Product Reviews

An all-in-one machine can prove incredibly useful in a small business or home office, easily eliminating the need for a roomful of expensive equipment. We're not sure, however, that Canon's Pixma MX7600 is worth the investment.

A price of £202 positions it in the upper echelon of small business machines. Only one device in our last All-in-One Labs - the A-Listed HP Officejet Pro L7780 - was more expensive.

Canon's Clear Ink technology, which produces impressive photographic output on standard paper, is part of the reason you might want to part with your cash. And it's speed at printing individual photographs is another: it takes 59 seconds to produce a 6 x 4in snap on glossy paper, compared to the 93 seconds taken by the Officejet. And print quality is good elsewhere.

The scanner, though, can't maintain this performance. Despite purportedly having

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a 4,800 x 1,200dpi optical resolution the driver offers no option to scan at any higher than 600dpi. Quality isn't good either and images appeared grainy with pale, washed-out colours.

Copying is variable. While colours lose little vibrancy, text is slightly blurred and in draft mode isn't black enough. It is quicker than the HP, though, taking 13 seconds to produce a copy of our A4 test page document when the Officejet took 22.

When it's printing standard quality pages, the Pixma falls behind - it's only able to churn out 4ppm compared to 10ppm from the HP. In draft it prints at a faster 13ppm, but the Officejet Pro again outperforms it with 20ppm.

On the positive side, the MX7600 has full fax capabilities, and a 1.8in LCD screen provides a wealth of customisation options. A card reader, which accepts CF, SD, MMC and MS memory, is also operable from the LCD screen, which is a boon.

And despite the steep purchase price, cartridges are a reasonable £12 each, though yields are little more than average. The black reservoir has a quoted capacity of 570 pages, while the magenta component will last for around 715 pages.

Despite this economy, though, we're not entirely convinced by the MX7600 - print quality is good in standard mode, but speed isn't that impressive, while grainy scanning and poor copy quality weaken its claim on your cash. It is packed with features and is relatively economic, but it's not worth the money when only one of the functions really performs.