Inkjet printers (a generic term - Canon refers to its products specifically as Bubble Jet printers) have so far failed to make much of an impression in the business colour printing market. The majority of customers prefer the perceived reliability and performance of colour lasers or other page printers. But the inkjet manufacturers aren't resting on their laurels and this new model from Canon has a lot going for it.

For a start there's its speed. Quoted as having a peak throughput of 17PPM (pages per minute) for mono printing and up to 12PPM for colour, the figures certainly look impressive. The top resolution of 2400 x 1200 dpi, using 5-picolitre ink drops, is also appealing. And to top it all off there are the separate ink cartridges - useful if you have to print 300 copies of a predominantly blue-coloured presentation and don't want to replace all the ink colours at once.

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So much for the stats, but what about the reality? For a start, the Bubble Jet S630 is about as robust as inkjet printers get. This isn't saying much, of course, but the detachable paper trays are made of a springy plastic that should take a few knocks and there are no obvious flaps to break off. Mains power, via a supplied two-pin cable, plugs into the back and there are two data interfaces; the conventional parallel connection and a USB input (optional network adapters are available). Two buttons - one for power, the other for page feed - are on the top alongside the single LED that flashes during activity.

In use, the first thing we noticed is that the printer is exceptionally quiet. The paper feed mechanism and the movement of the ink heads seems to have been designed to whisper rather than clank, which is nice in a busy office. As for the speed, the performance figures should (as always with printers) be taken with a pinch of salt. Printing a two-page text and business graphics document in standard quality mode took under 30 seconds in total, while a full page, full colour photo in high quality mode took 1 minute 48 seconds on plain paper and 2 minutes 46 seconds on the high-resolution paper (professional quality photo paper is also available). These times may not sound stunningly fast, but in fact they're good going for an inkjet printer.

As with most printers today, the driver support is excellent. The user gets full feedback on the operating status of the printer, plus numerous options for adjusting print quality, paper size, image enhancement and so on. There are also maintenance tools for head cleaning and head alignment. Your mileage will vary, but Canon claims that you'll get between 300 and 400 pages per ink refill at 5% page coverage.

This may not yet be the ideal business printing machine, but it's a step in the right direction. The separate ink cartridges should help reduce cost of ownership (possibly at the expense of extra maintenance time) and the print performance and quality are both good. For busy offices, a colour laser printer is still likely to be the more practical option in terms of maintenance costs and page throughput. But for smaller workgroups, the S630 is certainly worth consideration.