Canon Bubble Jet i80 review

Canon is one of the few companies that has continued to produce compact printers suitable for use on the move, and the i80 is its newest release.

The introduction of this model follows the launch of the i70 at the end of 2002, and it shares many characteristics with its older sibling. The styling is almost identical, with an inoffensive champagne finish that should blend well with most setups.

It certainly is compact, with a footprint smaller than the A4 size of paper it prints out, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that it slipped easily into our small laptop bag, next to the laptop itself. The main unit weighs 1.8kg, which is close to the maximum we'd be prepared to carry in addition to the laptop, but it's certainly not back-breaking.

Printing is pleasingly quiet, and the generally excellent print quality and reasonable speed exemplify the advances in inkjet technology; there are now few reasons to choose one inkjet printer over another on quality alone. Text in particular is extremely crisp. Even on cheap photocopier paper, we had difficulty distinguishing the i80's output from that of the office laser printer.

Surprisingly for such a consumer-level device, the i80 can produce borderless prints, and its 4800dpi output is more than capable of creating decent photographs. To this end, the printer supports PictBridge and Bubble Jet Direct which allows you to connect a compatible digital camera directly to the printer for outputting photos. This makes it ideal for getting quick contact shots on the move, and as it's not limited to 6 x 4in snaps like some direct-print devices, it's more flexible.

Although old-fashioned, infra-red is still a reliable way to connect wirelessly between devices, and the i80 has an infra-red port. The big news in connectivity, however, is the option of adding Bluetooth.

Unfortunately, Apple's recent announcement about updating its Bluetooth software to enable printing via Bluetooth (see News, 20 February 2004, p11) caught Canon unawares. It's currently impossible to print from a Mac to the i80 using Bluetooth, but Canon is working hard to fix this, and Bluetooth drivers should be available soon.

The i80 can communicate with other Bluetooth devices; we had no difficulty printing from a Palm Tungsten T, and could even print borderless 6 x 4in snaps directly from our Bluetooth-enabled camera phone.

You don't even have to remember the power cable. A £99 battery add-on is available and will only slightly increase the overall size of the printer, or for an extra £129 you can plump for the charging station to keep the battery topped up.

Canon claims that the printer will turn out 450 pages from a single charge, and after a week's light use, our test model only just dropped below full charge.

Our main gripe is that the battery is likely to outlast the ink cartridges. The tiny black tank, little larger than two sugar cubes side-by-side, is quoted as lasting for only 80 pages, so we would strongly recommend against having the i80 as your main desktop printer; it would be too expensive.

And price is the other reason why the Canon i80 drops to three mice. The printer costs £199, and if you add the Bluetooth module and charging station, it rockets to £387. The i80 is a compact and useful device, and once Canon issues Bluetooth drivers, the only stumbling block is cost.