Some vendors are offering the Canon Pixma iP1800 for as little as £35. It’s a no-frills printer, so there are no card slots, no colour display and not even a retractable paper rest for completed prints. But it’s very small, works with minimal fuss and punches above its weight in terms of photo print quality.



The iP1800 uses ink cartridges with integrated print heads which means more-expensive replacements, though there are only two cartridges. An A4 borderless photo printed using the high quality setting takes over seven minutes, though if you use the next quality setting down it takes three minutes. Prints of 6x4ins take either a little over two minutes or one minute, depending on the quality setting. The good news is that there isn’t a lot of difference in quality to be paid for in exchange for the welcome increase in speed of the lower quality setting.



Our test prints were free from banding, colours well saturated and shadow detail shows through nicely. There is a touch of magenta in some grey densities, but nothing to worry about. We’d like to have seen more dense blacks, and a slight bias towards yellow is characteristic of this and other Canon printers.