Canon Pixma MP800R review

Some out-of-box experiences are better than others, and the MP800R is a machine that makes a superb first impression. Finished in glossy black and matte silver, it's an imposing piece of equipment - within its hulking chassis are a five-ink printer, a 2,400 x 4,800dpi scanner, two paper trays and a duplexer.

The headline features continue elsewhere - both Ethernet and wireless LAN are included, and the TFT menu/preview screen has a very generous 3.5in diagonal. Factor in the PictBridge port and it's possible to get comprehensive use of the MP800R without ever connecting it to a PC.

You'd be missing out, though, as the MP800R is a master of all the functions it performs. Plain-text prints, for example, were close to laser printer quality. At larger font sizes and greater ink densities, you'll need coated paper to avoid soggy pages, but for reports, it produces great results. The trade-off for such good quality is particularly slow printing, though, and our 50-page text document took 11 mins, 33 secs to complete in normal mode. This is just 4ppm, and even dropping the quality mode to draft only boosts speed to 13ppm. These results make the MP800R less than ideal for serious office work.

There are two paper trays - one top-loading sheet feeder at the back, and a tray beneath the printer. It's a very useful arrangement, as you can load different types of media in separate trays. Paper handling is further enhanced by the built-in duplexer; however, the print speed isn't. Printing a ten-page document using the duplexer took 4 mins, 47 secs, reducing the print speed to 2ppm.

Printing five photos from a PC took 4 mins, 42 secs, and although the MP800R doesn't have any dedicated photo ink tanks (aside from photo black), the results were of photo lab quality. Colours were vibrant and accurately reproduced, with our only gripe being the cost of prints. The low efficiency of Canon's remote print head system and the high cost of its photo paper (21p per sheet) makes for an expensive outlay of 58p per 6 x 4in print.

The scanner portion of our tests produced good results. We scanned a 6 x 4in print at 600dpi in just 15 seconds, and a page of plain text took just 7 seconds at 300dpi using the supplied OmniPage SE software. The sharpness of the images was impressive, although our photos consistently exhibited a red colour-cast at default settings - a problem easily fixed pre-scan with the driver. Hidden under the scanner's lid is second lamp to allow you to scan transparencies and negatives.

The MP800R is capable of some fantastic results, particularly when working with photos, but there are some drawbacks. Running costs are high, as is the price tag. But the real reason to steer clear is HP's Photosmart 3210. It offers similar print and scanning quality to the MP800R, but costs £50 less, and offers far cheaper photo printing. The duplexer and wireless networking are the notable additions here, but unless you're desperate for these features, the 3210 is a far better choice.

Author: Dave Stevenson