Invasion Of The Ink Cartridge Snatchers
Written: Jun 02 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap
Cons: You get what you pay for
The Bottom Line: I apologize for all the bad jokes within this review. Blame the orange juice.
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| awoolcott's Full Review: Canon BJC S200 InkJet Printer |
Typically, when you see a product that's really cheap, there's 2 ways about it - it's either a steal for the low price, or a pile of crap that wasn't worth the trip to the store you bought it from. For me, the latter was the case for the Canon S200 printer - when the Fry's ad had it listed for $50, I leaped all over it, as my old printer had to be put out to pasture. I don't print a whole lot of stuff outside of documents, so I wasn't interested in a fancy, expensive printer that would collect more dust than print jobs in the queue, which is why this particular printer piqued my interest - it's from Canon (who makes my work desktop printer, the S450 which is an excellent piece of hardware), and it's cheap - what could be bad about it?
Ugh.
When the only positive I can think of is the small, portable size, lack of paper jams, and inexpensive replacement cartridges, it's not good. The S200 is a poor, poor printer that's not even worthy for budget-minded folks. Sometimes you get a bargain for $50 - and sometimes you get a swift kick in the jewels. All I know is my voice is a tad higher in the aftermath of owning this turd.
The S200 comes with 2 "starter" cartridges (read: we'll give you a half-empty cartridge and then make you buy more right away since we need to sucker you into buying something else), the installation CD-ROM disc and 2 manuals. Despite the printer being USB only, Canon saw fit to send another swift kick to the cajones by not including the necessary USB cable. I've always found this practice deplorable - it's like buying a game console without the controller or minus the AV cables to plug into your TV. Thankfully, I already had a spare cable, so nobody got flamed by the guy kicked in the nuts 2 times within 5 minutes.
Now, the first thing that got my attention - in a bad way, mind you - was the installation process. The color, picture-driven foldout manual (for the illiterate who can't follow simple directions, apparently) led to a strange ending. Basically, the printer installation software required you to get the computer to search for the device, and while it did, to actually plug the printer in a power source. Err? Being someone who always had RTFM beat into their head like an unsuspecting customer kicked in the balls by a computer company (special points if you know what RTFM means, and extra credit if you beat the filter to spell it out), I followed this step even if I thought it was ridiculous and borderline retarded. After about 10 tries, I gave up and did it the hard way - by manually installing the printer drivers, searching through the CD-ROM. I don't really know if I gave up any special features (like, maybe the printer wouldn't suck so bad), but really, I just wanted the damn thing to work! A thing I noticed is that there's no power switch on this thing - just a reset button if something goes awry (not that everything about this printer is awry or anything). Instead, it's always on, which is both a blessing and a curse. Either way, at least I finally got this thing to work.
Once that was taken care of, the really bad crap started to kick in. I knew this printer was going to be really slow, even in printing plain black text documents. Little did I know though, that it would be 2 pages per millennium. Seriously, this has to be the slowest printer in the history of slow printers - if you decided to print the page this review, you'd best bet to pack lunch, dinner, a Game Boy, maybe a DVD or a conjugal visit to kill some time, as it'll take a while before it's done. I'm a patient person and everything, but I'd prefer the stuff I've printed to come out before I have to check in for a castration procedure after getting kicked in the Jimmy so many times already by this thing. It's also really friggin' loud, so if you're going to carry out that conjugal visit, go into another room unless you want the printer to be the loudest moaner thing in the vicinity.
Worse yet, despite the slow printing process, the quality is incredibly awful. I couldn't believe how faded the colors were in color documents, even when bumping the quality way up - and that just made it tougher to dry when finished. Plain black documents were fine, but anything else looks faded like a newspaper does if you leave it outside on a 100-degree June day in Arizona.
The last straw though, is the consumption of ink. Simply, the S200 loves ink like a fat kid love cake (an aside, is this not the worst simile for love ever? It almost makes "I love you like a hooker loves Monday at the clinic" sound romantic - damn 50 Cent and his influence on pop culture!). This wasn't with the starter cartridge either, as that had been replaced long ago (it obviously was just a drop of ink) - this was with the stock black cartridge. I'd bet that after perhaps 20 documents of both color and black, it was depleted of ink. If not, it sure seemed like it - within just a few weeks the black ink was empty again. The color cartridge faired better, but that was because I used it much less than plain B&W documents. Still, when you factor in a constant need for cartridges, the $50 price suddenly doesn't seem so hot. It is nice though, that replacement cartridges are inexpensive - around $15. However, when they last all of a couple days, that price means jack - I might pay $30 for the cartridge for my leagues-better HP printer that I own now, but it lasts 4 times as long.
The Bottom Line
Seriously, there's nothing really appealing about the Canon S200, besides perhaps the cheap cartridges and the fact that there's never any paper jams). It might be cheap (if it's even around anymore to buy), but the cost of replacing the cartridges every few weeks suddenly evens out the low price. From the stupid installation process, to the terrible output and ink cartridge snatching to the incredibly slow printing process, the S200 is a total waste of money. Sometimes, you get what you pay for - and sometimes you get a kick in the Johnson to go along with it.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
awoolcott
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Location: Arizona
Reviews written: 409
Trusted by: 401 members
About Me:
Okay, scratch that...Uncharted 2 - Game of the Year.
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