Canon S520 review

After a long period off the pace, Canon puts itself back in the running with its 'S' series of printers.

The S520 is an update to the S500, offering greater speed and new features.

Design

Printers require a bit of packaging, but after unwrapping the Canon we found ourselves practically buried in a pile of plastic. Installation immediately got off to a bumpy start, with the setup routine halting midway and asking for a file. We managed to point it in the right direction and all was well, but this would flummox a beginner.

Paper moves through the Canon in a conventional fashion, from the holder at the top straight through to the output tray at the bottom - which, when fully extended, will take up a lot of room on your desk. At least it's quiet, though. The driver offers some useful features, such as a print advisor, which suggests the best combination of paper and quality setting, and a new 'borderless' printing option, allowing you to print right up to the edge of the paper. Another bonus is an optional adapter that allows you to connect the printer directly to a network for use in a busy office.

The Canon's best feature, though, is the use of separate ink cartridges for each colour, letting you make more efficient use of ink and cutting running costs.

Print Quality

The Canon's output was variable. Its reproduction of our photo was excellent and text was nice and sharp - not far off that of the Lexmark and HP. It made one gross error in the newsletter test though, with the driver rendering two greys completely different when they should have matched. Skin tones were accurate on plain paper, but in the business graphics test, blocks of colour were not as solid as we'd have liked.

Speed

Our photo shot out of the Canon in just over a minute - which, considering its quality, is amazing. The Canon was also the fastest at the report and newsletter, and was only just pipped at the post by the Lexmark in the text test.

Overall

The Canon's outstanding feature is speed: in just over one minute it printed a photo that wasn't too far off the one it took the Epson 23 minutes to produce! It may not achieve the absolute highest quality, but for a busy office where decent output produced quickly is preferable to slow perfection, the S520 is worth the money.