Some people will pay a month’s salary on a printer assuming it does a good job and offers all the features needed. Other people simply need something that will put out black text documents. For those kinds of basic requirements there’s really no need to pay a lot of money on a device.




If a cheap computer printer is what you’re looking for then there’s no better place to look for it, it seems, than Canon. The manufacturer seems to offer a printer for any budget, type of user or needs. The IP2702 for example costs just $49. This is as much as you would pay for a couple of ink cartridges. In fact the two cartridges this printer uses aren’t considerably more affordable than the printer itself.

Because it was meant to be an affordable and simple printer, the iP2702 features an extremely simple design with a black plastic casing. You won’t find any interesting feature like a memory card slot or USB port on the front. There is also no paper output tray which means you’ll need to have a spacious desk for the paper to fall in once it’s printed. Due to it’s simplicity and lack of features, this cheap computer printer is very easy to set up. As mentioned previously, this Canon printer holds two ink cartridges, one for black and another tri-color one (cyan, magenta and yellow).

Compared to other printers that offer individual color cartridges, for the iP2702 you’ll have to replace the whole cartridge even if one color runs out. The replacement ink s cost around $17 each and will last for somewhere in between 200 and 250 pages. This means that the overall maintenance cost of this printer isn’t the lowest of the bunch. A better option would be to go for the higher capacity version that end up meaning some cost saving.

Printing speed won’t impress you either. Printing in best quality is a relatively bad idea. The iP2702 can manage to produce just about 1 page per minute. Given the really low price of this printer, its future owner could have expected slower printing speeds from the start. But 1 page per minute still seems a bit too much under the expectations. On lower quality mode the printer hits an acceptable 5 pages per minute. This of course adding up the start up time of the printer that’s usually around 10 seconds. Moving on to quality, there’s not a lot to say either. The color accuracy is satisfactory and the detail of the prints is around average.

Printing can be done on a wide variety of media including regular paper or glossy photo paper up to letter size. For a buying price of $49 some people may be surprised that the iP2702 is even working. After all, technology may have evolved but not as much as to almost give people printers for free. Still, this little Canon printer can produce good quality prints, at a reasonable printing speed assuming you’re not using highest quality. This is more than enough for the money spent on it.

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