Canon Pixma MP620

Because it comes with built-in WiFi, the MP620 is an expensive printer.  It's Canon's offering for those who want a printer with separate cartridges that is as good at regular office printing as it is as it photos - and need it to be wireless, too.

Historically, we've been impressed by the MP range of multifunction printers, thanks to their high speeds, excellent quality and very economical price per page.

Unfortunately, though, Canon have somewhat neglected their products, and, based on their cartridge prices in Europe, the cost-per-page seems a litt le high.

This is no longer a printer that we can say is the cheapest out there, but it may well be one of the best.

Solid Design

Along with the WiFi come several features which were introduced with this model's predecessor, the MP 610: a large color screen, measuring 3'' from corner to corner, a practical, logical click-wheel interface and a set of five separate cartridges, a new record in this field, and a memory card reader.

Nevertheless, Canon has had to get rid of some features in order to fit this new functionality in. 

The two-sided printing mode, which was previously automatic has now reverted to manual, so you have to flip printed pages over and put them back in the printer yourself. 

If recto-verso printing is high on your wish list, you might want to think about the Canon MP630 on which this feature is available, at the expense of WiFi.

Canon's cartridges do not include the printing heads, and are essentially just small bottles of ink, which makes them easy to recycle once they're empty. 

As we mentioned in our Introduction, though, that means that this printer is more suited to regular use as the cleaning program that occurs each time it is switched on can use up a lot of ink

Office Printing: Fast, Accurate - but not cheap!

Canon claim speeds of up to 33 pages per minute for this model, but this is very optimistic.  In our experience, the MP620 only ever got close to 33 ppm when  handling very light documents in draft mode.  On documents with more text, the speeds were like 16 ppm in black and white draft mode, which produced relatively good results.

The black is lighter than in standard mode, but is perfectly readable, and definitely worth using to skim over a website or to check a document over.


Standard mode is inevitably slower, but offers better results: 7.8 ppm in color and 10.4 ppm in monochrome. 

Canon is certainly not risking its good reputation: speed, accuracy, true coors and deep blacks are all there. 

Our only tip would be not to grab the pages too quickly, as a damp finger can make the colors run if the ink is still wet.

Two optional settings are worth noting. 

The first is the ability to reduce the amount of time spent waiting for the ink to dry in between the production of each page. 

We turned it all the way down to zero without any loss of quality. 

A second is a silent mode, which is a great extra to a product that is already very quiet.

The only problem potential problem is the cost of the ink. 

While Canon's cartrdiges last a long time - sometimes managine over 500 A4 pages on the ISO test, they are very expensive in some territories and it's well worth checking out how much they cost near you and then diving it by the number of pages shown below to work out whether or not you're really getting good value for money.


Photo printing: same concerns

A standard 4 x 6'' print takes about 40 seconds to appear from the moment the paper enters the machine, which makes the MP620 amongst the fastest multifunctions for photo printing.  The individual ink drops are invisible to the naked eye and the colors are lively and accurate.  

Once again, Canon leans a little towards orange tones, making the photos brighter and a little less austere, butwithout being disturbing. 

Black and white photos are quite economical, too. Generally, photo printing is better quality than it was on the MP610.

Printing costs could be high, given how quickly the MP620's cartridges seem to empty. 

This is especially given that we've ot included the cost of Canon photo printing stock either, which can also vary from one country to another. 

Don't be shy about choosing other options, though, as there are excellent photo papers available elsewhere for a lot less

Cartridge lifespan - ISO test for photo printing