BUBBLEJET PRINTER: Canon i6100

At Rs 17,995, this is perhaps the cheapest A3+ bubblejet printer in the market today. This makes it a great option for designers who need a device for printing A3 proofs, sample designs, etc before they do the final printing. Canon i6100 can print on a range of media sizes, which include A3, A4, A5, B4, B5, ledger and photo cards. It's a desktop printer with a footprint of 60 cms. The printer comes with some good software controls such as automatic power on/off through the PC, which allows you to turn off the printer after a pre-defined time. It will then switch the power on the moment somebody fires a print job on it. 

The specified printing speed of the printer for the A4 sheets is 12 ppm for mono text and 9 ppm for color graphics. Like most inkjets, here also we got a lower print speed after printing multiple A4 sheets. It measured 6 ppm for mono text. An A4 color graphic took about 3 mins and 20 secs to print in best mode (2400 X 1200 dpi), which is quite fast and the quality too was excellent with vibrant colors. The printer has drivers for both Mac and Windows. Plus, it comes with two Windows-based image viewing and manipulation programs: ZoomBrowser and PhotoStitch. It also has printing enhancement tools,
Easy-PhotoPrint and Easy-WebPrint. 

Overall, a great A3 printer given the sub Rs 20k price tag and excellent performance.

Anindya Roy