Canon Pixma MP990 Wireless Photo All-in-One Printer

The Canon Pixma MP990 wireless photo printer offers a lot of great features such as auto duplexing in a rather large three-in-one printer (there's no fax). On the plus side it's very fast and photos in particular look fantastic. On the minus side, there's no ADF and the ink tends to saturate paper, leaving prints soggy. It doesn't come cheap (at least $200) and you'll need to spend extra on heavy-duty paper (and replacing those six ink tanks). But if you don't mind spending on better paper, it's an excellent printer.

The Pixma MP990 wireless photo printer is a fast printer that gives decent results--as long as you use thick paper. Trying to get something that looks good on cheap copy paper simply isn't possible here, since this printer's ink saturates the paper. Forget about using that handy built-in duplexer as well, unless you upgrade your paper.

That caveat aside, you will get very good results from this printer. Blacks came out much richer and deeper than on many other printers I've seen, making text look that much better. A 4x6 color photo came out looking spectacular, with colors vivid and sharp (and the ink dry to the touch when it finished).

Print speeds across the wireless network were certainly very good. A four-page Word document printed across the wireless network in only 37 seconds, with the first page out in about 21 seconds. A colorful four-page PDF took about two minutes when using the built-in duplexer--that's as long as some other Canon Pixma printers take to print out that document simplex--and switching to simplex printing (one side only) saw print time drop to 58 seconds. Again, though, when using duplex mode the colored graphics left the copy paper limp. A 4x6 took about 57 seconds, which isn't all that fast (and is a lot slower than the 21 seconds that Canon says is possible--likely with much lower resolution.

The printer (which has no fax) is fairly big, but looks good with rounded corners and a very large (3.8-inch) LCD screen and buttons under a fold-up panel. The large LCD screen makes browsing photos from a memory card easy. The printer has an "Easy Scroll Wheel" that allows you to flip quickly through features. The lid of the scanner has a place to fit photo negatives, which is very handy--a quick and simple fix to a serious issue for photographers.

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