Pixma iP90

Canon's PIXMA iP90 portable photo printer offers good prints for mobile users. The 1.8kg unit prints better and faster than its predecessor, the Canon i80, and even competes with full-size rivals.

We clocked the iP90 printing text at 6.3 pages per minute (ppm)--faster than many desktop inkjet printers and 10% quicker than the i80. Colour graphics came at a relatively slow 1.4ppm, but our test photo printed in a reasonable 2 minutes and 33 seconds, nearly a minute faster than the i80.

In our quality tests, the iP90 produced text documents with finely formed characters. The print was dark and very readable, although on several occasions we noticed slightly misaligned characters. There was also a moderate amount of banding in our plain-paper line art and colour graphics samples, but overall, the clarity of the prints impressed us. On photo paper, colour and greyscale images looked a little light; and compared with prints from full-size inkjets, the images lacked some contrast, which made them look slightly blurry. That said, the unit produced very crisp photos for a portable printer.

The iP90 comes equipped with a 198gm universal power adapter, but to get the most uptime on your travels, you'll have to spring for the optional battery and charging kit or car power adapter.

The iP90 offers plenty of connectivity options, but lacks the memory card slots found on some portable printers. In addition to a USB port, there's a built-in infrared port (useful with mobile phone cameras), a PictBridge port for compatible cameras, and a Bluetooth option.