Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job.

Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, inkjet (or in the case of Canon, Bubble Jet) printers have come
a long way. Your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.
The Canon i990 has seven, while the less expensive Epson R210 has six.

There are a couple of key advantages to having multiple ink tanks. The most basic is that it reduces printing costs because it's cheaper to replace individual cartridges when they run out, rather than replacing a single tri colour cartridge that may only have run out of one colour but won't work without it. The other important advantage is that it allows more precise printing and truer colours.

At $699 the i990 is not a cheap option and but you get what you pay for.

It comes with PictBridge technology, allowing you to plug your digital camera directly to the printer and print your photographs without needing a PC -- you use your camera
to do your photo editing.

However, having a PC does have a distinct advantage because it gives you much better control over your images and allows you to use the suite of PhotoPrint software that is packaged with the printer.

If you have a good digital camera that produces 4 megapixel images or higher you should be able to produce high quality A4 borderless prints on the i990.

There are two things that stand out about the i990: its speed and its silence. There is
no need to go and make a cup of coffee while your A4 image is printing because it will be complete before you get the kettle on. Canon says it will print a 10 x 8 glossy in about
40 seconds from go to whoa (depending on the processing power of your PC) and we were able to achieve results close to that.

And, apart from the initial muffled clunk as it grabbed the paper, we didn't hear it because the i990 is one of the quietest printers on the market.

To top it off, it produces accurate colours so you can rely on what you get as print being the same as what you see onscreen.

It seems that the cost of a printer is directly related to the speed at which it prints. For example, the i990 costs a bit under three times the price of the R210 but prints three times faster -- but that's where the major difference ends.

The R210 is a six-ink true photo printer that uses Epson's new foamless cartridges which contain a new generation of dye based inks that the company claims are more fade resistant. While we didn't have the time to test the longevity of the prints, one thing is for sure -- they produce a good print comparable with the quality of the more expensive Canon printer. In fact, in some cases the R210 was able to produce better fine detail and tones in dark prints, which just goes to show how little difference there is in print quality between the high- and low-ends of the market.

Although some prints from the R210 have a slight yellowish tinge it is only just noticeable when you compare it with prints of identical photos printed from the i990.

However, it is the difference in print speed where the two are chalk and cheese. While the i990 will push out a glossy 8 x 10 print in a nippy 40 seconds, the R210 is struggling to get close to the 128 second mark that Epson claims it is capable of.

While the i990 comes with a special cartridge feeder for 6 x 4 prints and has PictBridge
for printing direct from a digital camera, the R210 includes a fitting for printing direct to CD or DVD. This means that not only can you store your digital photographs on disc, you can print them onto the surface of the CD.

The software included with the printer is easy and fun to use and the family will thinks
it's great when you send personalised disks.

Although the R210 has neither the capability to print direct from a digital camera or from memory card, it does have an additional USB port at the front so you can plug in your laptop without having to disconnect the printer from your main PC -- a good idea with the increasing popularity of laptops in the home.

While it is probably not fair to do a head-to-head comparison between the two printers considering the difference in price, it's clear that there is very little difference in print quality between these top brands.

In the Canon you are getting faster and quieter operation and better ink economy as well as the convenience of PictBridge, but you need to weigh that against the price difference and decide what's best for you.

If you have lots of photos to print, pay the extra and go for the Canon; but if you just want to do the occasional holiday snap and put personalised labels on your CDs, the Epson is for you.