The Canon Pixma mini320 is a stocky photo printer featuring a special scroll wheel that gain printing photos an easy , suave experience . Equipped with a carrying grip and a bright LCD screen , the mini320 is very similar in coming into court to its forerunner , the Canon Pixma mini260 ( ) . unluckily , the mini320 is not much of an improvement over its forerunner . Still miss is the selection to print in bleak and white . And while the mini320 ’s photographic print quality is very pleasing , faint scratches still appear on print , presumably from the printer ’s roller — an publication I also regain in the mini260 . As it is , the mini320 is an telling machine , but the lack of improvement over the previous example is disappointing .
The mini320 sports an attractive whitened and facile casing , remindful of the iPod . Selecting and redaction photos is easy using the mini320 ’s gyre wheel . However , after you apply your edits , the printer does n’t offer you the option to preview your emended double before printing it . The lack of a preview mode means you ’ll probably be using a lot of ink to get your photo to bet just right . That ’s irritating .
you may link up the mini320 to your Mac , but that would somewhat vote out the purpose of purchasing a compact photo printer . I recommend impression picture direct from your memory poster . The mini320 supports a wide range of a function of memory card , let in Secure Digital card , MultiMediaCard , CompactFlash , Microdrive , Memory Stick , and others . If your photo card is n’t corroborate , you ’ll either have to connect your photographic camera directly to the printer via USB or purchase a scorecard adapter .
For $ 30 , canyon put up a compounding inner circle hold 100 sheets of Photo Paper Glossy and one ink cartridge , making the cost per photographic print 30 cent . Last year , Canon offer the same combining pack for the mini260 , but for $ 28 , meaning that the cost per mark went up 2 cents . This may seem like an insignificant increase , but at 30 cents per mark , the mini320 is the most expensive to apply of all the compendious photo printers I reviewed .
The mini320 is capable of printing pic as large as 5 by 7 inches . You ’ll plausibly be printing standard 4 - by-6 in photo most often with the mini320 , but print on declamatory sizes could come in handy when print more scenic photos .
The mini320 ’s print timber is impressive : coloring come along accurate , with excellent shadow detail . But under shining light , I could see very faint scratches on photograph printed with the mini320 . These scratches are negligible , but I ’m surprised Canon did n’t regenerate this issue since it was establish on the mini260 .
As for speed , the mini320 turned in median results . The pressman direct 1 minute and 17 second to print a single 4 - by-6 inch photograph . By way of comparison , our Top Product in the compendious photo printer category , the Epson PictureMate Zoom , take on 42 second to complete the same task .
jury tests
Scale = Superior , Very Good , Good , Fair , Poor
timed trials
Scale = hour : Seconds
How we tested : We printed all psychometric test files from a SanDisk CompactFlash circuit board inserted in the pressman . We recorded the sentence it took to print a 4 - by-6 - column inch photo and the time it get hold of to print five 4 - by-6 - inch photos . A panel of expert essay sample distribution of the pressman ’s end product to place its photographic print quality as Superior , Very salutary , Good , Fair , or Poor in comparison to the output of retiring compendious photograph printer we ’ve tested.—Macworld science laboratory testing by Brian Chen
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Macworld’s buying advice
Though the mini320 ’s prints are attractive and the gyre - wheel user interface is fun to practice , the printing machine is n’t a very wise investment yield its increased monetary value per print . pit against the PictureMate Zoom , which prints superior picture at faster speeds for a gimcrack price per photographic print , the mini320 almost does n’t stand a chance .
[ Brian Chen isMacworld ’s assistant editor . ]