Canon Pixma MP560 All-in-One Printer

Canon sets the bar pretty high for its printers, and in a few ways this one--the Pixma MP560--fell short. For a low-end printer it includes wireless, which is a real benefit; but I didn't get great all-around printing text. Being able to print in high quality on cheap paper is important, I think, since it's a whole lot cheaper to buy a ream of copy paper than inkjet paper. But the ink bled into the paper, making prints less than crisp. Photos on the other hand looked just fine. But if your printing needs are more towards sharp, clear documents, you're not going to be pleased with the MP 560.

The Pixma MP560 gave results that I thought were subpar. Printing on regular (read: cheap) paper left fonts fuzzy and less-than-clear. Even when I upgraded to nice (read: expensive) inkjet paper, the results were not as good as I've seen with other printers I've tested recently, including the Brother MFC-255CW and the Epson Artisan 810.

Print speeds across the network were certainly commendable. A four-page Word document printed across the wireless network in under a minute, with the first page taking about 15 seconds to come out. A colorful four-page PDF took about two minutes, but the colored graphics left the copy paper limp. I got much better results with photo printing, with a 4x6 taking only 39 seconds, and with the rich, deep colors that Pixmas usually provide.

Canon does a great job with keeping printers as rectangular as possible, to keep them from taking up a lot of room on small desks. They've hidden the (quite small) LCD screen and buttons under a fold-up panel, which I like quite a bit; even better is that multiple functions can be accessed easily via the easy-scroll wheel. The output tray automatically folds down when printing begins, which sounds obvious--but not every printer I've tried does that, leading to jammed pages.