Canon's range of Pixma inkjet printers have made a good name for themselves over the years. Most are desktop machines, but the iP100 is a portable printer, designed to be carried around with you. It weighs just 2kg - a bit more if you attach the lithium-ion battery.
Styled in silver with black end plates, the iP100 has a novel design. Lift the top cover, which becomes the paper feed tray, and the front cover, which hides the output slot, automatically drops down. Up to 50 sheets of plain paper can be loaded for printing, and the machine can also handle standard photo blanks.
There's a secondary top cover, which gives access to the twin ink cartridges. These are specific to Canon's mobile printers and, unlike most small format printers, there's a pigmented black cartridge, as well as a four-colour dye-based cartridge that includes a photo black to improve dark tones in photo prints.
There are just two control buttons, one to power the printer on and off, and the other to feed a sheet, each with indicator LEDs for power and paper jam. On the side are sockets for low voltage power from Canon's separate power supply, USB for computer connection and PictBridge, so you can print from a camera. There's also an optional Bluetooth adaptor, which plugs into the USB port and offers wireless connection to a Bluetooth device.
Canon's printer driver is pretty standard fare, offering the usual kind of controls for multiple pages per sheet and watermarking.
Mobile printers have a reputation for slow and poor quality prints, but not the iP100. Although the speeds are nowhere near the headline figures of 20ppm and 14ppm for black and colour, our five-page, black text print took 45 seconds, giving a speed of just under 7ppm. Similar five-page text and graphics prints, including colour graphics, took nearly 90 seconds, or just under 3.5ppm. While neither of these speeds is earth-shattering, they're more than adequate for a personal printer.
Print quality is very good, with clean, crisp black text from the pigmented ink cartridge and clear, rich colours, if not quite as bright as the best desktop offerings. A 15 x 10cm print took just under 1 minute 40 seconds, which again is a respectable speed. The image was clear and sharp, with plenty of shadow detail and good, smooth colour gradations. We could see little difference between prints produced on this machine and those from Canon's desktop inkjets.
You pay extra for the size and mobility of this printer, with a complete kit coming in close to £200 if you include the battery. You pay again through inflated consumables costs, with the black cartridge costing about £12 and the colour one close to £16. These compare with typical desktop cartridge prices of £3 and £8.50 for Canon consumables.
Even with these extra costs though, the Pixma iP100's excellent print quality means you have to sacrifice very little for the ability to take your printer with you. This device makes an excellent companion to just about any laptop.
Needs Spare USB port + Optional battery for full portabilityAuthor: Simon Williams
Canon Pixma iP100