Customer Reviews

Canon S330 Color Bubble Jet Printer

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Pros: Quiet mode is just that - quiet. You can specify a time frame for Quiet mode: for instance, all printing done between 10:00pm until 9:00am will be printed in quiet mode. The printer can automatically turn itself on to print, and turn itself off when the print job is done. Print quality is great, and it's fast. The ink cartridges are quite inexpensive (less than [price] each for B&W or color cartridge). Free sample back of 4"x6" Pro photo paper inlcuded for true bordless printing. A printed a photo from a 1.3Megapixel camera and it was as if Kodak processed it!

Cons: It's a little loud in normal mode. This is due to the automatic head-cleaning that occurs before a print job. Paper loader tray handles 100 sheets of paper, but the output tray handles only 50 sheets. Printer applications (there are several) that come with the printer weigh in at over 130MB (but you don't have to install them).

I just got this printer a few days ago and printed some photos and assignments on it. The photos were colorful and vivid. The quality was great, and it only took a minute to print. However, the blue was a little darker than it was suppose to be. Other than that, you can't even tell that the pictures came from a bubble jet printer. The printer has good speed on black and white pages. One drawback is that the printer is constantly cleaning the print head. It gets annoying after a while. The ink for this printer is relatively inexpensive compared with other printer catridges.
Overall, this printer is a great deal. It's definitely worth its price.

This is our first printer, so we don't have much to compare it to. However, we have been quite pleased with the quality of the text documents and photos that we have printed. One thing that I love about this printer is that there are separate black and color ink cartridges. The only negative comment I have is that it takes a little while (under a minute though) for the printer to "wake up" and it makes some noise while it is waking up.

Be advised that Low end printers from Canon can't be repaired, they need to be swapped for new ones (if they are still under warranty). Originally bought the S300. Had tons of problems with that model. After 3 swaps due to malfunctions in printers, Canon finally upgraded me, at no additional cost, to an S330. Happy to say that I now have no complaints to report and that this model works well for me. It is quiet and doesn't break down regardless of the thickness of the paper or if I print pictures.

I purchased my Canon S330 printer in late January of 2003. I used it to print the occasional shipping lable or report, no photos. The print head has failed three times in the past six months. First it stopped printing black right in the middle of a job(it suddenly started printing black again after about 3 weeks.) Then it stopped printing magenta, again, right in the middle of a job. As of January 2004 it stopped printing both black and magenta. After getting a run-around from customer service(telling me the standard "do a cleaning, etc.")I was told I need a new print head, which will cost about $60 plus $40 "labor" to install at a "certified Canon repair center". Of course there isn't one near me and my printer would have to be shipped to one at my cost. It's cheaper for me to just buy a new printer. The only good things I can say about this printer is that it was fast and the ink is cheap.

The printer does print pretty fast and offers reasonable (but not great) quality print outs.

Pro: Includes both Color and B/W ink cart. Low printing cost (cheap ink carts, a BIG PLUS). Supports gray scale printing, good for printing drafts and saving color ink.

Con: Long ink-wasting-cycle, head continue to move even w/o job. Rather bulky (still better than Epson). Insist that I install driver from CD instead of auto install by XP.

Just wanted to add my experience to the many people who, after having this printer for a year, now have a useless, grey-and-blue paperweight.

For the first year, this printer worked great. It was relatively fast, could produce photo-quality prints (but ONLY on Canon photo paper), and the ink was cheap. (And yes, it was an ink-guzzler.) Still, dispite everything -- even the ridiculous noises! -- we were happy. When we bought it, the printer came packaged with our computer; now I understand why it was so cheap.

Now, just over a year later, the black print head does not print clearly. Judging by the other reviews here, this happens often.

While I know this printer was cheap, it's unacceptable that it breaks after a year. I do not feel I over-worked this printer. How can Canon make such faulty products?

Be prepared that if you buy this product, and use it, it will break sooner than you expect. I almost gave this two stars because it was great while it worked. But now, it's broken. What a waste that it's cheaper and easier to buy a new printer, than replace my black print head. I doubt I'll be looking at a Canon printer.

This printer works great, the only problem I've found is that when you first turn it on, it has a long click-clack startup routine, like it is cleaning the printhead.

Apart from that, I love this printer, but mostly, I love the cheap ink prices for it. After owning a HP840c, buying ink for this one is really inexpensive.

Also, it works great in Red Hat Linux 9. The reason I mention it is because this is a USB Printer, and was worried about not having the appropiate drivers for Linux, but Red Hat 9 comes with S300 drivers and those work.

The S330 is a fast, reliable printer with crisp color printing and fast black and white. The color prints are incredible with photos coming out almost (but not quite) crystal clear. (Note: I've noticed that there is a noticable print difference when using regular verses heavy paper when printing lots of color. Use cardstock or photo paper if you want your color print to come out as clear as possible).

Additionally, the cartridges are very inexpensive (I've purchased black and white as low as $4 and color as low as $5) and easy to replace resulting in a very low cost-per-page with ease.

The only complaint I have against this printer is the number of times it cleans the print head. For example, when I printed 70 pages of text it cleaned the head 3 or 4 times during the print. This slows down the speed of printing significantly and also increases the noise level of the machine.

I have had mine for almost 2 years, and it has stopped printing black ink. Obviously time for a replacement, grrr. I never was completely happy with the unit. It constantly goes into a lengthy cleaning cycle before it prints. Very annoying when you want to quickly print off directions when you are late for an appointment. Extremely loud, and an ink hog (though you can buy cheap non brand name replacement cartridges). Print quality when working is near photo quality, and the unit is compact, but I REALLY expected more than 2 years of occasional use. And now I have 10 spare ink cartidges for a printer I need to replace.