Canon S450 Color Bubble Jet Printer

by Canon

Product Details

Product Manual [15.56mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1 x 12.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004UB7C
• Item model number: Q30-3400-US1
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Canon S450 Bubble Jet color printer is an ideal companion for your Mac or PC, providing 1,440 x 720 dpi resolution for black and color printing and up to 10 ppm for black printing and 7 ppm color printing. As part of your home office, the solid and durably built S450 includes easy-to-replace individual ink tanks and a 100-page sheet feeder to support continuous printing, all in a stylishly compact design to make life and work much easier.

The Canon S450 printer ably provides crisp clean back text and color prints. The automatic sheet feeder holds 100 sheets to speed your printing of letters, reports, and fliers. Canon's built-in Drop Modulation Technology enables you to print smooth color gradations on plain paper, artist canvas, banner paper, envelopes, glossy photo cards, glossy photo paper, high-gloss photo film, high-resolution paper, magnet sheets, transparencies, and T-shirt transfers. The economical Canon system of individual ink tanks lets you replace the ink color that runs out rather than the entire cartridge.

With USB and parallel interfaces, connect to any USB-compatible Mac or PC in one step and you're ready to print. The Canon S450 assures you there is no wait to print your drafts, presentations, contracts, and reports. Supported operating systems include Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0, and Mac OS (8.1 or later). The Canon S450 also comes with Canon Photo, OfficeReady CC, American Greetings CreataCard SE, PrintMaster SE, and TextBridge Pro software. It is backed by a one-year limited warranty on parts and labor. --Barbara Price

From Winmag®

Canon's S450 Color Bubble Jet Printer is a $149 printer that, while not as inexpensive as the $89 Epson Stylus Color 670, matches the Epson in print quality and beats it hands down on speed.

Lift the front cover and you'll install a black print head and a 3-color print head (which contains convenient individual ink tanks for cyan, yellow, and magenta). You can remove the black print head and replace it with a photo print head (which uses individual photo-black, -cyan, -magenta ink tanks). Canon's ThinkTank System lets you monitor the ink levels using the status monitor, which you can set to pop up with every job, or you can use the Properties dialog box of the printer itself. Installing the print heads, however, was a minor exercise in frustration -- they just didn't seem to seat properly right away, despite fiddling with them for a couple of minutes. Replacing the individual ink tanks is easy, however.

Installation on the whole is easy, until you get to the "Before you can print you must align the print heads" directions in the Quick Start Guide. It's here that the instructions get dicey because the Quick Start Guide refers you to "the Maintenance tab" of a dialog box but doesn't tell you where it is (first-time users need to know that it's in the driver's Properties menus). Experienced users would probably figure this out.

Canon claims the printer can produce 10 pages per minute in black (at 1440 x 720 with specialty media) and 7ppm in color (at 720 x 720 using the optional Photo ink). In our 20-page text document, the S450 spit out 7.64ppm in draft mode with type that's pleasingly darker than many of its competitors. For "normal" output, the printer produced the text document at the rate of 5.45ppm. A word of warning: the ink goes on heavy, and it's possible to smear it if you touch the document immediately upon its arrival in the output tray. The driver offers no "delay" setting to add time between pages. Fortunately, the ink on a page isn't smeared by the arrival of the next page on top of it.

A 6 x 7.5 inches color photo took 4 minutes and 7 seconds to print using Photo mode and selecting "High Resolution Paper." When I used the Photo cartridge and chose Super Photo mode, the time inched up to 4:33. Results on Canon photo glossy paper were very good, though I preferred to set the driver to lighten the printed image.

Paper handling is standard for this printer. The input tray can hold up to 100 sheets of letter or legal-sized paper (up to 38 pound bond), and it uses a near straight paper path that allows it to handle specialty stock. The input tray can hold up to 6 sheets of banner paper (which measures 9.5 x 23"). There is no special envelope feeder.

The printer driver offers a host of options, from half-tone control and changing color intensity to applying output optimizers. You can add monochrome special effects (like Sepia tones or printing a photo to look like an illustration), too. Best of all, the driver will save your collective choices into a custom-named setting. I especially liked being able to display the driver-enabled pop-up window that shows the printer's progress and ink levels. It's one of those reassuring features that is so much more informative (and accurate) than the printer status window built in to Windows. You can print watermarks, scale the printed document up or down in one percent increments, and select 2- or 4-up printing.

You can use Canon's handy IS-32 scanner cartridge ($69) in place of a print head, transforming your printer into a color sheet-fed scanner.

Not content to simply ship a good printer, Canon loads the installation CD with a wide array of software, from Canon Photo (for photo editing), Textbridge Pro (for OCR tasks), PrintMaster CE, and American Greetings' CreataCard SE.

The S450 includes both a USB and parallel port interface. The printer measures 12.3 x 17.9 x 6.8 inches (HWD) and weighs in at 9.5 pounds. Canon backs it with a one-year limited warranty.

If you're on a tight budget, the Epson Stylus Color 670 is your best choice. If speed is more important, the Canon S450, at a modest $149, is for you. That's why it joins the WinList.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great printer for the price!!!, September 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon S450 Color Bubble Jet Printer (Office Product)

I bought the Canon S450 because I wanted a step up from the low-end HP printer that came free with my computer. If you are fed up with HP printers, are looking for something that produces good quality output, and don't want to spend a lot of money, this is the printer for you. I had so many problems with ink trails on the HPs I've owned the last few years that I gave up on the HP brand completely. That is one of the big selling points of this printer. I have used it for almost 6 months months now and not once have I had to clean the print heads, even when it goes a few weeks between uses. CNet has rated this printer one of the lowest in operating costs, mostly due to the fact that you can replace each color cartridge individually. (They don't soak you on the cartridges either - some online auctions have them for as little as $6 apiece). I am very happy with both the black and color quality of this printer. I've used it for documents as well as photos and CD labels, and it does a great job.

For the casual user who wants a decent printer that doesn't require a fortune in upkeep or hours of cleaning just to get a good copy, this is definitely the one.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the canon s450!!!!, August 15, 2000

By 

Mike A. Richardson "Dj Teknikscian" (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Canon S450 Color Bubble Jet Printer (Office Product)

i bought this item about 2 days ago... and its the best printer i have ever had... combined with the quality of canon and the ease of individual ink tanks this printer is by far one of the best for its price range...

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth the cost, August 4, 2001

By 

Michael Smith (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Canon S450 Color Bubble Jet Printer (Office Product)

This is a very good printer. I am happy with it, it hasn't failed me yet. In comparison to my previous BJC-6000, it is basically the same model with a few minor differences. The paper tray is now removable and is improved, and on the down side the normal print mode is a bit slower. However, if you bring down the quality level down one notch, their isn't any noticable difference in text and minimal difference for graphics and it prints twice as fast. (You can take it down even one more for draft mode.)

I am using a PC with the parallel connection and have had no problems whatsoever. I have not tried the USB interface (although I could, I just don't want to buy a hub.) I have no opinion on mac usage either. However, if you looking for a mac printer, you should probably look at something else (like an Epson, many like these for macs) as I have heard bad things about this printer on macs.

The separate cartridges are great. And this printer is definitely cost-effective. The black only costs about $12 to fill, while colors about $10 a piece (C, M, and Y). I don't recommend the photo cartridge, it makes little difference but it does give more colors for the printer to pick from. You don't have to replace the cartridge every time for any color, just the ink tank. Do use a high quality paper, though. The cartridges need to be replaced only about once a year, and they include tanks when purchased. The price of the cartridges (one black, one color, one photo) are about the same as other brands of printers, and you don't have to replace them very often.

If you don't want a low end printer but you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a printer, this will do the trick for you. Text quality is much like more expensive inkjets, and picture quality will be fine for any casual user.