The Canon Pixma iP2600 is a budget, no frills inkjet photo printer. Retailing for under £30 and replacing the Pixma iP1800, this is an entry level, basic printer with few features. As such it lacks such items as a PictBridge port and a memory card slot, but is a sleek design and produces bold, crisp prints at competitive print speeds.

Design.

Printer manufacturers have been working hard to get away from the plastic grey look that has been mandatory for all printers in the past and the Pixma iP2600 follows this trend. The sleek exterior is 5.6x17.4x10 inches and has a mirrored glossy black finish, more reminisant of a furniture accessory rather than an inkjet printer. It certainly doesn’t take up a lot of desk space and will blend in nicely with your iPod or other desk peripherals. As one would expect on a budget printer, the control panel is limited to a power button and a paper feed button, located on top of the printer. The power button doubles as an error indicator by flashing a warning. Power input and USB port are located on the back of the printer, although no USB power cable is supplied with the unit. As previously mentioned, the printer does not support PictBridge so you will not be able to print directly from your digital camera.

Cartridge supplies.

Only two cartridges are required in the Pixma iP2600, a black ink cartridge and a three-colour cartridge. There are two capacities of each available, the standard black cartridge, PG37 has 11ml of ink and the higher capacity PG40 has 16ml. The standard colour cartridge, CL38 contains a total of 9ml of ink, 3ml of each cyan, magenta and yellow, whilst the higher capacity CL41 contains a total 12ml of ink, 4ml of each colour. With the PG40 costing less than £14 and the CL41 less than £17, these inkcartridges represent the best value for use in this printer.

Performance.

In speed tests the Pixma iP2600 performed very well. It managed to produce 5.68 pages per minute of black text, which compares well with both the HP DeskJet D4260 and the Lexmark Z845, that are both more expensive printers. The canon also performed well in quality tests, the characters formed were precise with crisp edges and created no blurred areas, in colour graphics tests most documents came out with solid colours and nice even distribution of colour. The only slight area of concern was in portions where gradual colour gradients occurred but these imperfections were barely noticeable to the bare eye and only a perfectionist could grumble.

4x6 photos printed on Canons semi-gloss paper were also impressive. They were not perfect but were well balanced and even, a difficult job for a budget printer.

So with solid printing performance at relatively quick output speeds and acceptable photo prints, the Pixma iP2600 is an affordable choice and is a printer that performs well above its weight, making it probably the best budget buy under £50.