Customer Reviews

Canon S520 Color Bubble Jet Photo Printer

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I needed a new inkjet printer and wanted something high-quality but also below $200. So I surfed the web and looked over many websites and reviews. I gathered that the Canon S series is the best for the money. The Canon S520 features four separate ink tanks so you can replace individual colors as they run out, which will save you money in the long run. It's also a fast printer, but I'm not usually in much of a hurry to print something. If you print a picture in high-quality resolution it can take a little longer (still quite speedy), but the results are fabulous. I've only used cheap plain paper so far, but photos and graphics still look really great. I'm sure it would look even better on higher quality paper. Also, plain text was printed very crisply as well, no complaints in that department. The printer is even really quiet, it makes very little noise. Overall I was really happy with this Canon S520 printer; it prints great looking color graphics/photos and it's pretty cheap, quiet and fast. I really can't find any fault with this printer, it's performed beyond expectations. Top-quality color inkjet printer - 5 STARS!

OK, I did a fair amount of research for printers in this price range and cheaper. I banged along on an old Epson 400 for years until my upgrade to XP left me without a driver. I thought about replacing it with another Epson but caught wind of too many hit and miss problems with quality control and customer service.
Setup was quite easy. The printer is quick by my standards, shooting out a text draft that to me I would not be ashamed to send to anyone. I put in a sheet of high end photo paper and was very impressed with the results, though I did not buy it for that purpose. I like using the parallel port and saving an available USB port. In addition, I put an envelope in to print, a procedure I dreaded with the old Epson. Slick as a whistle, out came a clean smudge free envelope. I like the idea of individual ink tanks though I've not had to deal with a refill. I've had the printer a few weeks now and am very happy with it! Minor negative is the output tray. It has a concave design wich was well thought out, but the lip that attaches to the printer is shallow and if bumped will detach and spill your contents. Once I found it was vulnerable, I'm now careful not to bump it. That said, I'd buy it again!

I have to say that I was quite impressed by the canon s520. I spent 2 months reviewing and researching all the other printers, HP, Epson etc and for the price range canon s520 topped the lot. I was going to buy the s750, but I couldn't afford it, so for a midrange price, the canon s520 is the top in it's league.
The installation went like a breeze, canon made the instructions simple enough that a 10yo could install the thing, although there's not enough instructions for the additional software that came with it(the photo imaging software), the default was the 3 options were all selected, but I wanted only to install the necessary, in the end I installed all 3 products.
The pluses are:
- one of the cheapest printers to run in cents per page, Epson c80 also matches canon s520, but the Epson costs...more to purchase in the first place
- fast efficient printer
- colour printing is unreal
- separate ink tanks, for ink saving and cost efficiency,
unreal! I looked at the other printers that had separate ink tanks, and the prices to purchase those printers, were way above my budget.
- it's not that noisy as other printers
Although this is my first colour printer, I was amazed at how close the colours were to the real thing. I've been printing out digital photo pics.
Black and white text, perfect. I used standard ordinary paper, there was no blotching, no smudging or anything.
Some things I noticed that was a bit annoying:
- when it prints it shakes the whole table, I have a wooden table, and it's pretty sturdy, when I'm printing while typing away on my keyboard it feels like a mini-mini earthquake.
- it takes about 10 seconds plus to initialise the print. The printer makes all these wizzing noises, and you have to wait a while before the first page shoots out, but then it's lightning fast.
- oh yes the power cable is short as, it's about the length of two keyboards if not shorter. I had to buy an extension lead.
I would have given it a 5star except those 2 points, did annoy me.
"You can on a Canon, really it's true"

After doing a lot of web research, I finally chose the Canon S520 color printer to replace my Epson 740, which was beginning to give me problems and use a lot of ink. So far I love it! Installing the Canon printer software went smoothly, and the USB connection works well (there were problems with my PC recognizing the Epson printer using the USB port).

After using the Canon S520 for a few months now, I am extremely happy with my choice. It's much quieter and faster than my Epson, and appears to use less ink (it isn't constantly going through the noisy, time consuming and wasteful cleaning cycles that my Epson did). Black and white documents printed in Draft mode look just fine and are very fast to print. Although it's not billed as a "photo" printer, photos come out great too. In addition, the ink cartridges are cheaper than the Epson or HP cartridges, and you can replace one color at a time.

I've had the S520 for a couple of months now and I must say this by far has been the best printer I've ever owned. It prints excellent 4x6 photos taken with my digital camera with almost the same accuracy as regular 35mm photos that you would get from Kodak. I mean, no one could tell the difference between the photos I printed out on this machine and the photos that are developed at a photolab. Canon says to use the Canon Photo Pro paper to achieve great results, however, I've used Hewlett Packard 4x6 photo paper and color photos and non color photos have come out very nicely. It also prints text well.
Most importantly, the S520 is very easy on the ink. This was the major problem I had with my previous Epson Stylus C60. Since I've had this printer, I've not had to change the the cartridges yet! And I've had this printer for 4 months. I know that's not a long time but when I had the Epson C60, I had it for about the same amount of time and had to replace the cartridges 3 times.
All and all, this is an excellent printer. Reasonably priced and cost efficient.
Get this one!

Having never owned a Canon product previously, I was slightly hesitant, but the S-series printers garner great reviews all over the Net. Besides, my HP DeskJet cartridges cost nearly as much by themselves (black and color).

Having once seen a S600 demo print in Office Max, I was quite impressed...that's how I first happened onto the Canon brand. Well, I have to say that the S520 does not disappoint. To start with, the printer is very easy to set up. Definitely plug and play (at least with Windows XP, may need driver included on CD on older systems). Yes, you will need to get a seperate USB cable, but they're cheap, so it's a non-issue. One of the GREAT features of this printer is that the ink cartridges (4 in total) are all seperate! What does this mean? You don't have to replace ALL of them if one color runs out! Now why can't more manufacturers do this? In addition, the cartridges are cheap, so your overall cost of printing is very low.

But aside from features and stuff, the Canon S520 is just an excellent printer in terms of quality and speed. Extremely fast with full page text and even color prints! Fast AND quiet! I think anyone who picks up this printer will be pleasantly surprised by the quality and speed at which this printer is capable of printing.

UPDATE: So far I've purchased 3 of these printers. One for a system I built for a family friend, one for my girlfriend, and one for my girlfriend's sister. Definitely a great value.

I became frustrated with my Lexmark 5700 after 3 years of flawless service. The printouts were excellent and the paper never jammed, but it cost me a fortune per page in ink and the heads constantly clogged. 80% of what I print is text, resumes and letters, but I also enjoy hard copies of my better digital photos, so I needed one printer to do both jobs reasonably well. I let Consumer Report magazine narrow down my choices and ended up with the Canon S520 from Amazon.com. I got a great deal on a great printer! It does everything very well and has separate ink tanks for each color. The tanks are clear so you can see how much ink is left, then replace them one at a time ...
I've been using this printer for about 2 months now and totally satisfied with performance. Zero paper jams, quality text and photo printouts with minimal ink usage. Easy install (I'm running on the parallel port with Windows ME). The noise is not bad and the speed is acceptable.
The one downside I found was that it tends to bog down the rest of the system while printing. But I don't mind that because I print while word processing, not video gaming.
I would highly recommend this printer to anyone looking for a solid, reliable, all around printer. You can find other printers that do just one or two things better, but none that do it all to this level. And definitely not for this price!

I recently purchased a Brother all in one machine, but found that it didn't have the quality I needed for photo's. After doing some research and knowing that I didn't want an Epson (many problems in the past with Epson going through Ink quickly, and clogging) I decided to try the Canon S520 Bubblejet Printer. I am VERY pleased with the quality of the prints! It was very easy out of the box set up. I would recommend this printer to anyone wanting a good deal on an inexpensive printer. I'm impressed! THe only reason I gave it 4 out of 5 stars is that it's a little bit noisy, after it's done printing a page. The first time it startled me, now I'm used to it - But, if you're looking for something extremely quite, this may not be the best choice. Overall though, great printer!

This is my third Canon printer. The first two were bottom of the line(BJ 240&1010)that came w/ the PCs. I went broke buying ink [money]BW/[money]color. Not so with the S520. [less money]each tank. And they last longer. As for the ink level gauges. They show either full or empty. No true levels. The low ink warning comes on suddenly. I kept using the tanks that were supposed to be low for about a month. Your print job will stop and you will get a out of ink warning when it is really empty. I've ran all four tanks dry 3-4 times with no apparant problem. The ink does take a few seconds to dry, but it's not wet enough to stain the next page that ejects on top. I'm glad I went for this printer.

Setup the printer with no problems (WinXP). Text printed fast and crisp. Printed out a photo using some Kodak Glossy Photo Paper I purchased from Sam's Club. The photos were overall dark and dull - My 2-yr old HP printer did better than that! Tried various printer settings with same result. Contacted Canon: They said that the printer driver was optimized for their paper. Finally, tried the trial Canon 4x6 Photo Paper Pro that came with printer. Excellent results; looked like a photograph. Looks like I'll have to be buying Canon paper for all my future photo printing. Would have rated this printer five stars if it had been insensitive to brands of photo papers.