The Canon BJC3000 is the ideal printer for domestic use because of its size, ease of use and most importantly has separate colour cartridges. Oh yes! The price comes into the equation as well.
In addition to the manual there is a large colour printed card that shows in detail how to install the cartridges. In fact apart from getting some details for this review I haven’t even opened the manual yet. But curiosity got the better of me and I eventually had a look at it after using the printer without a problem for over three months. Clear and full of useful information is the only way to describe it.
Where you place the printer is a matter for the user but in general if you were to sit in the place that you intend to allocate for the printer and are comfortable, then so will the printer. Would you be comfortable sat next to a radiator each and every day or in bright sunlight through a window or in a draughty and damp room? If you wouldn’t then neither would the printer.
Weighing in at just under 4 kg it only requires some 15’’ wide x 18’’ deep of desk space and if height is a factor then 9’’ is the figure and will connect to the PC via the Parallel port or USB port. The accompanying CD does all the work in installing the appropriate printer driver, which takes just a few seconds.
The printer is so simple to connect and set up for immediate use that there is no need to even open the manual let alone read it. Connect it up, switch it and the PC on and once the PC has recognised the printer’s presence load the CD and open it. The printer driver will be installed and you can print in full colour straight away.
The sheet feeder (A4 size) will take up to 100 sheets of paper and churn them out at the rate of 4 ppm in just black. It is just 2.8 ppm in colour. But you can get a faster print rate of 9 ppm for just mono printing by using the BC-30 ink cartridge. The print resolution is 1440 x 720 dpi. Time with me is not a factor, so printing speeds are of no relevance. A lever on the front will adjust the distance between the print head and paper so thin card of up to 105 g/m² can be printed on. The only other controls are the on/off switch and the resume button, the purpose of which is explained in the manual.
The print quality is very, very good and with the right sort of paper will print photographs as near as good as the real thing. The printed pages come out dry so there is no danger of smearing the print by handling them immediately.
It does tend to be a bit noisy when switching on as the carriage sorts itself out to eventually arrive in the right place.
A neat touch is its ability to go into stand-by by mode after a period of none use of 1, 10, 30 or 60 mins. I haven’t tried this as my printing requirements do not warrant leaving it switched on all day.
An even neater touch is the separate cartridges for the four colours. So as my printer will be used mainly for black work I only need to buy a replacement black ink cartridge when it becomes empty and not a full set to replace the hardly used colours as well. I mean who wants to throw away a nearly full colour cartridge?
It isn’t the cheapest printer on the market but at £89.99 it is good value. Now whether it lasts as long as my old Star LC200 9 pin dot matrix did remains to be seen as after ten years it is still going strong. I have my doubts but I should get at least five years out of it.