There’s a good range of software and excellent image quality, but you pay a lot for the durability and ADF.

Running costs are high, but with a high resolution and superb performance, it’s a groundbreaking product.

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.

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.

The Ixus 60 delivers superb image quality and is beautifully designed and built.

Successor to the ubiquitous 350D, Canon's affordable yet powerful 400D D-SLR is a serious weapon whether an amateur or pro.

Canon's reign over the compact digital camera market looks set to continue with this offering.

A high end DVD-based camcorder for quick and clean shooting.

Cheap, sexy, slim and fully-featured. A dream for ultra-portable photography.

High performance with a matching price tag.

Anyone who used the IXUS 40 mightwonder how Canon could possiblyimprove on it, but that’s precisely whatit has done.

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.

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.

Along with the Sony Cyber-shot P-93, the Canon Powershot A95 is the big lad of this roundup with a pretty decent 5-megapixel CCD. The rest vary from 3-4-megapixel. While this does give the Canon a bit of an edge over the competition in terms of resolution and functionality, it's the camera's other attributes that cemented this unit in the top three.

An A4 paper and folder kit for printing out your digital photos in a format that can easily be shared and stored for years. It's essentially a pack of 10 sheets of double-sided photo paper, a hard book and folder clips.

Canon typically puts out a good digital video camera and for a while had the market fairly well sown up. However, there is now plenty of competition and Canon can no longer just rely on its reputation to keep it at the top. The MVX250i is a mid range camera designed for average users who want something more than the bare basics. Its 860,000 pixel (effective) CCD provides a good quality picture in most cases, including in night mode. However, it can be slow to find a good colour balance.

Whereas a couple of years ago Canon might have described this as a mini camcorder, it now describes it as a compact multimedia DV camera. Certainly by comparison with the others in this month's labs it's not mini, however it does manage to pack a lot of features into a relatively small package. It is an upright camera rather than the longer, squatter shape of the MVX250i and weighs 43 grams less than its bigger but cheaper brother.

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.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what the advantages of eight megapixels (MP) were over five, I would have said very few. However, that was before I discovered the fun factor in being able to play with an image that is up to 115cm by just over 86cm (72dpi).

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.