Digital Photography Now Printer Reviews

Printer review: Canon S900

11th March - 2002
By Ian Burley

Select a page... Canon S900 review In use Description ..The S900 in pictures Test summaries and costs ..Print quality ....Colour gamut ....Detail magnified ....Flowers and foliage ....Human tones ....Text quality Conclusions

Page 4 - Product tour in pictures

Below is a series of views of the Canon S900:

The Canon S900 is no simple facelift of the S800. It has a sleek new case with a aluminium style upper finish. Canon’s trademark beige plastic has given way to a blue-ish grey, contrasted with smoked black acrylic panels. The bottom paper rest is telescopic, but the top sheet feeder rest is of the increasingly popular clip-on type.

The only external controls are two wide buttons separated by a status LED at the top. The left button is the power on/off switch and the right hand button is the form feed and error resume button.

This low angle view gives a feel for the low and wide style of the S900.

The S900 paper rest telescopes and folds away neatly, almost flush with the front of the case

Most of the top of the case is one hinged piece that, when lifted, provides access to the platen, print head and ink tanks. When power is on, lifting the lid automatically causes the print head assembly to present itself in the centre of the bay.

Even from its side, the S900 has an aesthetic look. The traditional top to bottom paper path means a fairly deep area of desk top is required to accommodate the S900. However, heavy media weights can be accommodated safely as the paper path is relatively flat.

Canon continues its policy of providing separate ink tanks for each colour, all of which (including the black tank) live inside a replaceable print head (seen above minus ink tanks). If the print head becomes damaged, it’s an easy and relatively inexpensive do-it-yourself replacement job.

Here you can see the ink tanks installed, with the yellow tank (rightmost) shown half inserted. All are the the same size and different coloured tanks are not keyed, so care must be taken as it is possible to install a colour in the wrong slot.

The S900 only supports USB 1.1 connectivity. With such a data hungry print head, the S900 could benefit from the extra speed of USB 2.0.

One noticeable omission compared to the out-going S800 is the lack of second rear-feed flat paper path for thicker media.

Another economy is the introduction of a clip-on paper feed rest rather than the usual pull-out rest.

Overall, the Canon S900 looks and feels like a high quality product.

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