Canon Pixma MX350

This mid-range multifunction printer is a compact four-in-one model designed for both home and office use. It can print, scan, photocopy and fax, and uses one colour cartridge rather than individual cartridges for each coloured ink. That's great for anyone who's sick of having draws full of replacement cartridges 'just in case', whereas more environmentally conscious users won't like having to throw away a whole cartridge just because one colour has run out.

Hardware

To be honest, the control panel isn't the most exciting we've ever seen. The colour screen does gain 2 cm in size on the MX330, although it's still relatively small at 6.2 cm (2.5 inches). Unfortunately, it's not touch-sensitive either, so you'll have to make do with physical buttons and arrow keys to control or adjust this printer.

Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections mean that printing can be launched from any computer in your network, and the paper feed tray can be loaded with 30 sheets.



Speeds: Quite Slow

As usual, Canon gives slower ISO print speeds than those we recorded with our test pages, which are less complex than the ISO standard documents. Canon promises 8.4 pages per minute for black and white or 4.8 pages per minute for colour, whereas we recorded 11.4 and 7.5 ppm respectively from our tests in standard mode. Bear in mind that the average laser printer has a print speed of 16 pages per minute.

The MX350's results are acceptable enough for home use, but could lead to printing backlogs in a network setup. In this respect, we probably wouldn't recommend the MX350 for office use. If print speed is important to you, the MP640 offers better performances (9 ppm in colour, 13 ppm in B&W) for a very similar price.

Slow print speeds are a problem in photo mode too. Note that the MP640 can print photos nearly twice as quickly as the MX350. More precisely, an A4 print is ready in one minute with the MP640, whereas the MX350 takes nearer two. A 10 x 15 cm print takes 27 seconds with the MP640 and 52 seconds with the MX350.
Energy Consumption & Noise Levels

This printer has a slightly below average power consumption of just 12 W when in operation. However, the 2.4 W it guzzles on standby is on the higher side of average. If the power consumption on standby had been under 1 W, then the MX350 would have bagged itself a fifth star.

The noise output is 43.8 dB, which it pretty quiet (the MP640 emits 50 dB).
  Unlike top-of-the-range models, this printer uses a single colour ink cartridge (one colour cartridge for cyan + magenta + yellow, instead of one cartridge for each colour). For documents, the print quality is excellent. Everything is good, from the colours on our test document, to contrast and readability: there's not a bad word to say.


Although it's decent enough, print quality in photos is nowhere near as good as that of documents. The ink drops (2 picolitres) are still visible and the colours have a red or yellow tinge.



Scanner & Copier: Very Fast

The scanner is very fast, taking 6 seconds for a pre-scan, 4 seconds to scan a document at 75 dpi or 11 seconds at 300 dpi.

Scan quality, however, isn't entirely satisfactory. This is definitely a scanner for occasional use only, and it's certainly not suitable for professional use, even if the native definition of 4,800 dpi could lead you to believe otherwise. We found a colorimetric shift of almost 7%, whereas other models fall easily under 5%. Worse still were the peaks of almost 10% in black, yellow and red.

Photocopies are ready in approximately 20 seconds in black and white or 33 seconds in colour.

Cost per Page: High-Capacity Cartridges Worth the Investment

The cost per page with standard cartridges amounts to 10.2 pence per page or 8.3 pence per page with the optional high-capacity cartridges. That's a pretty good score and it's certainly below average.

ISO lifespan test for text documents