When you're looking at sub-$100 printers, it's reasonable to wonder how much you can expect for the price. When you get down to $50, the more appropriate question is whether the printer you're looking at is inexpensive or just plain cheap. With the Canon Pixma iP1800 ($49.99 direct), it's only the price that's cheap, making this printer a prime candidate for home or a college dorm, and even a potential choice for light-duty printing in a home office.

At 6 by 17.4 by 9.3 inches (HWD), the iP1800 is small enough to fit just about anyplace you might need it. Setup is typical for an ink jet: Plug it in, turn it on, and snap in the black and tricolor cartridges. Then run the automated installation program and plug in a USB cable when the program tells you to. Unlike most Canon printers, the iP1800 includes the nozzles in the cartridges, so there's no separate print head to install.

Unfortunately, one choice Canon made to keep the price low was to eliminate automatic alignment. That means you have to align the print heads manually—an unusual step for all but the least-expensive printers today. Manual alignment involves printing an alignment page, picking the best-looking choices for each of several alignment samples, and then entering the settings in the printer driver. Given the price, relying on manual alignment is acceptable, but it doesn't make the process any less of a chore, especially since you have to do it whenever you replace a cartridge. Consider it the price you have to pay for the benefit of shelling out less cash.

One thing you don't have to compromise on with the iP1800 is performance. I timed it on our business applications suite at a respectable 21 minutes 15 seconds total (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com). That's comparable to speeds for all-in-ones that cost $100 or more, including, for example, the Dell Photo All-In-One 926 Printer at 20:49. As another point of reference, the Lexmark Z1300 printer, which costs even less than the iP1800 ($25 street), took 35:03. Photos averaged a more-than-acceptable 2:02 for 4-by-6s and 4:04 for 8-by-10s.

The iP1800 also scores reasonably well on quality. Text is a little below par for an ink jet, but far from the worst I've seen. The only real problems were with two heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes. One font needed 20 points to qualify as easily readable. The other font couldn't pass that threshold even at 20 points. Even so, all the standard fonts in our tests—the ones you might use in business or school work—were easily readable, with well-formed characters, at 8 points, and in some cases even at 6 points. Edges aren't as sharp as I'd want if I were trying to project a sense of professionalism, but the quality is good enough for most business needs, and certainly good enough for school.

Graphics and photo quality match most of what you find in other ink jets. With graphics I saw some banding in default mode, but not in high-quality mode, and a tendency (as with many printers), for thin lines to disappear. Like other Canon printers, full-page graphics printed with the iP1800 tended to curl the plain paper we used on our tests.

None of these count as serious issues, however. The graphics are easily good enough for schoolwork and internal business use. If you stay away from thin lines, print in high-quality mode, and invest in a slightly more expensive, heavier-weight paper to avoid curling, the graphics are even good enough for output aimed at a client or customer you want to impress with your professionalism.

Photo quality is typical for a current-model ink jet, making the 1P1800's prints as good as photos from your local drugstore or photo shop. That's a bit short of what you can get from the best photo printers or a professional photo lab, but it's also true photo quality by definition. I saw a slight blue shift in some photos, and hints of color in some shades of gray on a monochrome photo, but no serious issues. Unless you have a critical eye, you probably won't notice any problems.

The photos are also reasonably water resistant. If you let drops of water dry, they'll leave water stains, but you can hand the photos around for people to look at without worrying about them coming back smudged. I held one under running water and rubbed it without noticeable effect.

Unfortunately the photos aren't scratchproof, which means you'll need to be careful about sliding them over each other. I saw lots of surface scratches after repeatedly shuffling through the stack. If you can avoid scratching them, however, they should last a long time. Canon claims they will resist fading for 100 years if kept in dark storage, as in an album; 30 years if kept behind glass; and 10 years if exposed to the air.

Overall, the Canon Pixma iP1800 is a surprisingly good printer. I'd like it even more if its text quality were a bit better. Still, the text is good enough for most personal and business needs, the graphics and photos are more than adequate, and the performance is terrific for the price. It all adds up to making the iP1800 a great choice if you need a printer for a home, home office, or dorm room.

Check out the Canon Pixma iP1800's test scores.

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