When you first look at it, the Canon S450 Color BubbleJet printer appears relatively unremarkable. It's small, light, and quiet - with neutral colours, no distracting logos, and only two unobtrusive function lights. Clearly, Canon is banking on the buyer who looks below the surface. And those who take the time to look will find a lot of printer for the price.

The market for home and small business printers is full of entries by all the big (and small) names. It's tough to come up with something different that might catch a buyer's attention while offering all the "standard" features users have come to expect from their bubble jet printer. The people at Canon wisely kept it simple with the S450. With the catchline "print fast - ink lasts," Canon goes right to the heart of previous inkjet issues. And, while the company doesn't perform miracles with its $249 (MSRP) machine, the S450 deals admirably with many issues previous generations of bubble jets couldn't touch.

The S450 starts out by offering users 1440 X 720 dpi resolution using Canon's proprietary Drop Modulation Technology - designed to provide greater tonal expression and smoother transition between colours in photo reproduction.

Listed as a replacement for the BJC-6100, the S450 is rated at up to 10 pages per minute in black and white and seven pages per minute in colour. The printer uses Canon's new "e" series ink, with a new ink formulation designed for increased optical density, brighter colours and richer blacks.

Finally, the S450 offers both parallel and USB connectivity, along with software for PC and Macintosh operation systems.

On the bench

But how does it really work, you ask.

First of all, it's pretty simple to set up. Although the printer comes with plenty of packaging, it all makes sense - and some of it might come in handy in the future, too. In particular, there's the small ABS carrying case for carrying around colour ink wells from Canon's Think Tank system. The system is a good idea, and goes along with the "ink lasts" part of the Canon credo.

Unlike some printer producers, Canon created individual containers for each of the four printer colours - allowing users to replace them as they run out. That could come in handy, say, for nature photographers who go through pots of cyan, but rarely encounter magentas.

In addition to the actual printer software, Canon includes PDF instructions and printer hints. Although you can have your machine up and running in less than a half hour (including installation of the four colour cartridges), a perusal of the instruction manual is highly recommended. Why? Read on.

In order to produce 10 ppm speeds in black and white, the printer drops a lot of the finer points and extra information you'll need for colour and photographic reproduction. By the way, it really is that fast - as long as you're not trying to produce grayscale pie charts and other graphics. Things necessarily slow down as you get more detailed and more colourful - to the point where a high resolution 8X10 colour pic on glossy paper will take you the better part of 20 minutes.

That's no knock on the S450, though, because the colour picture you end up with really does feature brighter, richer and denser colour than you may have been expecting. With proper manipulation of the printer's easy-to-follow print options dialogues, you'll get excellent control of your final output. Colour balance and density are controlled with standard slide controls, although the preset outputs, recommended by Canon's colour matching system, came admirably close to on-screen values.

So, what does Canon prove with its low-impact approach to the S450? Simply that the best technology is often that which blends into your work environment.

(Photo courtesy of Canon - Canon S450 BubbleJet printer.)