Absolute Gadget

Review: Canon Pixma MP620 multifunction printer

Written by Rene Millman Tuesday, 09 December 2008 14:49

This new printer from Canon is sat firmly in the middle of its Pixma range and purports to scan, copy and print. Heck, there's even a card reader and a PictBridge port. Break out the champagne.

The printer is fairly small in stature and isn't quite the behemoth its cousin, the Pixma MX7600 is. But then again this printer hasn't got a fax machine built-in. The aluminium look complements most modern looking computers, such as the shiny new AppleiMac of a Sony Vaio.

Setting up is an OK affair. The printer allows for connection via USB, Ethernet and wireless. Luckily unlike the Brother HL-2170W laser printer, setting up wireless printing isn't as torturous. Simply set up a wireless network within XP or Vista with the same details as you wireless router, save that info to a flash disc and stick the flash disc in the printer'sUSB slot and you're done.

You can also configure Ethernet or a wireless connection by first connecting the printer via USB to a computer and running Canon's configuration utility. One thing to note is that if left on for a while, the printer seems to switch off wireless and you have to go back into the menu to reactivate it.

{mospagebreak}In use, the printer's display folds down when not needed and beneath it are some buttons and a jog wheel that brings up various menu options. The menu screen is clear and bright and easy to use.

The print tray is sadly quite small so you end up having to refill the tray a lot which can be annoying. Suffice to say, printing is generally quiet in operation.

Canon uses five separate ink cartridges in the MP620: cyan, magenta, yellow and black cartridges for colour, and a separate, high-capacity black cartridge for mono. Printing in colour and black and white is good, although with some colour print outs on paper the image seems slightly faded. That said, it prints out quite quickly.

{mospagebreak}Increasing the print quality improves the situation but at the expense of extra printing time and more ink used. Mono prints were sharp and crisp with no overspill on letters.

Scanning was quick in use and very quiet. It can scam up to 2400dpi in quality and scanned a sheet of A4 at 150dpi in around eight seconds, 300dpi in 15 seconds and 600dpi in 49 seconds. The scanner showed reasonably low levels of paper grain and noise.

Overall, a very good printer that makes wireless printing possible and not too infuriating. It looks good, we were happy with the prints we got from it when on a higher quality print setting. Wireless works but some foibles of the printer mean that you have to reset it to make it work

Rating: 8/10