Having just reviewed two Canon printers—the Pixma iP4500 Photo Printer and Pixma MP610 Photo All-In-One (AIO)—that offered little to no improvement over the models they replaced (even though they're still better than the competition), I approached the Canon Pixma MP970 Photo All-In-One ($299.99 direct) with low expectations. But in this case, the new model includes some substantial improvements over the Editors' Choice Pixma MP960 it replaces. Even better, the MP970 drops the price to just three-quarters of what the MP960 cost, making an entire subcategory of AIO far more affordable.

A touch smaller than the last-generation version, the MP970 is still relatively large for an ink-jet-based AIO, at 8.4 by 15.6 by 18.5 inches (HWD) and 26.3 pounds. Physical setup is standard for a Canon AIO or printer. Find a spot for it, plug in the power cord, load paper, and snap in the print head and ink cartridges. There's a separate cartridge for each ink color: cyan, yellow, magenta, light cyan, light magenta, pigment-based black for text, and dye-based black for photos.

The MP970 is a photo-lab AIO, meaning you can use it to print photos without connecting it to a computer. You can also use it as a standard AIO for printing, scanning, standalone copying, and e-mail (automatically creating an e-mail message on your PC and adding the scan as an attachment). Unlike office-centric all-in-ones, however, it has no fax feature and no automatic document feeder (ADF) for multipage documents.

Instead, the MP970 offers 35mm film scanning (for both slides and strips of film) and the ability to print directly from 35mm film as well as from PictBridge cameras and memory cards (but not USB keys). It also lets you preview photos on film and memory cards via its ample 3.5-inch LCD.

Installing the MP970 on a network is, well, different. With most printers, you connect the printer to the network and run an automated installation program that finds the printer and installs the software. With the MP970, you connect by USB cable, tell the installation program that you want to connect to a network, and then connect a network cable. If you want to position the printer farther from your computer than a USB cable can reach, you'll have to set it up in one spot and then relocate it afterwards. This isn't difficult, but it's not exactly state-of-the-art installation.

Once set up, the MP970 works swimmingly, particularly for photos. Most ink jets today print photos well enough to match what you'd expect from a drugstore or local photo shop. The MP970 is closer to what you'd expect from a professional lab, with print quality that's more than adequate for pictures meant for framing. Every photo on our standard test suite, as well as images printed directly from slides, qualified as true photo quality, with virtually no flaws. Prints copied with the front-panel Photo Reprint menu command—which is separate from the Copy command—showed a minor color shift, but not enough to be a problem.

The prints should also last reasonably well. Canon claims a lifetime of 100 years for dark storage (as in an album), 30 years framed behind glass, or 10 years exposed to air. The photos are also water-resistant enough for you to hand them out to friends to look at without worrying about them coming back smudged. However, you should ask people to handle them carefully; while looking through them I saw a number of surface scratches from sliding the photos over each other.

The MP970's text quality is within the expected range for an ink jet. Unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, it should be able to print any text you require. All the standard fonts on our test suite were quite legible, with well-formed characters at 6 points, and even the most heavily stylized font with thick strokes was clearly readable at 20 points.

Graphics are easily good enough for any internal business use. Thin lines tend to disappear (an issue with many printers), but as long as you stay away from thin lines, the graphics are sharp enough to hand out to an important client you need to impress with your professionalism. As with other Canon printers, full-page graphics tended to make the plain paper in our tests curl, so you may need to spend a little extra on a more expensive paper.

On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com), the MP970 took a total of 15 minutes 58 seconds, which is a little slow, but acceptable. As a point of reference, the less expensive Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MP610 Photo All-In-One, which is one of the fastest ink-jet AIOs I've tested, took only 12:13. Photo speed was relatively fast compared with other AIOs, averaging 58 seconds for each 4-by-6 and 2:01 for each 8-by-10.

The MP970 has room for improvement, but its flaws are forgivable. It's hard to count its oddball network installation against it. Having a network connector at all is a big plus at this price. I'd like the printer better if the photos were more scratch-resistant, but you can avoid scratches if you handle the photos carefully, and I'd rather have higher-quality photos that scratch easily than scratch resistance with lower quality.

Far outweighing the MP970's minor flaws is its ability to scan slides and also print high-quality photos directly from slides, features almost unheard of at this price, as is the level of photo quality. Quite simply, the MP970 is a high-quality photo lab AIO at a much more affordable price than most, easily making it our new Editors' Choice for photo lab AIOs.

Check out the Canon Pixma MP970 Photo All-In-One's test scores.

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