Canon Pixma IP2500 review

The Pixma IP2500 is a strictly no-frills photo inkjet printer that dispenses with features such as separate ink tanks, additional feed trays and CD/DVD printing, but still manages to output impressive photos and text pages pretty quickly.

The smokey black plastic and silver styling may not sit particularly well next to an iMac or Mac mini, but it looks stylish enough.

The first clue - other than the £40 price tag - that this is a printer that sticks to the basics is when you take it out of the box: it's disarmingly light. It does, however, have a built-in power supply, so there's no need for another brick under your desk. Aside from the power and USB sockets, there's nothing else to interrupt the smooth plastic finish of the case except the power and feed buttons on top of the flap that you lift to access the print cartridges. Also noticeable by its absence is an output tray for the paper to drop into, which rolls out and onto whatever surface is in front of the printer.

Our only other real criticism is the lack of an A3 quick-start guide. The guide here is in the form of a booklet with precious few pictures and is nowhere near as useful.

Despite the fact that there are only two cartridges - black and CMY - photo quality is very good. Surprisingly for a printer aimed at home users, it lacks punch; usually the opposite is true, with reds in particular being oversaturated. Text quality on our test sheet was pretty good and even 8pt text was perfectly legible. There was a little bleeding into the paper, but nothing disastrous.

Print speeds were also impressive for a £40 printer. One A4 text page took around 25 seconds, and an A4 photo was timed at 60 seconds on plain paper and just under two minutes on glossy photo paper.

Canon supplies a trial pack of matte photo paper and a CD with content from Canon's Creative Pack, which has lots of fun templates and projects, but is also available online.

As with all inexpensive inkjet printers, it's almost as cheap to throw out the printer and buy a new one as it is to buy a set of cartridges - blank and colour together will cost you around £34. That's galling from a value point of view and not exactly environmentally friendly, but seems to be common practice among manufacturers. At least in this case you have the option to buy low-capacity cartridges, which will set you back £22 for a pair. That's fine if you only use the printer occasionally, but is uneconomical for regular use.

If you're looking for a basic photo printer to knock out the odd photo, or want to supplement and office laser with something that will output photographs, and don't need features such as media card slots, direct printing from camera or CD/DVD printing, the Canon Pixma IP2500 is an excellent choice.