Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/10/21/review_printer_canon_pixma_mp560_multifunction_inkjet/

Canon Pixma MP560

More than just a model refresh, apparently

By Simon Williams

Posted in Personal Tech, 21st October 2009 08:02 GMT

Review Mid-range, inkjet all-in-ones are the mainstay of most printer makers’ catalogues, so for one to stand out, it has to offer extra features, better performance or improved cost of ownership to get noticed. Canon has introduced the Pixma MP560 to build on a successful design in at least two of these three ways.

Canon Pixma MP560

Canon's Pixma MP560: the changes are more than cosmetic

There are many instances when a new printer model is nothing but a replacement for one that’s gone before, often with more minor cosmetic changes than between this year’s and last year's Ford Fiesta. However, that’s not the case with the Pixma MP560. It may appear like the MP540, but actually has a lot more going for it.

Indeed, it looks much like Canon’s recent run of all-in-ones, coloured in silver and high-gloss black plastic, but the concave sides are less pronounced and it’s a little squatter than its predecessor. At the back, a flap folds up and lifts to become a 150-sheet paper tray for photo sheets, though it can be used for special media, like letterheads, too.

Underneath is a 15-sheet, plain paper tray, which feeds each page through 180 degrees before printing; like an HP inkjet. All pages end up on the fold-down front cover of the machine, which becomes the output tray. It drops automatically, a nice touch, if you try to print without opening it first.

Lift the cover at top, front right to reveal the control panel, together with a 50mm LCD display in the cover lid. Controls are big and clearly marked and incorporate Canon’s clickwheel – the easiest way yet of moving through a menu without having a touchscreen. Two large buttons set at the front of the panel offer black and colour copies and there’s a large cancel button, too.

Canon Pixma MP560

The clickwheel makes it easy to flick through menus

Set into the right front edge is a rather flimsy plastic cover, which hides three memory card slots. There are the standard two, which between them cater for SD, MemoryStick and xD, but there’s also support for CompactFlash, which most of Canon’s rivals have dropped. If you have a semi-pro digital SLR, this continued support for the older format may swing your choice.

At the back is a single USB socket, but many will buy this machine for its wireless connection. The Pixma MP560 supports WPS and WPA, so even if you don’t have a router with WPS you can still connect pretty painlessly. The machine searches for wireless networks within range and you then enter your passphrase using the clickwheel. It’s a bit longwinded, but preferable to a temporary USB connection, that other machines require.

Canon Pixma MP560

Easy fit for all cartridges, including two blacks

The five ink cartridges – CMYK and a pigmented black for text – clip into the head in moments and red LEDs confirm correct insertion. The corresponding LED also flashes when a cartridge is empty – this is one of the best consumables systems around. Canon provides drivers for Windows from 2000 SP4 on and for OSX from 10.3.9, but returned no results for either Linux or Unix on its driver-support site. Drivers for the MP540 should support some functions, though not the Wi-Fi connection, of course.

Thanks to the ISO, some sanity has been restored to speed claims in printers. Canon claims 9.2 page images per minute for black print and 6.2ipm for colour. The ISO tests still don’t include page rasterisation time, only the time to actually print the pages, so the results we saw, 7.0ppm and 3.4ppm still fall some way short, but they’re at least in the right ballpark.

They compare well with results from some similarly-priced inkjet all-in-ones, such as the Epson Stylus SX415 (4.0ppm and 3.1ppm), but less well with others, like the HP OfficeJet 6500 (9.0ppm and 3.9ppm). Duplex print is designed to save paper and with a ream costing around £10, it can make a worthwhile difference over a year, even if you don’t print that heavily. To be of any use, though, it has happen at a reasonable speed. That, sadly, isn’t the case here.

Our 20-page, black text document took 2:52 to print single-sided, which equates to a speed of 7.0ppm. This is not at all bad for a mid-range inkjet all-in-one, but when you cut in duplex print, the same document takes 9:45, a mere 2.1 sides per minute, or 1.0ppm.

Canon Pixma MP560

CompactFlash is still an option

This is painfully slow, partly because of the 8-10 second drying time inserted between printing the front and back sides of each sheet, but also because of a number of unscheduled stops, when the printer didn’t seem to be doing anything in the way of housekeeping, just idling. These pauses didn’t occur during single-sided print. Overall, we can’t see anybody but a committed Green opting to print all duplex on the MP560.

Canon printers normally give very good quality prints. Here, black text shows a little more feathering into the paper nap, thus giving a very slight fuzz to characters, particularly bold ones. Colour graphics are bright and solid and black text over the top of colour is well-registered, with no signs of haloing.

Canon Pixma MP560

Wi-Fi equipped, so you can dispense with the USB umbilical

Copy quality, using the machine’s 2,400 by 4,800ppi CIS scanner, shows surprising fidelity, for what is essentially a budget scan head, and there was only slight lightening of the colours in our test copy, compared with the original. It’s also a relatively fast scan, producing a single-page photocopy in 35 seconds.

Photo output on Canon’s Photo Paper II Pro is very good, with natural colours and high levels of detail in both bright and shadowed parts of images. There’s no noticeable colour cast and the MP560 manages to produce vivid tints where they’re needed, as well as subtle shades in landscapes and portraits alike.

Running costs, of course, depend on the price you can find for the five cartridges the machine uses. The best prices we could find give a cost per A4, ISO black page – roughly five per cent cover – of 2.6p, with an ISO colour page – roughly 20 per cent – of 7.2p. Neither of the page costs is unduly high and the black page cost is around 0.4p below the average. Although you may baulk at the cost of inkjet printing, per se, it’s still the cheapest form of colour print and the comparative costs for this printer are reasonable.

Verdict

Comparing this machine with its predecessor shows that you’re getting a lot extra: increased print speed, duplex printing and Wi-Fi connectivity, for little extra money. It’s a flexible all-in-one with a good scanner, dual paper sources and high quality print on plain and especially photo paper. ®

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