The Canon BJC-50 is a lightweight, portable printer with print quality equal to their inkjet printers. The BJC-50 offers two convenient features, especially for portable printing. For taking your computing on the road, the BJC-50 comes with a battery. It also has a wireless IrDA interface for cable-free printing. The Canon BJC-50 comes with TrueType fonts, and resident bitmap fonts. It's capable of printing envelopes and transparencies, and with the optional auto sheet feeder, it has desktop printing capacity. As with other Canon products, the BJC-50 has an optional Color Image Scanner Cartridge that quickly converts the printer into a desktop scanner. Simply insert the cartridge into its slot and the BJC-50 becomes a sheetfeed scanner in just minutes.
Need a printer while you're on the road? Take the Canon BJC-50 with you. This battery-powered, compact, color bubble-jet printer makes a great traveling companion for your notebook computer.
Setting up the BJC-50 was easy. We just followed the Quick Start Guide to install the lithium-ion battery and ink cartridge and to connect the AC adapter and printer cable. We then turned on our computer and followed the Windows setup wizard for setting up a new plug-and-play printer.
In our test of the BJC-50, we printed several color, black-and-white, draft-quality, and letter-quality samples. The samples included graphics, large and small letters, and a variety of color shades. Draft-quality printing was fast but attractive. Letter quality demonstrated modest improvements in character quality, and the printing was reasonably clear and sharp. Color shades were accurate, if not bold. There was some ink "bleeding" on ordinary uncoated paper, and even a discrete glance betrayed the BJC-50's bubble-jet origins--all as you would expect in a small bubble-jet printer.
At only 2.1 pounds the BJC-50 is exceptionally lightweight; its case is slim, attractive, and very compact--easy to tuck away in a backpack or briefcase. If you need color printing on the go, the Canon BJC-50 is a solid choice.
Pros:
- Compact and lightweight
- Portable, battery-powered
Cons:
- Requires switching between color and black cartridges
- Single-sheet feed (feeder optional)
1 Canon BJC-50
Excellent printer...everything that I thought it would be . Works wells all the time. Works wells with Windows XP and downloaded driver from Canon site.
2 Beware
I purchased the Canon BJC-50 in August of 1998. It has take at least three hours to three days of effort to get it to work for each time that I have occasionally used it. I have used it mainly for color printing, and also for scanning with the optional scanning cartridge. It is particularly troublesome when switching from scan to print functions. It is quite noisy. I can not depend on it to function when I need it. It usually works eventually, but only after many trial and error attempts. Email technical support usually does not provide a quick solution. There have been no quick solutions. There have only been time consuming, painstaking encounters with this machine.
3 Infrared works well with Windows ME
Even though it said that the infrared wireless printing only works with Windows 95, I found that it worked just as well with Windows ME installed in my laptop.
Two great benefits of the BJ-50: 1. Infrared wireless printing (if your laptop supports it) 2. There is battery in the printer, so you don't have to connect it to an electrical outlet to print! Both features are VERY convenient.
Print quality is decent, but I can't comment on ink life since I have just begun to use the printer.
4 I like this product.
"Excellent" That's all I can say...
5 Great! Canon BJC-50 Color Bubble Jet Printer!
I have owned several brands and models of portable printers... nothing like this one! Its portability, reliability, and quality are just the best. Ink tanks last fairly long also.
