Canon PIXMA MG5450 review

While Canon often refreshes PIXMA models without making major changes, the MG5450 is quite a new design. It's stylish and very low-slung, rising less than 15cm from the desk. To make this low height possible the scanner bed is fixed in place; you access the ink cartridges by raising the cantilevered control panel.

It's beautifully engineered, but we have our reservations; the shallow access means you have to insert the rear of each tank by feel, and we found ourselves wondering how we'd clear a paper jam if one happened deep in the printer's bowels.

This printer uses a five-ink setup comprising a pigment black tank for bold prints on plain paper, and dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks for high-quality photos. For the first time Canon has introduced high-capacity versions of this style of tank, which does help to lower running costs to 7.9p per page. While acceptable, however, this is hardly cheap; the more basic Canon PIXMA MG3250 undercuts the MG5450 by nearly 1.5p per page.

This printer has a colour screen with three dedicated selection buttons below, combined with a separate four-way navigation controller and selection button. We're not a great fan of this system, in which the two sets of buttons never seem to work together intuitively.

The MG5450 seemed unhappy with the congested wireless environment in which we performed our wireless printing tests. By switching the router's wireless channel we managed to double the speed of a 1,200dpi photo scan from taking six minutes down to just over three, but over USB the sample test took just a minute and 21 seconds, and all other scans were swift. Several other MFP scanners also seemed affected to a lesser degree, illustrating that in a typical environment high-resolution scans can still be slow over a wireless network.

Print speeds were adequate in our tests, peaking at an impressive 13.2ppm when printing black text at the Normal setting. Strangely, the Fast mode proved more than 2ppm slower, making it useless unless you want to save money on ink; text printed using it was far lighter, but still very readable. Our mixed colour text appeared at a modest 2.6ppm, but the quality was very high.

The MG5450 supports some advanced page setup options, including automatic duplex (double-sided) printing

This printer's high 9,600x2,400dpi resolution and small one-picolitre ink droplet size promise good photos, and the results were indeed strong, with a characteristic sharpness and good shade control that helped reproduce detail that gets lost by less accomplished photo printers. Scans were similarly good, with above-average sharpness and colour accuracy. Working together, the scanner and printer delivered high-quality photocopies very quickly, with a colour copy taking only 20 seconds and black copies 11 seconds.

This is a good multifunction printer, with useful features, good results and a welcome dash of style. However, we've some minor gripes about its controls, and its wireless performance was fairly slow; we think the Canon MG6350 is worth the extra cash.

Basic Specifications

Rating

****

Maximum native print resolution

9,600x2,400dpi

Max optical resolution

2,400x4,800dpi

Output bit depth

24-bit

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0

9m 45s

Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0

13m 57s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces

USB, 802.11b/g/n wireless

Optional printer interfaces

none

Size

148x455x369mm

Weight

8.0kg

Noise (in normal use)

44.4dB(A)

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size

A4/legal

Maximum paper weight

300gsm

Standard paper inputs

2

Standard paper input capacity

145

Maximum paper inputs

2

Maximum paper input capacity

145

Duplex (code, cost if option)

Yes

General

Printer technology

thermal inkjet

Supported operating systems

Windows XP/Vista/7/RT/8, Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later

Other inkjet features

7.5cm colour screen

Other inkjet options

none

Buying Information

Price

£86

Consumable parts and prices

£12 each

Price per colour A4 page

5.1p

Quoted life of supplied black cartridge

Pigment black 300 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), dye black 1,795 pages (Canon estimate)

Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s)

Cyan 332, magenta 319, yellow 344 pages (ISO/IEC 24712)

Quoted life of supplied photo cartridge(s)

N/A

Warranty

one year RTB

Supplier

http://www.lambda-tek.com

Details

www.canon.co.uk

Print Quality

Number of ink colours

5

Number of ink cartridges

5

Maximum number of ink colours

5

Maximum number of cartridges

5

Quoted photo durability

30 years

Quoted photo durability source

Canon

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview

8s

A4 document at 150dpi

13s

A4 document at 300dpi

21s

6x4in photo at 600dpi

25s

6x4in photo at 1200dpi

1m 21s

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.0

11s

Time for single A4 colour copy 1.0

20s

Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0

N/A

Photo Features

PictBridge support

No

Borderless printing

A4

Direct (PC-less) printing

Yes

Supported memory cards

Memory Stick, SD, MMC

CD printing

Yes

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies

99

Fax Features

Max mono fax resolution

N/A

Fax memory (maximum mono pages)

N/A

Basic Specifications

Tested Print Speeds

Physical and Environmental

Paper Handling

General

Buying Information

Print Quality

Tested Scan Speeds

Tested Copy Speeds

Photo Features

Copy Features

Fax Features

Hunter Jones

Hunter Jones

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