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Canon i350 Color Bubble Jet Printer

Canon i350 Color Bubble Jet Printer

List Price: $59.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hard to beat among low-cost printers
Review: *Note: This review is from pcworld.com*
Canon's i350 costs around $60 and resembles a loaf of bread, but the little machine is very impressive.It printes solid, well-defined black text with only subtle hatching or barbs on diagonal lines. On plain paper, the i350 produces gray-scale photos with realistic textures and shading, though a slightly soft-focus look obscured detail somewhat. On glossy photo paper, the i350 prints with sharp detail and fine texture; you might need to tweak color settings in the driver, however, to correct a pinkish color cast. It can print at about 5.5 pages per minute, a fairly average speed among ink jets ; on graphics, the rate falls to an unusually slow 0.7 ppm.

Working with an i350 is largely a positive experience. The unit comes with a detailed, carefully illustrated setup poster, and the driver installs itself: You simply connect a USB cable, insert the driver CD, and wait for a message inviting you to turn on the printer's power. The printer's single status light uses various flashes to indicate problems; you'll have to refer to the manual to figure out what it's trying to tell you, but Canon provides excellent documentation with the i350. The 60-page manual describes driver features and troubleshooting, and it reproduces the table of contents for the larger on-screen manual. If the i350 has an Achilles' heel, that must be its flimsy paper trays; be sure to fold them out of harm's way when they're empty. I don't like how noisy the printer was while under steam, either.

The i350 uses the same driver that runs most Canon ink jets. This driver lets you adjust each ink density independently, create duotones, and place a watermark or external image file in the background. It also guides you through two-sided printing for making booklets. The driver interface sometimes requires more windows than ought to be necessary. The watermark feature, for example, has three tabs of its own, though it isn't difficult to figure out.

The i350 uses two ink cartridges. The black tank costs $7 and prints an estimated 300 pages of text, which works out to a modest 2.3 cents per page. Printing color, on the other hand, isn't particularly cheap. A three-color cartridge costs $18.50 and produces an estimated 170 pages of light graphics (not photos); so you'll use about 12.2 cents of ink (including the cost of black ink) per color page.

Verdict: The i350 is for bargain hunters who won't compromise on print quality, but can live without fast print speeds and fancy features.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Buy Canon
Review: Canon will not stand behind their products. If one breaks you'll get sent from place to place to place and they may even offer you a replacment but rest assured it won't be in your favor. We dealt with them trying to get another printer replaced after it broke several times. Their response was to exchange it for a unit costing half as much and when we objected they were beyond rude. Go with HP, they actually care about their customers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What it does it does good
Review: Hi,
I was searching for cheap, fast, quality B&W and reliable printer for home priting.
So far only pleasant suprises.
1. Separate replaceable print head and ink tanks.
2. Ink is CHEAP. one black cartridge lasts about 300-350 one side pages in draft mode (see next) still i did
3. Increadible good and fast draft mode for documents. In my oppinion it's better than normal mode because on sheets i use
'normal' mode does not look any different just tends to soak the
paper.(i use plain A4 sheets)
4. It's not so loud as people say It does not bother me much.
5. It's pretty fast for an inkjet printer.
Overall it's very good. Better than my previous 3 owned.
I hope it lasts long :) so i can firm my good impression.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Printer Fair Price
Review: I bought a Conon I350 to replace another brand that had a 90 day warranty and stopped printing after 8 months. The I 350 is quicker, easy to operate and the ink cost is a lot less than the one that died. I was pleased to recieve E-Mail from Canon thanking me fior my purchase and providing cost free soft ware for my Canon printer and sending more no cost software later. If I ever need a new printer it will be CANON. Ben-- AZ

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great printer, great buy
Review: I bought this printer based on the PC World review, the reviews here, the price, and the small footprint. The last two were important to me. I can't speak to durability after using it for a week, but it was 40 bucks - if a print head really dies, I can replace it and still will have paid less than the price of the HP I would've purchased otherwise.

Compared with my old HP inkjet, this printer is just as easy to set up, the quality of the output is just as good, the noise when preparing to print is no greater, and the speed is a huge improvement. The same might be true of a new HP of course, but I'm amazed at how quickly text prints in draft mode. It fits nicely in the small space I have available, where the output tray can be hidden away when I'm not printing, allowing me to fully open a door next to my desk. If I wanted, I could fit this nicely on the computer tower also, not the case for the HP I would have chosen otherwise.

My only difficulty was a moment of confusion installing the printer. After installing the print driver (no problem), the installer for optional printer software said to uninstall any previous versions. I had software installed to import images from my Canon digital camera, and it wasn't clear whether that needed to be removed and replaced based on the onscreen messages. Since I simply wanted to use this printer to print text, didn't need the optional software, and didn't really feel like spending time with tech support, I simply skipped the optional software. If you have other Canon hardware and don't want to skip this step, you may have to do a little research first.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Printer Fair Price
Review: I bought this printer because it was getting good reviews and was very inexpensive. When I recieved the printer the box had a giant hole in it and the packaging in the inside was broken but the printer looked fine. Set up is extremely easy and impossible to screw up. So I was very suprised when the printer was showing that there was an error with the ink cartriges. I called Canon and after a few minutes they determined that there was some sort of hardware problem. They sent a brand new printer which arrived the next day. The second one set up in a couple of minutes and works perfectly. Also I ended up with extra ink cartriges because the only thing Cannon wanted back was the printer and print head. The printer works great (a little noisey and slow, but inexpensive) and Canon had excellent customer service. I suspect that the printer was damaged during delivery and not during manufacturing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Experience
Review: I bought this printer because it was getting good reviews and was very inexpensive. When I recieved the printer the box had a giant hole in it and the packaging in the inside was broken but the printer looked fine. Set up is extremely easy and impossible to screw up. So I was very suprised when the printer was showing that there was an error with the ink cartriges. I called Canon and after a few minutes they determined that there was some sort of hardware problem. They sent a brand new printer which arrived the next day. The second one set up in a couple of minutes and works perfectly. Also I ended up with extra ink cartriges because the only thing Cannon wanted back was the printer and print head. The printer works great (a little noisey and slow, but inexpensive) and Canon had excellent customer service. I suspect that the printer was damaged during delivery and not during manufacturing.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: T.C.O - High - Print quality very average -- not a good buy
Review: I bought this printer for its low Total Cost of Ownership as the ink tanks are relatively cheap, however after about 9 months I started to get reduced print quality "banding" which are white lines or missed sections of ink from the nozzels on the Blue part of my prints which is due to blockage of the fine nozzles of the print head. No amount of cleaning could fix this which results in the requirement of a new print head. Investigations show that the cost of a replacement head is almost the same cost as the printer !!
Until Canon reduce the price of replacement print heads to a sensible level i.e < £20 DO NOT buy one of these printers as you will not be impressed by the maintenance costs incurred.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Replaceable printer head adds to total cost of ownership
Review: I bought this printer for three reasons:
--PC World recommended it as a Best Buy.
--PC World said it had a low cost of ownership.
--it was inexpensive ($50).

Considering the cheap price, I knew it would be a "throwaway"--that is, I expected to have it four a couple of years and then replace it for a new one. However, I discovered after buying it that it has a replaceable part called a printer head. From what I can tell, the printer head dies in about a year, and Canon only makes this part available through direct purchase. I think you have to call customer support first, probably because Canon doesn't want to advertise that the printer head costs more than the printer's original purchase price. (This information is probably true at the time I'm writing this review. However, information was difficult to find, and all my information is second hand from other web reviews. I never actually took the time to call Canon customer support myself.)

PC World never mentioned anything about the printer head, so the magazine probably never factored its cost into the estimated cost of ownership. (Based on ink alone, cost of ownership is reasonable. It cost less than average to print a page.)

The printer's one annoying characteristic is that it's noisy--much noisier than my previous printer.

Please note that the printer's USB cable is not included. (This fact IS mentioned somewhere in the product description.) I didn't buy one from Amazon because I thought I could get it cheaper locally. I was wrong. Amazon sold it for 40% cheaper than I found anywhere in town.

If this printer lasts two years, I'll consider it a bargain (worth more than the two stars I'm giving it now). If the printer head dies after a year (as others say it will), then it really will be worth just two stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: "Canon" Best Printers
Review: I just love my canon printer. The print quality is great and the inks are inexpensive. As a matter of fact I have bought four canon printers (i250,i350) and today I am going to buy another one for my sister. Canon keep up the good work. I have to add that I hate Epson and all the other brands in the market because the inks are just too expensive.


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