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General Performance
Warm-Up (8.02)
We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these high scores for warm-up time on Canon inkjet printers. This latest generation, of which the mini320 is a part, all feature Canon’s new quick start feature, which reduces start-up times from at least 25 seconds (with the MP600) to a few seconds. In the mini320’s case, this is only 5 seconds. This makes it competitive with HP’s compact photo printers and the HiTi 731PS.
Power Usage (8.65)
Canon printers usually do very well in our power tests. We use a watt meter to measure the power used in various printing modes, including off, idle, ready, and printing. The mini320 only scored lower than the HP Photosmart A440 compact photo inkjet printer. However, it used the same amount of power in ready mode (3 watts), and it was able to drop that by one watt in idle/power save mode, which is nonexistent on the A440. It used just a few more watts in printing and self-cleaning modes—11 watts and 14 watts, respectively. (Inkjets always score better than dye sublimation printers on power usage because dye subs need to warm up the heating element to transfer the dry ink to the paper, and they use a lot of energy to maintain that and power the roller.)
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Power Usage (watts)
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Off
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Idle
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Ready
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Printing
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Self-Cleaning
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HP Photosmart A440
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0
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3
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3
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8
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12
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Canon Pixma mini320
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0
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2
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3
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11
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14
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Epson PictureMate Snap
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0
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4
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4
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12
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12
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Canon Selphy ES1*
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0
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3
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3
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32
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n/a
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HiTi S400 Dazzle*
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0
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5
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5
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43.5
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n/a
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Canon Selphy CP730*
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0
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3
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3
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56
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n/a
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Sony PictureStation FP90*
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0
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4
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4
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55
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n/a
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* Dye sublimation printers
Photo Speed / Timing (4.60)
The mini320 printed pretty quickly, scoring near the top of the rapidly growing group of compact photo printers that have graced our labs. We base our score on printing speeds from a PC and from a memory card. Of the nine printers we’ve tested, only three achieved an overall speed score greater than the mini320, as can be seen in the table below.
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Compact Photo Printer 4x6 Photo Print Speeds in Pages per Minute
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From Computer
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From CompactFlash
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Printer
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Small file
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Large file
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Small file
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Large file
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Sony PictureStation FP90*
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1.18
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1.06
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1.36
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1.12
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Epson PictureMate Snap
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1.40
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1.40
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1.36
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0.10
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Canon Selphy CP730*
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0.83
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0.81
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0.98
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1.00
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Canon Pixma mini320
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0.85
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0.80
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0.75
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0.75
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HiTi S400 Dazzle*
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0.79
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0.81
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0.81
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n/a
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Canon Selphy ES1*
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0.74
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0.74
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0.81
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n/a
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Panasonic FX-PX20*
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0.73
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0.57
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0.56
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0.48
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HP Photosmart A440
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0.61
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0.60
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n/a
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n/a
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* Dye sublimation printers
We test printing speeds with two file sizes—one 6-megabyte (mb) jpeg and one 19-mb jpeg. Four-by-six-inch photos printed from these two file sizes via a PC took 70 seconds and 75 seconds, respectively. Prints from a CompactFlash memory card took slightly longer, at 81 seconds for both file sizes. The difference between file sizes was exaggerated when printing in the 5x7-inch size, with the smaller jpegs taking 91 seconds to print and the larger jpegs taking 135 seconds from a PC. Memory card times were 10 seconds longer and a few seconds shorter for small and large files, respectively.
The Sony FP90, a dye sublimation printer, was much faster overall. Prints from a PC took 51 seconds and 56 seconds from small and large files, respectively. Prints from memory cards were even faster, at 44 seconds for small files and 53 seconds for large files.
The Epson PictureMate Snap was the fastest compact inkjet printer we’ve found so far, when it comes to prints from PCs—just 43 seconds for small and large files. Printing small files from memory cards took the same amount of time, but large files were problematic, taking several minutes, which dragged the printer’s score down.
Color Accuracy (3.06)
The Canon mini320 did pretty well for itself in our color accuracy test, garnering a Delta E mean error of only 7.02. This was better than all other compact photo printers except for the high-scoring Epson PM 240 (Snap), which, outside of the two high-end wide-format printers we’ve tested, scored the best of any printer tested, at 5.04 error. The new HP Photosmart A626 compact inkjet printer scored slightly worse, with an error value of 8.07.
We derive these scores by comparing the printer’s reproduction of a standard chart, the X-Rite Colorchecker chart, which is composed of 24 squares of oft-photographed colors. We then compare the color values used to create the idealized chart with the values we read from the printed version using X-Rite’s EyeOne spectrophotometer. The average error is then computed into a score.
The greatest errors occurred on the blue and green side of the spectrum, with cyan straying furthest of any color from the ideal value. We’ve seen this same pattern of error in other Canon printers as well as those from other manufacturers. Blue and green colors are often manipulated in cameras and printers to give a more subjective view of what the manufacturers think people like to see in their skies and foliage. Skin values had moderately low error values, meaning these colors would reproduce reasonably well. We’d like to see better performance with these tones especially.
Reproduction of all colors was improved markedly by custom profiling the mini320, even bringing the blues and greens down to very low error values between 1 and 3. However, we base our score on the average error calculated using the stock profile included with the printer. It’s encouraging that this small, single-cartridge printer can perform so well when custom profiled.
Color Gamut (4.72)
All printers have a range of colors that they can produce, and it’s this spectrum of colors that partially determines the resulting quality of the prints. We test a printer’s color gamut by viewing the gamut using Gamutvision, a software program developed by Norman Koren. The program outputs a 3-D visualization of the printer’s profile as it compares to known color spaces, such as sRGB and Adobe RGB. This chart is show below.
We used Canon’s Photo Paper Pro profile (the paper we performed all of our tests on) with the highest quality setting and compared it with the Adobe RGB color space. The Canon mini320 was able to reproduce 55 percent of the Adobe color space, for a total of 674,754 colors. This was far better than any of the other compact photo printers tested in Printerinfo’s labs. Those that came closest, the Epson PictureMate Snap inkjet printer and the two recently reviewed Hi-Touch Imaging dye sub printers, the S400 Dazzle and the 731PS, didn’t even break the 50th percentile.
The mini320 also reproduces a wider color gamut than all of the AIO photo printers we’ve tested, and scored just slightly less than the $500 Canon Pro9000 and similarly to the $50 Canon iP1800.
Dmax (6.04)
One of the ways commercial printers measure the quality of a print and a printer is by measuring the density of the inks laid on the paper. The resulting density values fall within a range starting at dmin, usually paper white, and dmax, the densest printable black. Dmax is a good benchmark for determining the richness of the tones and the print itself. It’s not a guarantee of the overall quality of black-and-white tone reproduction, but it’s a good start.
The mini320 offered up a surprisingly dense black, with a value of 2.23. Once again, the Sony FP90 and the Epson PM240 were the only two compact printers to beat it out, with a 2.30 and 2.44 dmax value, respectively. Values this high are usually only attained by high-end, pro photo printers with large ink sets of 8, 9, 10, or more inks.
That’s what makes the mini320’s dmax score so incredible. This printer uses only a single cartridge, which often means reduced ink quality. For example, the HP Photosmart A440, a single-cartridge compact printer, was only able to print a pathetic 1.72 dmax value. This truly showed in the A440’s prints, which were washed-out looking and generally unimpressive.
Monochrome (6.50)
Our test black-and-white print came out very nicely from the mini320. It indeed does show very rich shadows and black tones, but it also retained a good dynamic range, or range of gray tones. Light tones showed good detail and were not blown out. As is usually the case with Canon inks, contrast was greater than with Epson’s inksets, even the compact PictureMate series printers. That said, the mini320 produced a very nice black-and-white print from a single-cartridge printer.
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