Canon BJC-50 Color Bubble Jet Printer

Average customer rating: 4.0

A convenient, small printer, but with bothersome quirks.
Canon BJC-50
Beware
Infrared works well with Windows ME
I like this product.

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Canon BJC-50 Color Bubble Jet Printer

Manufacturer: Canon Computer Systems
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B00000JH71

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Product Description

The Canon BJC-50 is a lightweight, portable printer with print quality equal to their inkjet printers. The BJC-50 offers two convenient features, especially for portable printing. For taking your computing on the road, the BJC-50 comes with a battery. It also has a wireless IrDA interface for cable-free printing. The Canon BJC-50 comes with TrueType fonts, and resident bitmap fonts. It's capable of printing envelopes and transparencies, and with the optional auto sheet feeder, it has desktop printing capacity. As with other Canon products, the BJC-50 has an optional Color Image Scanner Cartridge that quickly converts the printer into a desktop scanner. Simply insert the cartridge into its slot and the BJC-50 becomes a sheetfeed scanner in just minutes.

Amazon.com Review

Need a printer while you're on the road? Take the Canon BJC-50 with you. This battery-powered, compact, color bubble-jet printer makes a great traveling companion for your notebook computer.

Setting up the BJC-50 was easy. We just followed the Quick Start Guide to install the lithium-ion battery and ink cartridge and to connect the AC adapter and printer cable. We then turned on our computer and followed the Windows setup wizard for setting up a new plug-and-play printer.

In our test of the BJC-50, we printed several color, black-and-white, draft-quality, and letter-quality samples. The samples included graphics, large and small letters, and a variety of color shades. Draft-quality printing was fast but attractive. Letter quality demonstrated modest improvements in character quality, and the printing was reasonably clear and sharp. Color shades were accurate, if not bold. There was some ink "bleeding" on ordinary uncoated paper, and even a discrete glance betrayed the BJC-50's bubble-jet origins--all as you would expect in a small bubble-jet printer.

At only 2.1 pounds the BJC-50 is exceptionally lightweight; its case is slim, attractive, and very compact--easy to tuck away in a backpack or briefcase. If you need color printing on the go, the Canon BJC-50 is a solid choice.

Pros: <UL> <LI>Compact and lightweight <LI>Portable, battery-powered </UL> Cons: <UL> <LI>Requires switching between color and black cartridges <LI>Single-sheet feed (feeder optional) </UL>

Customer Reviews:

A convenient, small printer, but with bothersome quirks........2007-02-22

I purchased this printer after a very bad experience when I traveled away from home and needed to print out a simple document. So I had my laptop and I saw those ads about a business that offers to be your office away from home. Well, I could not get the document printed out. So I did my research and purchased the BJC-50 since it was the smallest portable printer available at the time (the two Canons and a HP version). My BJC-50 is about seven years old and still works. It worked well with my laptop and Windows 98 and now with my laptops using Windows XP.

PROS:
The BJC-50 is the smallest available travel printer for printing documents and prints at a relatively acceptable speed.

The BJC-50 printer includes a LiON battery which makes for truly portable printing. I'm amazed how long a charge lasts and the battery pack is inside a battery compartment in the printer (not externally like the HP Deskjet 460 series). Well, the LiON battery is piggy back attached to the HP 460. I'm guessing that HP recommends removing the battery before traveling. You don't need to do that with the BJC-50. Just remember to slide the power lock switch on the right side of the BJC-50 to prevent the printer from accidentally turning on when traveling.

CONS:
The REALLY BAD part of this printer is that the ink cartridges, once opened, do not last very long. The color cartridges dry out faster than the black cartridges. And the ink cartridges do not provide feedback to indicate the amount of ink remaining in each cartridge.

The printer is relatively loud when it is printing.

You need to be careful when feeding the paper otherwise the printer ejects the paper.

I cannot get the IS-12 Scanner Cartridge in the BJC-50 printer to communicate with the IS application under Windows XP even though Canon's web site and the Readme file says it is supported (there is a configuration issue somewhere). This is more effort than its worth for now.

SUMMARY: This is one temperamental printer. While it provides convenient printing on the go, I think it takes more effort than it should just to get something printed.

I'm purchasing a HP Deskjet 460WF. I'll let you know how I like it soon.

Canon BJC-50.......2002-02-27

Excellent printer...everything that I thought it would be . Works wells all the time. Works wells with Windows XP and downloaded driver from Canon site.

Beware.......2001-08-06

I purchased the Canon BJC-50 in August of 1998. It has taken at least three hours to three days of effort to get it to work for each time that I have occasionally used it. I have used it mainly for color printing, and also for scanning with the optional scanning cartridge. It is particularly troublesome when switching from scan to print functions. It is quite noisy. I can not depend on it to function when I need it. It usually works eventually, but only after many trial and error attempts. Email technical support usually does not provide a quick solution. There have been no quick solutions. There have only been time consuming, painstaking encounters with this machine.

Infrared works well with Windows ME.......2001-01-21

Even though it said that the infrared wireless printing only works with Windows 95, I found that it worked just as well with Windows ME installed in my laptop.

Two great benefits of the BJ-50: 1. Infrared wireless printing (if your laptop supports it) 2. There is battery in the printer, so you don't have to connect it to an electrical outlet to print! Both features are VERY convenient.

Print quality is decent, but I can't comment on ink life since I have just begun to use the printer.

I like this product........2000-07-26

"Excellent" That's all I can say...

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