads is set at about that of replacing the whole printer – a bit of a scam I would call it. If this were not so I would never have passed my old one on, I’d have just had the heads replaced.

I thought I’d shop around some more, just in case I could get it cheaper elsewhere, since Staples has a Price Promise that guarantees that if you can get something cheaper locally they will knock off 150% of the difference.

The same machine in Office World was £99.99 (yeah, that’s right, a hundred quid less a penny).

*** Stop Press – Another Interlude ***

My son has just wandered into my study and demonstrated that if you type ”Miserable failure” into Google’s search engine, the first website to come up is a biography of George W.Bush – ain’t that cute?

*** Get On With It! ***

I then broke my own Unwritten Rule Number One: Stay Away From PC World. I hate the place – but then I am a Grumpy Old Man. And there I saw it: the Canon i450 at £59.99 to clear – a whopping £20 cheaper than at Staples, so that with their Price Promise I could have it at only £50 (that’s half the Office World price).

I ran back to Staples (only about 50 metres) and asked to buy the said machine. Yes, it would only cost me £50 agreed the Nice Man. Only trouble was, they only had the display model of the i450 in stock and they wouldn’t sell it until reinforcements arrived.

Decision time!!!

I slunk back in to the dreadful PC World and had another look. A security guard approached.

“Can I help you, Sir?”

Huh? Did I look that suspicious or can they spot Grumpy Old Man syndrome from thirty paces?

“Can you tell me anything about this printer?” I asked, deciding to treat him as if he were just one of the regular assistants. And he must have been either a hypnotist or a very good salesman because the next thing I remember was carefully placing a rather bulky box on the back seat of my car.

*** Home At Last ***

When I unpacked the machine from its polystyrene and cardboard cocoon I found it was labelled the i450x. I have yet to discover how it differs from the i450; there’s even a leaflet with it explaining that it is totally compatible with that other version.

I found the software supplied quick and easy to install, the print-head and cartridges went into place without bother and I tried printing a few of the hundreds of photos of Venice stored in my computer.

*** Print Quality ***

And indeed I couldn’t fault the quality of those pictures: crisp and sharp with a great depth of colour. Neither was there any trace of banding, the problem that bugged me in the Last Days of The Epson Stylus Photo 700 (what an unwieldy name!). The resolution is 4800 x 1200 dots per inch – standard for a lower-price-range photo quality printer.

I then tried borderless printing – that took a bit of doing as I had to negotiate the software to find out how to do it. It was worth it: the sight of a sheet of A4 photo paper emerging from the bowels (sorry, I’ll find another word – “bowels” doesn’t exactly fit in this context), from the, the, the innards of the printer with an edge-to-edge picture is quite something to behold.

Since then my wife has had an exhibition of her artwork in Lincoln Library and I’ve had to scan and reproduce her pictures, since so many people wanted copies. There are so many settings for this printer that I’m still finding out how to get the pictures exactly as I want them but results are still pretty good.

Print speed is good, too – not as fast as their claimed 18 pages per minute but in draft mode it can easily manage 12 in black – and the print quality for text even at this fast speed is astonishingly good.

If I’m totally honest, I think Epson’s depth of colour is still a step ahead of Canon’s thought there’s not a lot in it. But in every other way, this printer is a marvel. It even has a port for plugging in a Canon camera and printing direct. Not much use to me, however – my camera’s an Olympus.

The manual is fairly basic but gets you started. However, more comprehensive information is provided on the disc containing the software.

As to manufacturer support, I haven't yet needed this and I hope I don't. Their website appears to be supportive so I've played safe below and called it Satisfactory.

I gather the i450 has been superseded by the i455, though the basic specification remains the same. The difference is that now you can plug any make of camera directly into it. If this feature doesn’t grab you, look around for the i450. There still seem to be plenty around.

And even a Grumpy Old Man should enjoy using this printer.

Update: As a Grumpy Old Man, I'm amazed that I forgot to complain about the fact that there's no USB cable supplied, so you have to buy your own. Rather naughty, considering it's an essential piece of equipment!