Despite its low price tag, the four-colour Pixma iP2000 from Canon boasts several features that are normally found on more expensive printers; speed, direct printing support, dual input trays and good graphics printing.

But it's not all good news. The colour cartridge, as in most low cost printers, is a tri-colour affair, so once one colour runs out you have to replace the cartridge - and there is no ink level indicator built into the print-heads.

Resolutions are 600 x 600dpi (dots per inch) for mono and 4,800 x 1,200dpi for colour. The Pixma range of printers uses a new print-head technology developed by Canon. Named FINE (Full-Photolithography InkJet Nozzle Engineering), it uses micro nozzles to eject tiny droplets of ink (which are only two picolitres in size) which make up the printed images.

Surprisingly for a printer in this price bracket, the Pixma iP2000 is a quick performer. Under test conditions the printer managed an engine speed of 17 pages per minute, not far off of Canon's quoted 20ppm maximum (Canon quotes 14ppm for colour). When it came to printing out A4 pages of text, it managed 7ppm, which is fast for a printer in this price bracket. Mixed pages of text and graphics came out at just over 3.5ppm, while an A4 colour photo was printed in a very reasonable 63 seconds.

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In addition to its speed, the quality of the output - especially graphics - puts some of its bigger siblings to shame, even with just two ink cartridges, with a good level of detail and contrast. However, printed text doesn't stand up so well, nor do photo prints, but then at this price the fact that it can do a reasonable job of any type of image is quite remarkable.

Setting up the Pixma iP2000 is quick and easy, and the fact the printer has two input trays - one at the top of the printer and a plastic tray at the front - means that you don't have to swap out paper when switching from printing text to printing photos. The main USB port is on the right-hand side of the printer, while a second USB port on the front allows you to print from any Canon or PictBridge-compatible camera without the switching on your PC.

The printer comes with a bundle of user-friendly utilities; PhotoRecord for making photo albums, Easy-PhotoPrint which helps with borderless prints and red eye correction, and Easy-WebPrint which helps print Web pages without the annoying cutting off of the edges that often happens.

For those on a tight budget the Canon Pixma iP2000 is an ideal choice for a basic all-round printer, offering good print speed and a good set of features. Check the price of replacement ink cartridges before you buy, though, as this is where printer companies make a lot of their profit.