Scanner and Copier

Canon has really put some oomph into its new all-in-one, and color copies come out in under 15 seconds, twice as fast as they did on the earlier MP610. A black and white copy takes only 12 seconds, which compares very favorably with some of the other models we've reviewed.

The scanner seems to operate in turbo mode too, with an initial preview only taking 5 seconds and a full scan of a 300 dpi 4 x 6 print taking only 12 seconds, compared to the preceding model's 15 second.

Fortunately, it seems that Canon hasn't cut back on quality, either, with a great quality image and strong, bright colors.

Because it comes with built-in WiFi, the MP620 is an expensive printer.  It's Canon's offering for people who want a printer with separate cartridges that is also as good at regular office printing as it is as it photos (and need wireless functionality as well).

Historically, we've been impressed by the MP range of multifunction printers due to their high speeds, excellent quality and very economical price per page. Unfortunately, though, Canon has somewhat neglected this product line and the cost-per-page seems a little high.

This is no longer a printer that we can say is the cheapest out there, but it may well be one of the best.

Solid Design

Along with the WiFi comes several features which were introduced with this model's predecessor, the MP 610: a 3-inch color screen, a practical click-wheel interface, a set of five separate cartridges, and a memory card reader.

Nevertheless, Canon had to get rid of some features in order to fit all this new functionality in.  The two-sided printing mode, which was previously automatic, has now reverted to manual so you have to flip printed pages over and put them back in the printer yourself.  If double-sided printing is high on your wish list, you might want to think about the Canon MP630 on which this feature is available, at the expense of WiFi.

Canon's cartridges do not include the printing heads, and are essentially just small bottles of ink, which makes them easy to recycle once they're empty. As we mentioned in our Introduction, this means that this printer is more suited to regular use because the cleaning program that occurs each time it is switched on can use up a lot of ink.

Office Printing: Fast, Accurate - but not cheap!

Canon claims speeds up to 33 pages per minute for this model, but that is optimistic.  In our experience, the MP620 only ever got close to 33 ppm when handling very light documents in draft mode. On documents with more text, the speeds were 16 ppm in black and white draft mode, which produced relatively good results.

The black is lighter than in standard mode, but is perfectly readable, and definitely worth using to skim over a website or to check a document. Standard mode is inevitably slower, but offers better results: 7.8 ppm in color and 10.4 ppm in monochrome. 

Canon is certainly not risking its good reputation with this printer: speed, accuracy, true colors and deep blacks are all here. A tip: Don't grab the pages too quickly, as a damp finger can make the colors run if the ink is still wet.

Two optional settings are worth noting. The first is the ability to reduce the amount of time spent waiting for the ink to dry in between the production of each page. We turned it all the way down to zero without any loss of quality. A second is a silent mode, which is a great add-on to a product that is already very quiet.

The only potential problem is the cost of the ink. While Canon's cartridges last a long time - sometimes managing over 500 A4 pages on the test, they are very expensive and it's well worth checking out how much they cost near you, and then dividing that amount by the number of pages shown below to work out whether or not you're really getting good value for money.


Photo printing: same concerns

A standard 4 x 6-inch print takes about 40 seconds to appear, which makes the MP620 among the fastest multifunctions for photo printing. The individual ink drops are invisible to the naked eye and the colors are lively and accurate. Once again, Canon leans a little towards orange tones, making the photos brighter and a little less austere, but without being disturbing. 

Black and white photos are quite economical, too. Generally, photo printing is better quality than it was on the MP610.mPrinting costs could be high, given how quickly the MP620's cartridges seem to empty.