Canon Pixma MP620 All-In-One InkJet Printer

The Ms picked up a one-day contract job not long ago, her first income since moving back to Texas and - more importantly - exposure to a potentially huge market that, sadly, doesn't pay particularly well (after figuring up her supply and travel expenses, I estimate that instead of earning something for that job, she lost money... but that's not the point). One expense I didn't bother to include was the new printer - a Canon PIXMA MP620 - she decided we needed. OK, I had to agree: our four year-old Dell 720 is wired to the desktop computer at the other end of the house from where she's set up her work area, and the accursed AT&T Uverse wireless router that forms the backbone of our network doesn't reach into the room (too many walls and shelves full of books in the way). Besides, she also wanted a new scanner (also wired to the desktop) and a copier (down the street at Kinko's). Let's just say we decided to be patriotic and stimulate the economy a bit. Anyway, the multifunction printer arrived at the house within a few days, and yours truly set it up. Now, we get to live with it...

What a Canon PIXMA MP620 Printer does:

This is a multipurpose device, hence the "MP" in its model number. The MP620:


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Prints in color or B/W on plain paper, one-sided or duplex

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Prints in color or B/W on photo paper

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Scans color or B/W documents to a computer or a flash drive

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Copies color or B/W documents (including books)

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Connects to your Windows or Apple computer or home network wirelessly (802.11b/g), via Ethernet, or via USB cable (included)

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Prints photos and other documents from the wired or networked computer(s) and from more than a dozen flash devices (I've only used SD so far myself)

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Prints photos directly from camera or cell phone with appropriate cable or optional Bluetooth interface

System Requirements for a Canon PIXMA MP620 printer:

Windows Vista
Windows XP SP2
Windows 2000 pro SP4
Mac OSX 10.3.9 to 10.5
CD-ROM player
500MB disk space for all software (Windows)

Setting up the Canon PIXMA MP620 printer:

Since the MP620 includes a full-screen scanner / copier platen, the device's footprint is necessarily larger than the simple ink-jet printers we've used in the past. It's about 18 inches wide by 15 inches deep, and stands a little under 7 inches tall - somewhat larger in all directions than a case of aluminum cans. Letter-size paper feeds from a drawer that slides out from the front; photo paper and other sizes (envelopes, etc) feed from a tray that flips out from the top rear. The output is discharged into a fold-down tray at the front. Clearly, you need extra room for I/O.  The power cable and USB cable (if used) plug in at the rear, though the slots for memory chips are at the front.

Before the printer can be set up for wired or wireless use (or computer-free use, in the case of printers used only from memory cards), it has to be unpacked and the print head and five ink tanks (included) installed. This took me perhaps fifteen minutes because of all the protective tape and other packaging. Then you have to install the software and drivers on any computer that'll be using the printer (networked or standalone). After that comes network setup.

Initial network setup is carried out following the provided large-format booklet and step-by-step guide. Even if using wireless LAN capability, initial setup must be performed using a USB cable; but setup can be completed in one place and the printer then moved to its "home." To connect to a wireless network, you'll also need your wireless key (duh). Wireless setup involves "handshaking" with the network and other identification procedures, so it's rather slow - it took fifteen minutes at least, most of which was waiting for router and printer to exchange phone numbers and buy each other beers. Once that's done, you're good to go. From opening the box to printing a first test page took about 90 minutes, a fair chunk of which was spent cursing AT&T for hiding the WEP key on the router so well... All in all, it's a process that shouldn't tax anyone who can follow simple software installation directions or connect a laptop to a wireless network.

Included software (on CD-ROM):

On-screen manual: operational help, installation instructions, and troubleshooting (there is no hard-copy manual supplied)
Drivers for all supported operating systems
MP Navigator EX:  proprietary software that includes scanner and OCR executables, One-Click scanning to the computer where you're running
Easy Photo-Print EX: yet another picture library management package (what's that give me - ‘leventy-four?)
My Printer: manage printer settings and maintenance, run troubleshooting product, and view printer status (including ink levels)
Canon Solution Menu: a front end for all the software plus a couple of on-line links.

None of the software is absolutely necessary. Easy Photo-Print and My Printer duplicate programs already included in the Windows (and, I'm sure, Mac) OS installs. The MP Navigator allows you to scan from your computer, so it's the most useful - the others just use space, in my experience.

On-board controls:

The Canon PIXMA MP620 has a top-mounted LCD control panel surrounded by buttons and a scroll wheel like that on an iPod. The LCD panel displays status messages and other information under normal print/copy/scan operations. When a memory card is inserted in a slot, any included photos are displayed on the LCD screen. Like many cellphones, there are two overloaded buttons below-left and below-right relative to the LCD; these fire off whatever functions are named just above them on the screen (scroll, edit, etc.). The LCD screen, though relatively small, has crisp and clear display and pictures load rapidly from memory cards.

The controls include dedicated B/W and color printing buttons and a scan button, plus a button that executes the on-board navigator software. One button allows stepping back; another takes you to the home screen. When all else fails, there's a Power button. The scroll wheel allows clockwise and counter-clockwise sweeps to move through options rapidly, and also has four directional arrows that move through menus, etc., stepwise. Controls are relatively intuitive, assuming that you're familiar with the conventions used in scroll wheels and those menu buttons.

Operating the Canon PIXMA MP620:

Printing from a computer: Once the printer driver has been installed and the network (wired or wireless) connected - or the cable attached - the MP620 operates just like any other printer (choose the print option from your software and select the "Canon MP620 Series Printer" from the list). You can control paper source, print quality, print count, color usage, simplex or duplex (plain paper only), and the like. You can also set these up as defaults with the "My Printer" program.

Plain letter, A4, A5, or B5 paper can be loaded into the 150-sheet tray. Other size paper, photo paper, envelopes, etc., must be loaded into the manual tray at the rear.

The Easy Photo-Print EX software includes functions to sharpen, crop, and similar image manipulation (not unlike the "lite" versions of PhotoShop included with many cameras and printers). It also has red-eye correction, burn and dodge, and "auto-correct" modes.

There are saved printable templates, like lined paper, graph paper, checklists with check boxes, and staff (musical) paper. The Canon website may have more templates - I haven't checked.

Printing from a memory card: The Canon PIXMA MP620 supports seventeen card formats, though mini-cards such as a MicroSD require an adapter (not supplied). The printer reads the card and displays the images on the LCD screen (approximately 1" x 1½" size). The program supports displaying as a slide show or as thumbnails (six to a screen). Pictures may be printed as-is to media from 4x6 to 8½x11, or printed to a pre-formatted calendar page. Images may also be grouped in a format similar to a contact sheet, or printed six- or eight-up on a single page (like the wallet-size photos in school photos). Images from a memory card can be cropped or zoomed, within limits, but no other "corrections" may be applied.

Scanning: Color or black and white documents, including photographs, may be scanned from either a computer on the network or directly from the control panel. The platen is sized to take a sheet of A4 paper; slightly larger than US letter paper. Scanner output images may be saved in common formats (.bmp, .jpg, .tiff, .pdf) to either a networked computer or a flash drive plugged into the computer. Scanned text may be routed to OCR (optical character recognition) software for conversion to a text document. The OCR software is pretty good, with an error rate of less than one per cent in tests I've run. One function that the scanner lacks is the ability to scan photo negatives and slides, which we have on the old CanoScan (a good reason to keep it). For those who want to occasionally convert film images to digital without making a print, this will disappoint. You kids who've never seen film probably won't care...

Copying: Either color or black and white documents, again up to A4 size, can be copied from the printer's control panel (not from a PC). Printing functions include zoom capability from 25% to 400%, a sharpening function, and a brightening function. Using the software reduction allows you to print multiple documents (two or four) on a single sheet.

Impressions from Usage:

Setup: Installation and setup are simple and straightforward, though somewhat time-consuming. The documentation is clear and the software, for the most part, installs flawlessly. Some of the included software is mere window-dressing, but the Navigator software has some one-click options that make it worth keeping around.

Ease of Use: Very good. Between the included software and the printer's on-board user interface, most functions can be carried out with just a little help from the user manual. Menus are "intuitive," assuming you've already seen menus and controls of this type (which, I suppose, means they're not really "intuitive").

Printing: Print speed is a nominal 26 ppm (pages per minute) for B/W printing, 17 ppm for color. That's after the first page hits the output tray; loading the document into memory (print spooling) means the first page can take a while. In our case, a full sheet of B/W text takes about 30 seconds to print from the time "OK" is clicked until the sheet drops in the output tray. Color printing is slower, but still considerably faster than our old printer. Photographs will print without borders, by the way, using the entirety of the sheet.

Print Quality: Color photos are crisp and clear. Canon claims a maximum 9600 x 2400 dpi (dot per inch) resolution for photo printing; resulting in ink "dots" that are invisible to the naked eye (you can see them with a 20x magnifier, though). Color quality seems a little dull by default, but there is adjustment capability in the software to brighten and adjust contrast. B/W prints are also clear and crisp.

Scanning: The scanner has a maximum 2400 x 4800 dpi resolution, though most of our scanning takes place at typical document resolution of 200-600 dpi. OCR works quite well at 300 dpi. I miss the film negative and positive scanning functions, however.

Copying: Color and B/W copying are both pretty much no-brainers. There are a couple of useful special functions that will prove useful, such as a "frame erase" that lets you copy books without that ink-wasting black border, or masking to hide selected parts of the image. Copy speed is somewhat slower than print speed; copying a single sheet takes about thirty seconds. There is no document feed, so each sheet must be placed on the platen separately. But whaddya want for $120, anyway?

Ink usage: The Ms has already gone though almost an entire B/W tank in about six weeks. Hard telling what that means in terms of page count, but probably several hundred. The large tanks are $15 at Office Depot. I am told that the printer can't use third-party ink, but cannot confirm this.

Overall: Good to very performance on all three functions, with simple setup and relatively easy-to-use controls and software. Lacks a document feeder or the ability to perform automatic duplexing when scanning or copying, though it can duplex in printing. Scanner is "full-contact" only and does not have special capability for film positives or negatives. These latter are fairly minor omissions for ordinary home usage, however.  Based on ease of setup and use and quality of output, I highly recommend the Canon PIXMA MP620 multifunction printer.

4½ Stars