Today's review is of the Pixma MX515 from Canon's latest all-in-one multifunction printer series. Designed for home use and/or small businesses, the MX series offers a full range of features, including fax.
This is a versatile printer that does both photo and document printing. Canon has bet its money on elegance, productivity, Wi-Fi and network connectivity to present this model ideal for home businesses.
Design and Build
Let's see, it has rounded edges, a combination glossy/matte black body, it's compact and it's covered with buttons in the front... Who could it be? Of course, it's Canon! With printing, copying, scanning and faxing, the MX515 has all the features you could want out of a multifunction printer. It also has Wi-Fi and network connectivity so you can set it up anywhere in your home or workplace. Three buttons are located below the 6.2-cm colour display, with which you navigate through the menus. Like all of Canon's Pixma models, buttons are what do all the work here. While they're easy to use, we largely prefer a touchscreen, which is both more intuitive and flexible.
Canon opted for a FastFront build that allows it to fit in cramped spaces. The MX515 was designed to be used through the front for easy access on a shelf or table. The tray supports only 30 sheets.
Likewise, the ink cartridges go in the front.
Speed
The advertised print speeds are 9 pages per minute (ppm) in colour and 5.5 ppm in black and white. The speeds we got out of it were 8 and 6 ppm, respectively. One of the characteristics of Canon printers is long drying times, especially for B&W. The denser the volume, the longer the drying time. And it isn't rare to get slower speeds on colour prints. However, with double-sided prints the speed drops little in comparison with other printers: 4 ppm for B&W.
These are similar speeds to the Epson Stylus SX440W, which in the same conditions produces 4 and 8 pages per minute. But that model aside, the majority of all-in-ones print faster than the MX515. The Brother MFC-J430W does 9 ppm in colour and 11 ppm in B&W. Although it has a much higher price tag, the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro 5500 produces 11 ppm in colour and 22 in B&W.
And the photo print speeds aren't among the fastest, either. To use the same examples, the Brother MFC-J430W takes 129 seconds per A4 photo (compared to 131 here) and 58 seconds per 10 x 15 cm photo (compared to 65 here). The Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro 5500 prints the same formats in 71 and 23 seconds, respectively.
Print quality
The Canon Pixma MX515 will do just fine for all-text documents. But as you can see in the image below, the biggest flaw when printing pictures is the highly visible ink droplets in areas of solid colouring. The overall effect is quite mediocre. While shading comes out fine, the letters are poorly outlined, to say the least. The contours lack precision and the characters in the yellow legend bleed all over the place, giving the whole a very "rough draft" look.
Canon decided to take the "radiant colours" approach, which consists in reproducing colours the way our brain sees them. At least, that's the company's theory. So in the end what you get is extremely green greens and extremely blue blues. Which would explain why our sensor showed considerable deviations from the "neutral" colours on our chart. We have a lot of trouble subscribing to this theory, especially when you consider the delta E chart below, which measures the difference between the colours you expect (the document's original colours) and the colours you get (the ones printed on the page).
Average delta E 94 (colour difference): 5.1
Scanner & Copier
The scan function can save to a memory card, USB key or e-mail address. To see a preview of the scan, all you have to do is lay your document on the glass table.
The copy mode offers a few settings, such as borders, resizing, frame templates, intensity, format, paper type and layout. But even when you optimise the quality settings for more complex graphs and images, the rendering is still quite poor. The copy mode is best used with plain text. It also offers double-sided copying. As for the copy speed, B&W is fast, at 7 seconds, and colour takes 20 seconds.
Average delta E 94 (colour difference): 6.7
Power Use
The Canon Pixma MX515 is a low energy consumer: 1 W in sleep mode and 16 W during use. It's also a fairly quiet printer, with an average of 47 dB.
Cost Per Page
We should point out Canon's efforts in finally making a printer that's compatible with XL cartridges, which reduce the cost per page and maintenance. With these higher-capacity cartridges the CPP drops to 7.5 pence (references in the table below). This is lower than average for the printers we've reviewed.
ISO lifespan for text with XL cartridges
This is a versatile printer that does both photo and document printing. Canon has bet its money on elegance, productivity, Wi-Fi and network connectivity to present this model ideal for home businesses.
Design and Build
Let's see, it has rounded edges, a combination glossy/matte black body, it's compact and it's covered with buttons in the front... Who could it be? Of course, it's Canon! With printing, copying, scanning and faxing, the MX515 has all the features you could want out of a multifunction printer. It also has Wi-Fi and network connectivity so you can set it up anywhere in your home or workplace. Three buttons are located below the 6.2-cm colour display, with which you navigate through the menus. Like all of Canon's Pixma models, buttons are what do all the work here. While they're easy to use, we largely prefer a touchscreen, which is both more intuitive and flexible.
Canon opted for a FastFront build that allows it to fit in cramped spaces. The MX515 was designed to be used through the front for easy access on a shelf or table. The tray supports only 30 sheets.
Likewise, the ink cartridges go in the front.
Speed
The advertised print speeds are 9 pages per minute (ppm) in colour and 5.5 ppm in black and white. The speeds we got out of it were 8 and 6 ppm, respectively. One of the characteristics of Canon printers is long drying times, especially for B&W. The denser the volume, the longer the drying time. And it isn't rare to get slower speeds on colour prints. However, with double-sided prints the speed drops little in comparison with other printers: 4 ppm for B&W.
These are similar speeds to the Epson Stylus SX440W, which in the same conditions produces 4 and 8 pages per minute. But that model aside, the majority of all-in-ones print faster than the MX515. The Brother MFC-J430W does 9 ppm in colour and 11 ppm in B&W. Although it has a much higher price tag, the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro 5500 produces 11 ppm in colour and 22 in B&W.
And the photo print speeds aren't among the fastest, either. To use the same examples, the Brother MFC-J430W takes 129 seconds per A4 photo (compared to 131 here) and 58 seconds per 10 x 15 cm photo (compared to 65 here). The Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro 5500 prints the same formats in 71 and 23 seconds, respectively.
Print speeds for A4 and 10 x 15 cm, in seconds
Print quality
The Canon Pixma MX515 will do just fine for all-text documents. But as you can see in the image below, the biggest flaw when printing pictures is the highly visible ink droplets in areas of solid colouring. The overall effect is quite mediocre. While shading comes out fine, the letters are poorly outlined, to say the least. The contours lack precision and the characters in the yellow legend bleed all over the place, giving the whole a very "rough draft" look.
Canon decided to take the "radiant colours" approach, which consists in reproducing colours the way our brain sees them. At least, that's the company's theory. So in the end what you get is extremely green greens and extremely blue blues. Which would explain why our sensor showed considerable deviations from the "neutral" colours on our chart. We have a lot of trouble subscribing to this theory, especially when you consider the delta E chart below, which measures the difference between the colours you expect (the document's original colours) and the colours you get (the ones printed on the page).
Average delta E 94 (colour difference): 12.7.
The higher the bar, the less accurate the colour (where 3 and below is ideal).
What the dE 94 graph doesn't make clear is that there's a high tendency towards red in photo prints, and in B&W photos you can see a high level of green. And the ink droplets are visible in places. So the rendering will please people who like their colours warm, but anyone who prefers neutrality will certainly be less enthused.
The average for printers we've reviewed is 7.
What the dE 94 graph doesn't make clear is that there's a high tendency towards red in photo prints, and in B&W photos you can see a high level of green. And the ink droplets are visible in places. So the rendering will please people who like their colours warm, but anyone who prefers neutrality will certainly be less enthused.
Average delta E 94 (colour difference): 5.1
Scanner & Copier
The scan function can save to a memory card, USB key or e-mail address. To see a preview of the scan, all you have to do is lay your document on the glass table.
The copy mode offers a few settings, such as borders, resizing, frame templates, intensity, format, paper type and layout. But even when you optimise the quality settings for more complex graphs and images, the rendering is still quite poor. The copy mode is best used with plain text. It also offers double-sided copying. As for the copy speed, B&W is fast, at 7 seconds, and colour takes 20 seconds.
Average delta E 94 (colour difference): 6.7
Power Use
The Canon Pixma MX515 is a low energy consumer: 1 W in sleep mode and 16 W during use. It's also a fairly quiet printer, with an average of 47 dB.
Cost Per Page
We should point out Canon's efforts in finally making a printer that's compatible with XL cartridges, which reduce the cost per page and maintenance. With these higher-capacity cartridges the CPP drops to 7.5 pence (references in the table below). This is lower than average for the printers we've reviewed.
ISO lifespan for text with XL cartridges
Pros
- Elegant design
- Cost per page: 7.5 pence with XL cartridges
- Wi-Fi
- Low energy consumption
- Quiet
Cons
- Slow printing
- Long start-up
Conclusion
Okay is the best word to describe the Canon Pixma MX515. It will do just fine for people who want an elegant-looking multi-function printer at an affordable price. But it won't work any miracles, whether it's in print speed or quality.
OUR SCORE
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