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, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.

Portability has been talked about a lot recently, and people are starting to get used to the fact that their printer can be just as portable as the rest of their equipment. Canon has been offering portable laptop printers for several years and selling just enough of them to persevere, however, with the digital camera boom they are starting to come into their own.

Canon's S820 has persistently fought off numerous challengers and remains one of the best photo printers on the market.

Fast, great quality prints at a decent price – the only real competition for the other Canon

Canon continues the good work and delivers another winner with the MP610.

Canon's new 600i series of digital video cameras doesn't offer any major changes to the 500i series, just a continuing improvement in quality and a few nice extras. The cameras still look the same and are just as easy to use, but the new top of the range 650i is about as good as you are going to get in its price range.

Having set itself as a stalwart in slimline, ultra-cheap flatbed scanners, Canon is moving into the world of scanners for the serious photographer.

The attractive looks are undermined by average image quality, although it remains good value.

Finishing a point above average overall, Canon's PIXMA iP5000 was unlucky to miss out on our coveted recommended award, pipped at the finishing line by Epson's PictureMate small format printer. Canon's five individual ink cartridges is a great system that allows you to replace only the inks you need without needing to replace a whole colour cartridge as is the case with the HP PhotoSmart 8150 printer.

Well-equipped and quite quick, but the quality is patchy

A brilliant performer, particularly in terms of photo image quality. It’s superb value, too.

Capable of reproducing good photos, but it’s slow, a bit expensive to run and has a poor scanner.

The MP500 is a great all-rounder. It’s capable of excellent print quality at high speeds, plus CD printing, has an automatic duplex module and a tempting price.

It doesn't seem likely that one device could be all things to all people, but the Canon PIXMA MP780 is the closest thing we've seen yet. It has a feature set that would leave few wanting, and is capable of professional results. Not only that, but this is by far the quickest inkjet in this roundup.

Large form factored and decked out in buttons, this unit features the incredibly easy to use Canon Toolbox 4.1 software

Another scanner to share the same software as the LiDE 20, Canon's 3000F boasts a jumbo sized Z-hinge for scanning of books and large bound documents helping to evenly light image scanning – great for students and perfect in conjunction with the quality results gained from the included OCR scanning software.

The Canon LiDE 20 strikes a balance between quality and price. The scanner is well designed, with Z-hinges combined and the space-saving ability to stand upright.

The scanner is the only minor weakness in an otherwise near perfect home all-in-one

One of the fastest and best-quality printers on show. The scanner isn’t perfect and there aren’t as many features as the best here, but the MP170 is hard to beat for value.