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Canon Pixma MG5250
by Taz123456
When I was looking for a printer, there were so many printers models and makes to choose from that it made the task of choosing the right one a little bit difficult. I personally wanted a All in One Printer, a printer that can print, scan and copy all in one machine that didn't take up too much room on my desk. I also wanted a wireless ... printer, mainly to reduce the clutter in my already small office room; and so a wireless printer with no unnecessary wires would be ideal.
I was also quite surprised to find that the prices for many wireless printers were quite reasonable, making a wireless printer with an all in one function very affordable. That was one of the key reasons why I chose the Canon Pixma MG5250, priced at around £50, meant it matched my budget and had all the features I wanted in a Printer.
SPECIFICATIONS SUMMARY
Resolution: n9600 x 2400 dpi
B&W / colour speed 11 ppm / 9.3 ppm
Ink droplet size 1 pl
Number of cartridges 5
Number of base colours 4
Scanner yes
Copier yes
Fax no
Wi-Fi yes
Duplex yes
DESIGN
The Canon Pixma MG5250 has a nice modern design, with a nice glossy black colour finish. The edges have a nice smooth curvy feel, and makes the printer look in my opinion very sophisticated and classy. The printer is a nice compact size, making it fit easily on my desk leaving plenty of room left over.
The Printer has a scanner device that is located just below the top cover, and a printer inkjet tray that is visible once the tray is opened. It has slots for five cartridges, and an easy accessible photo/paper tray at the front of the printer. The selection buttons are easily visible and placed on the right of the printer.
What really grabbed my attention was the very modern and sleek 2.4 inch TFT colour LCD screen. I found the screen position can easily be adjusted by tilting up or down.
It has slots for USB flash drives, and photo memory cards at the front just under a small cover.
I was very pleasantly surprised with the design of the printer, it looks beautiful and places the slots and buttons in convenient places.
PUT TO THE TEST
The first thing that I noticed when using the printer was the LCD screen's easy to use interface. It has a very handy preview option where you can view previews of the photos/documents on the 2 inch screen before you print them. This was great, as the picture quality on screen was very crisp and clear. I loved how I was able to quickly access features that I had used last, by simply selecting quick access function in the menu screen.
The menu design Is definitely a plus, I am not a technical person so was a great feature to have an easy user friendly design. The menu was so easy to use, that I didn't even find the need to look at the instruction manual, which is always a good thing as I never like reading through manuals!
The Wireless feature on this printer is great, it easily automatically detected the WiFi on my laptop and connected almost instantly. One of the positive aspects of the WiFi feature on this printer is that it is WEP and WPA secure, and keeps my network safely free from intruders.
It also comes with full HD printing software, making it very handy for someone who loves taking HD photos. I found it easy to install the software on my computer and fairly straight forward to use, all I had to do I click on the photo I wanted to print and it would start printing in HD quality.
As I currently own an iPhone, I love taking pictures using the iPhone camera when ever I am at functions. Therefore the next feature I am about to mention is a huge advantage for owning this Canon Pixma printer. It has a feature that recognises the iPhone's easy photo print option. This was really easy to use, I basically open the application on my iPhone and then tap the picture I wish to print, and then simply select the print option on the phone, it really as easy as 1,2,3. The recent update means it is also supports android and iPad devices.
The other feature I liked about this printer, was the printers ability to automatically print two sided documents using its auto duplex print option. This has saved me from having to manually turn the pages around and has kept me from wasting paper. The printer therefore reduces paper use by up to a huge 50%, meaning I have saved money and helped the environment in the same process.
HOW WAS THE PRINTING?
So to the main function, how well does it print? When I was printing Plain paper documents from word it took around 15 seconds. In sleep mode it took a little longer at 20 seconds. Photocopying took around 25 seconds, and The duplex function took the longest (which was expected) printing printouts at around 40 seconds. I overall thought the print out times were very fast.
Quality wise, the printouts were of great quality. The photo prints were very detailed and were nice a colourful. This was evidently due to the vast range of colours in the five ink tanks. I thought the print outs were of a professional standard and could easily compare to the photo prints that I use to get from photo print stores.
As the Printer uses iPi technology and a maximum of 9600 dpi, I found the resolution and colour contrasts in the photos were outstanding.
Ink Cartridges are also reasonably priced (around £20-25) and are readily available at most supermarkets or online store.
The scanner function also performed well, it has rates of 2400ppi optical scanning which is not the best; but for me it still scanned documents with noticeable detail and quality.
VERDICT
Overall I found this printer to be a great valued added member to our home office. It has brilliant printing quality, and wireless connectivity, as well as the major benefit of printing photos without even turning your computer on (iPhone). It was very user friendly, and easy to use.
I would recommend this printer to anyone who is looking for an all in one printer that is reasonably low in price and high in quality.
10/10
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Canon PIXMA MG3250
by Decanus
My old Lexmark finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks back; although when it was first bought it was a good printer and scanner, it had been chewing up paper like an angry dog lately, so I decided to move on.
As any good man does with too much time (leave the essential household chores to one side, and spend several hours on ... the internet) I did my research on replacement printers. I needed an all-in-one printer (one that prints, copies, and scans), as I work part-time from home, but my budget was very tight, around the £60 mark. I knew I would struggle to find anything decent...
...actually I didn't. I found the Canon 3250 on Amazon, did some due diligence on review and technical sites (those dishes in the sink weren't going anywhere) and decided this looked too good to be true.
The printer arrived, nicely boxed up as they always are but with far too much packaging. After wading through that, I set the printer up (the black design much nicer than my beige lexmark) and connected it to my pc; all leads and instructions are supplied, and it is very straightforward to set up, not a problem if you are not technically incllined. Well, it looked good, set up nicely, now to see how it actually performs...
very well, it turns out. Far quieter than my old printer, pretty speedy on feeding the paper through, and excellent print quality. I could bore you with some technical talk but it does exactly what you want - prints fast, prints good quality pages, scans quickly, and all pretty quietly. Could not be happier.
An added bonus was the wi-fi functionality, (something that you will need help with if you don't do gadgets), so I set the printer up with a wi-fi connection to the printer, and a connection to my iPad, so I can send documents and photos remotely to be printed out. This is proving to be really useful for work reasons, but only after the novelty of me being able to print things out from downstairs to upstairs wore off (and started to bore people!). Its a great feature, and not one I expected for a printer at this price point.
It has a handy automatic power saving feature as well, so if you don't use the printer for some time it will go into 'energy saving mode', but if you send a remote print request will still power up itself and do it.
No complaints with the staying power of the print cartridges either; the printer came pre-loaded with colour and black and white cartridges, and I have still not had to change them yet; one potential negative though is that the replacement cartridges are not cheap, and there are no compatible 'cheap ink' options, you can only buy the 'official' ink.
The printer comes with canon software for printing pictures, adding bells and whistles etc but I have not had to use these as of yet, but nice little package that will be useful for some.
For a printer at this price point (around £50) the Canon 3250 is a star; perfectly suited for everything a casual to busy home user would put it through, even a home-worker like myself. Quality is excellent, up to 4800dpi, and it just does everything it needs to, and then some. Very please I purchased...
now, where's that scourer.
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HP Deskjet 1050
by quissue
I bought this printer/scanner and photocopier when my old Epson all in one stopped working. I was told by my son that Tesco Direct had a sale on and this would be a good printer to go for. It was reasonably priced at a mere £25 or so. It also had ink cartridges with it. Great I thought as it did everything the old printer did and ... cost about as much as refill ink cartridges would cost me for the whole package.
It was easy to install with the usual disc and onscreen instructions, you just followed the small manual and on screen instructions and away it went. Scanning and photocopying is a doddle to do as it is so easy to follow the relevant instructions a child could do it. Once loaded you get Icons on your desktop which makes for easy access when scanning. To photocopy anything all you have to do is make sure paper is in the slot at the back and lift lid place in document to copy or scan and press the button on the left hand side.
Printing is so easy to do too, just push print when you have finished with your document and away she goes all providing you have enough paper in the slot at the back of course.
It tells you well in advance as well when your ink is getting low so you can reorder before it runs out. Which is really handy as not only does the little light board on the left of the printer flash but an icon on screen of your computer will pop up warning you too.
You can either do this online or go to Tesco and buy more ink there. Most black cartridges are around £15 and colour cartridges are around £18 - 20 depending but you can buy a combination cartridge for around £23 - 25 which is very good value. I have also found a cartridge shop online that does multi packs at very reasonable rates too, called the cartridge shop. www.cartridgeshop.co.uk/
This printer comes in grey which is slightly two tone, it is compact and light and easy to operate even my grand kids can operate it so how hard can it get. I find it quite quiet compared to the Epson one we had to replace and works relatively quickly. there are others out there that would probably be a lot faster but I am not in that much of a hurry.
It sits well on top of my bookcase in the Study and the leads are just long enough to plug everything in so I did not have a problem with that end of things. Some might find they would need longer cables but that is down to where you would place your printer, as mine is right next to my computer module I have no issue with it.
Very cheap reliable so far and prints cleanly and properly without smudges. All I ever needed.
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