Manufacturers often cut corners when trying to lower the prices of their products, but with its iP1600, Canon may have gone over the line by omitting a paper output tray. Still, it's not a fatal flaw, and it certainly doesn't affect the quality of the printer itself. If your color printing needs are modest, you won't find a much better deal.

Set-up is predictably easy, although also predictably, you must supply your own USB cable (around $10 to $20). The iP1600 is lightweight and compact, with an unusual downward-slanting design. To save some space, the paper input tray folds up when not in use. Despite the printer's compact design, the lack of a paper output tray means you must sacrifice desktop space to serve as a paper tray, or else resign yourself to always picking printed pages up off the floor.

The iP1600 supports printing resolutions of up to 600X600 dpi for black-and-white documents, and up to 4,800X1,200 dpi for color documents. It can handle a typical variety of paper sizes and stocks, including letter, legal, credit card, 4X6-inch, 5X7-inch and envelopes.

Output quality is a mixed bag. Text is reasonably sharp for an inkjet, although you may have some trouble with specialty fonts or small font sizes. Fine lines in line art may get a little muddy. Nevertheless, the output quality of photos is above average for a sub-$100 photo printer.

The iP1600 is a little difficult to rate. It doesn't offer much in the way of features, including something as basic as the paper output tray. Output quality is uneven, although the quality of color photos is generally satisfying. It's difficult to quibble when a printer actually costs less than its included ink cartridges.

The iP1600 package includes a power cord, ink tanks and a CD with software, drivers and an electronic user guide. The software bundle includes Easy-PhotoPrint (Windows and Macintosh) for rotating, cropping and editing images; Easy-WebPrint (Windows) for optimizing the printing of web pages; and PhotoRecord (Windows) for creating photo albums.

Note that the $49.99 price is actually the estimated street price, as MSRP data was unavailable.

Pros:  Bargain price, output quality of color photos is very good
Cons:  Output quality of text, color graphics, and monochrome photos is mixed, no paper output tray

Warranty
1 year, limited