Review: Canon Pixma MG4220 a capable home-office MFP with pricey ink

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them, studied music at Julliard, and power mods his car for kicks.
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The $130 Canon Pixma MG4220 color inkjet multifunction will easily handle the needs of a home office, but its ink costs are higher than average, and they're ludicrously expensive if you make the mistake of purchasing the low-capacity PG-240 and CL-241 cartridges. On the other hand, the unit provides nice output, makes quick work of business documents and copies, and automatically duplexes—a nice feature set for the price.

The Pixma MG4220 is easy to set up via Wi-Fi or USB. The control panel, unfortunately, is still not so simple to use. On this model, Canon continues its practice of positioning three buttons under the LCD (a 2.5-incher on the Pixma MG4220) to perform certain actions, rather than letting you use the perfectly adequate four-way cursor control and OK button. Hopping back and forth among all the buttons is both pointless and aggravating. Comparatively, the software is a model of efficiency, and the new quick menu for common tasks is easy on the eye. The MFP provides full support for scanning, copying, and Web printing.

The Pixma MG4220's 100-sheet input tray and 50-sheet output tray make it strictly a low-volume printer. The fact that it will automatically refeed the paper to print on the other side (automatic duplexing, in other words) is a boon. You'll find no automatic document feeder for the letter/A4-size scanner on the top of the Pixma MG4220, but the lid telescopes a full inch to accept thicker materials. The MFP's card slot supports direct photo printing from SD Card and Memory Stick media.

Judging from our tests, the Pixma MG4220 is easily fast enough for a home office when printing and copying business documents. Monochrome pages exited at about 6.8 pages per minute on the PC and 6.6 ppm on the Mac, while copies arrived at a sprightly 6.4 ppm. Photos, on the other hand, printed rather slowly. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos printed at a little under 3 ppm to plain paper, but at a rate of only about 0.6 ppm on glossy paper. Full-page color photos rendered to glossy paper at a rate of 0.3 ppm, about average for an entry-level inkjet MFP.

The output from the Pixma MG4220 is good, but typical current-generation Canon. At default settings, text is sharp and black, monochrome graphics have a slight purple tint, and plain-paper color graphics could be a tad darker and use more contrast. At the printer's best setting, text is good enough for business documents, though extremely slow to arrive compared with default settings. Color photos look very nice, with our only minor complaint being the slight orange tint. Said tint, however, does give the pictures a friendly, warm vibe.

Now for the bad news. Ink costs for the MG4220 are high in general, but what you absolutely do not want to do is purchase the 180-page PG-240 black cartridge or CL-241 unified color cartridge (the same kinds of cartridges that also ship with the unit): At 10.6 cents per page for black and 13.9 cents per page for color, their costs are exorbitant. The story gets better—slightly—from there. The 300-page XL black costs $21, or 7.0 cents per page, and the 600-page XXL black costs $38, or 6.3 cents per page.

The XL unified color cartridge is more affordable: At $30 for 400 pages, you pay 7.5 cents per page for all three colors. That assumes usage similar to the industry standard employed to measure page yield. If you use a lot more of any one color, you’ll need to replace the entire cartridge even if plenty of ink remains for the other colors. A four-color page printed with the XL color cartridge and the XXL black cartridge costs a slightly lower-than-average 13.8 cents.

Melissa Riofrio

The Canon Pixma MG4220 has decent output and sufficient speed for most home offices, and is one of the cheaper MFPs with automatic duplexing. However, you do have alternatives. The HP Photosmart 5520 has cheaper inks, and the Brother MFC-J625DW has an automatic document feeder as well.

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Canon PowerShot SX260 HS Review: Another Top-Notch Canon Pocket Zoom

Thanks to a hard-to-beat combo of very good image quality, a generous optical-zoom reach, ease of use, and flexible shooting options, every iteration of Canon's PowerShot SX line seems to end up at the top of our pocket-megazoom cameras chart. The latest camera in the family, the 20X-optical-zoom Canon PowerShot SX260 HS ($350 as of June 1, 2012), is another winner. Because it covers so many bases, it's one of the easiest point-and-shoot cameras to recommend for any user.

The 12-megapixel PowerShot SX260 HS's versatile lens, assorted shooting modes, excellent image and video quality, and manual controls all contribute to its high rating. You'll find only a few weak spots in this camera: It doesn't shoot RAW, it has mediocre battery life, and audio capture is a bit hissy while it's shooting video. Due to its extensive zoom range, it also has a relatively narrow aperture at the wide-angle end--but every pocket megazoom we've ever seen also has that shortcoming.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

In PCWorld Labs subjective tests for image quality, the PowerShot SX260 HS earned a score of Very Good in nearly all of our testing categories, namely in exposure quality, color accuracy, and lack of distortion. In image sharpness it received a rating of Good.

The camera's sharpness score suffered a bit due to a visible moiré effect in our target-chart sharpness test, and the camera's images looked a bit soft in our still-life test. Colors appeared bright and vibrant without the oversaturation we commonly see from many of today's cameras, and the SX260 HS's auto-exposure mode produced excellent white-balance and exposure levels in our hands-on tests.

Click the thumbnails to the left to see the full-size images we used in the PCWorld Labs' subjective tests.

In video capture, the SX260 HS again ranked among the best models we've tested in the pocket megazoom category, generating good contrast, pleasing colors, and fine details in well-lit situations. The test footage we shot in low light wasn't as impressive, but due to its performance in our bright-lighting test, we rated the PowerShot SX260 HS's overall video quality as Very Good.

As mentioned before, audio pickup through the SX260 HS's top-mounted stereo microphones is a bit of a weakness. Audio capture in video mode sounded hissy to our subjective jury's ears, so we gave the camera an Audio score of Fair in our tests.

The battery life is a bit of a downer, too; the lack of long-lasting juice is beginning to look like a common failing among many of Canon's recent point-and-shoots. The PowerShot SX260 HS has a CIPA rating of 230 shots per charge of its lithium ion battery, which falls in the Fair range of our battery-life scores.

Shooting Modes and Features

SX260 HS: Wide-angle (25mm)SX260 HS: Full telephoto (500mm)SX260 HS: Handheld NightScene modeSX260 HS: Low-Light mode (3 megapixels)SX260 HS: Color Accent modeWith a 20X-optical-zoom (25mm to 500mm) lens and a pocketable body, the 12-megapixel Canon PowerShot SX260 HS is already a versatile camera in terms of hardware. When you consider its diverse range of shooting modes, the camera becomes the photographic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.

In addition to traditional manual controls for focus, aperture (F3.5 wide-angle to F6.8 telephoto maximum aperture), shutter speed (1/3200 of a second to 15 seconds), and ISO levels (ISO 100 to 3200), the SX260 HS has a number of creative shooting options to rival any competing pocket megazoom. It's a solid performer at both ends of its zoom range, with macro capabilities that let you get within 2 inches of your subject, and excellent optical stabilization when you're zoomed all the way. At full telephoto, the camera's stabilization system "floats" a bit, making it easier to keep faraway subjects in frame. In my hands-on tests, handheld shots that I took at full telephoto came out impressively sharp.

Along with the usual array of scene modes (Portrait, Smooth Skin, Sunset, Snow, Panorama Assist, Fireworks), the camera's scene menu has a few unique options. Smart Shutter, for instance, automatically snaps three photos when it senses that someone in front of the lens is smiling, making it an alternative for self-timer shots. And the SX260 HS's High-Speed Burst HQ mode shoots ten full-resolution shots per second, with focus and exposure settings locked at the first image in the sequence.

For low-light shooting without a flash, the camera has two dedicated scene modes that each go about their business differently. The Handheld NightScene mode uses burst shooting with exposure bracketing to create an HDR-like image in dark environments. The Low Light mode shoots a single 3-megapixel image, as the camera combines adjacent pixels on the sensor to increase light sensitivity. In my tests, the Handheld NightScene mode produced noticeably sharper, more-detailed images in dark settings, but both did a good job in low-light situations. You can see sample shots taken with each mode, in the same scenario, to the left.

The camera also has a separate mode-dial entry for its digital creative effects, which include a fish-eye simulator, a miniature mode that lets you manually adjust the vertical and horizontal plane of focus, black-and-white and vibrant-color effects, and a vignette filter that simulates a toy camera. Included as well are Canon's Color Accent and Color Swap modes, which remain the best implementations of single-color highlight features I've seen in any point-and-shoot camera. With these modes, you can isolate a single color in a black-and-white shot or replace all instances of one color with another in your photo, as you're shooting it.

The creative options extend to the SX260 HS's movie-capture modes, which max out at 1080p capture at 24 frames per second. In the camera's Super Slow Motion movie mode, you can shoot 640-by-480-pixel video at 120 fps and 320-by-240-pixel video at 240 fps. Miniature Mode is also applicable while you're shooting video, but the camera records at 6 fps and plays the video back at 30 fps to simulate an old-timey, fast-motion movie.

Other notable options on the SX260 HS's mode dial include a "Quiet" mode, which completely silences the shutter and disables the flash to help you capture that stealthy photo of a sleeping baby or a wedding ceremony, and a "Live" mode that helps novice shooters adjust the brightness, color saturation, and color temperature via on-screen sliders rather than delving into manual controls.

Hardware and Design

The PowerShot SX260 HS feels sturdily built, and it looks a bit more streamlined than most high-zoom pocket cameras thanks to its minimalist handgrip. A slender, raised bar on the front of the camera works well as a handgrip when you hold it with your middle finger, and a slight groove around the top edge of the camera provides a comfortable resting spot for your index finger when you're shooting one-handed.

The top of the camera hosts the pop-up flash, the shutter button ringed by the zoom control, the power button, and the camera's built-in stereo microphones. The back of the camera hosts a mode dial, which lies relatively flat on the surface and locks into place firmly with each mode selection.

Accompanying the mode dial and the 3-inch LCD screen are five more controls that handle most of the commonly used settings: a dedicated video-record button, a playback button, a four-way directional pad/scrollwheel (for quick access to exposure compensation, flash settings, macro/manual focus, and the self timer), a display-settings button, and a menu button. As for ports, the SX260 HS has a rubberized cover for a Mini-USB connector and a Mini HDMI connector on the side, as well as a metal-backed plastic door that covers the battery and SD/SDHC/SDXC slot on the bottom, next to the tripod mount.

GPS Features

The Canon PowerShot SX260 HS's GPS features are as basic as they come, but they work well when you're adding geotagged images to photo-sharing services that support mapping. The SX260 HS doesn't have any in-camera maps like the ones found in pocket-zoom competitors such as the Samsung WB850F, but it does add information to each photo's EXIF data that you can use with various mapping services.

The camera requires a clear view of the sky--and depending on your immediate environment, it can take a minute or so to establish your GPS connection. I tested the PowerShot SX260 HS's GPS functions in New York; at street level with a lot of tall buildings around, the initial GPS connection needed about 2 to 3 minutes, and the camera had trouble maintaining the connection. Once I went up to the roof of a building with a clear view of the sky, the satellite link-up took less than a minute and was less problematic.

After you create that connection, you have the option of turning on the camera's GPS Logger feature to refresh your location data periodically, even when the camera is turned off. As you might guess, leaving the GPS Logger feature on all the time will have a significant impact on battery life, so it's a good idea to use the feature sparingly if you don't carry an extra battery.

I didn't find much to look at on the camera in terms of geodata--pressing the Display button during playback showed raw longitude and latitude data for each geotagged shot--but once I offloaded a tagged photo to a computer, the info integrated seamlessly with the mapping functions in Flickr, Picasa, and SmugMug.

As with the majority of GPS-enabled cameras, the SX260 HS's GPS functions are a "nice to have" feature for frequent travelers and anyone who likes to geotag images. If you want in-camera mapping, you'd be better served by the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 or the Samsung WB850F. Outside of its GPS features, however, the PowerShot SX260 HS is simply one of the best pocket-megazoom cameras we've tested, and its geotagging works well with popular photo-sharing services.

Bottom Line

You're probably familiar with the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." The PowerShot SX260 HS blows that idea out of the water. This is a pocket megazoom that does a lot of things and masters quite a few of them, providing excellent overall image and video quality, easy-to-use controls for both experienced photographers and novices, and shooting modes that cover a whole lot of bases. It's hard to recommend a single camera for everybody, but in the realm of long-zoom point-and-shoots, this one offers as much universal appeal as I've seen.

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Canon PowerShot Elph 520 HS Review: Ultracompact Camera With 12X Optical Zoom

Pocket-megazoom cameras have been around for a few years now, but you probably haven't seen one as small or as simple as the Canon PowerShot Elph 520 HS ($300 as of April 7, 2012). In a way, it represents a new breed of basic compact camera: Rather than cramming more megapixels into a tiny sensor, the 10-megapixel PowerShot Elph 520 HS keeps the pixel count relatively sane and jacks up the optical zoom to 12X (28mm to 336mm), an impossible-sounding level for a camera of this size.

This tiny little camera can fit comfortably in a shirt or pants pocket; at just 0.76 inch deep, it's the size of a deck of playing cards, and it's a pocket megazoom that's even smaller than many of today's 3X-optical-zoom cameras. The trade-offs for the tiny size start with the camera's manual controls for shutter and aperture--there aren't any--but this model does offer Canon's latest auto-exposure functions, scene modes, and in-camera effects.

Regrettably, this camera is a disappointing performer, at least if you're used to the generally excellent output of Canon's PowerShot line. Our review unit made everything look a bit soft, and the PowerShot Elph 520 HS will leave many owners wanting bigger buttons, better battery life, and more fine-tunable control. For casual shooters who just want as much optical zoom as possible in a pocket camera, it's still a good option.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

Getting a razor-sharp shot with this camera may prove to be a challenge, but if you do snap one, it should look great. In PCWorld Labs subjective tests for image and video quality, the PowerShot Elph 520 HS scored very well in most categories, but image sharpness was a major weak spot that brought down its overall score.

Although we didn't see a lot of chromatic abberation or fringing in our test shots, everything looked slightly fuzzy. Unfortunately, it's easier to fix exposure and color problems during the editing process than it is to sharpen up a soft image.

As a result, our judges gave the PowerShot Elph 520 HS a sharpness score of Poor in our tests, but its ratings for exposure quality, color accuracy, and lack of distortion were among the best we've tested in the world of point-and-shoots over the past year. Held back by the disappointing sharpness scores, its overall imaging score fell at the low end of our Very Good range.

Video performance was also a bit of a letdown, given Canon's consistently high scores for video-capture quality. Still, the PowerShot Elph 520 HS netted a video-quality score of Good. Again, fuzziness was an issue, and colors in our test footage looked a bit too vibrant to seem "real," but the camera did an admirable job of brightening up video that we shot in low light.

Another issue: This model's battery life falls well short of the 300-plus shots we look for in a point-and-shoot camera. The PowerShot Elph 520 HS is rated at just 190 shots per charge of its tiny, ChapStick-size lithium ion battery, a score that falls in our Fair range.

Shooting Modes and Features

Elph 520 HS: Wide-angleElph 520 HS: Full telephotoAs with many long-zoom cameras, the 12X-optical-zoom (28mm to 336mm) PowerShot Elph 520 HS's major drawback is its narrow maximum aperture of F3.4 at wide angle. This camera doesn't have full manual controls or aperture- and shutter-priority modes, either, although it does provide a long-shutter scene mode that lets you dial in shutter speeds from 1 second to 15 seconds.

To the left are sample shots that showcase the camera's field of view at wide-angle and full telephoto. When zooming quickly from wide-angle to full telephoto, the camera's autofocus system searches a tiny bit from midrange to full zoom, but generally locks focus on faraway subjects within a second. The camera's optical stabilization system works well in steadying shots, as long as it's dealing with a relatively normal amount of hand shakiness. You'll need to at least attempt to hold the camera steady; using a flat surface or a tripod, if possible, is always a good idea.

Elph 520 HS: Handheld Night SceneElph 520 HS: Low-Light ModeThe camera can extend beyond its 12X optical zoom range to a simulated 21X digital zoom, although you will see a loss of detail and paintlike pockmarking at larger sizes in shots taken with the digital zoom enabled.

The PowerShot Elph 520 HS also has a Program mode that lets you set ISO (100 to 3200), white balance presets, and light-metering presets (evaluative, centered, and spot metering), as well as Canon's full boat of specialized shooting modes. You can preview and apply a few fun filter effects as you're shooting, such as a tilt-shift-simulating Miniature Mode, a Toy Camera filter, and a fish-eye lens effect.

Elph 520 HS: Macro ModeElph 520 HS: Color Accent ModeElph 520 HS: Color Swap ModeTo eke the most out of the PowerShot Elph 520 HS's 10-megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, you can turn to a couple of low-light scene modes available in the camera's menus. Handheld Night Scene mode stacks three shots taken in rapid succession at different exposure settings to create an HDR-like photo that brings out detail in darker scenes. Low-Light mode jacks up the ISO and uses pixel binning to increase light sensitivity while reducing resolution to 2.5 megapixels.

Of those two modes, Handheld Night Scene performed much better in my hands-on tests, producing more-accurate white balance and sharper contrast in low-light scenes. That said, both modes' images suffered from noise and a decrease in detail when we viewed the results at larger sizes (you can see sample shots taken in each mode above).

Other scene-mode highlights include Canon's Color Accent and Color Swap modes, which let you bring out a single color in an otherwise black-and-white photo or swap instances of colors in a photo, respectively. You can see examples of those modes in action to the left; in Color Accent mode, red is the only color visible, and in Color Swap mode, I switched all the red objects in the frame to yellow.

Like other recent Canon cameras, the CMOS-sensored PowerShot Elph 520 HS also has a high-speed still-shooting mode (about 7 shots per second at a reduced 2.5-megapixel resolution) and a superslow-motion movie mode that records 320-by-240 footage at 240 frames per second or 640-by-480 footage at 120 fps.

The PowerShot Elph 520 HS also performs well in macro mode, with the ability to capture a clear close-up shot when you position the lens less than an inch away from the subject. All in all, despite the lack of manual exposure controls, the in-camera settings cover a wide array of photo options.

Hardware and Design

There is only one word to describe the PowerShot Elph 520 HS's physical build, and that word is boxy. It's a solid deck of cards, with sharp corners and few protrusions aside from the shutter button/zoom control on the top of the camera.

Although the camera doesn't offer a raised handgrip, it is small enough, and light enough, to hold comfortably with an index finger around the edge. The control scheme is a departure from most Canon PowerShots, which have all of their controls handled by tiny buttons on the back and top of the camera rather than the usual directional pad or scrollwheel.

A 3-inch-diagonal LCD screen and seven small buttons, each of which is about the size of a piece of confetti, dominate the back of the camera. You get a dedicated video-record button; a diamond-shaped arrangement of four buttons that let you navigate menus and supply quick access to exposure compensation, macro mode, flash, and display settings; and two buttons below that let you select a function and access the in-camera menu.

On the top of the camera are the expected shutter button/zoom control, the power button, a toggle switch for selecting between Auto mode and the camera's program and scene modes, and a playback button. Three doors cover ports on the camera, consisting of one for the battery port and another for the MicroSD card slot on the bottom of the camera, plus a plasticky door on the side of the camera that covers both a Mini HDMI connection and a Mini-USB port. You get a tripod mount on the bottom of the camera as well.

If you're eyeing this camera, that MicroSD card is something to think about. It may not be a huge deal for anyone who plans to buy a camera and a storage card in one trip to the store, but anyone who owns a full-size SD/SDHC/SDXC card that they were hoping to use with this camera is out of luck. Many MicroSD cards come with a MicroSD-to-SD-Card converter, which you may need to use to offload photos and video to your computer, although connecting the camera via USB will work for that, too.

Bottom Line

It's best to think of this camera as a solid, basic point-and-shoot that happens to have a particularly long lens. If you're a fan of Canon's older, easy-to-use PowerShot SD series, the PowerShot Elph 520 HS basically adds a lot of zoom to that line.

The major issues are the less-than-sharp images, the disappointing battery life, Canon's space-saving decision to use a MicroSD card for storage, and the lack of manual controls. It's a small camera, too, which offers benefits in terms of sheer portability but also means it has tiny buttons (so it may be a challenge for larger-handed users to operate). Overall, the Canon PowerShot Elph 520 HS disappoints in photo quality and performance, but as a simple, pocketable camera that offers impressive optical reach for its size, it should do the trick for many casual photographers.

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Canon Pixma MG4120 Review: All the Basics, Expensive Black Ink

The $130 (as of March 19, 2012) Canon Pixma MG4120 color inkjet multifunction (print/copy/scan) is one of the cheaper MFPs on the market to feature paper-saving automatic duplexing. It also produces nice-looking output at a reasonable pace. Color-ink costs are lower than average for a low-price MFP, too, so photos and Web pages are relatively cheap to print. The black ink is pricey, however, so printing out everyday letters and term papers costs more than the norm.

You can attach the Pixma MG4120 directly to your PC via USB, or network it using the integrated Wi-Fi. The unit's flip-up 2.4-inch LCD screen is easy to read, and makes using the printer a breeze for the most part. Canon needs to ditch the three "function" buttons for making selections, though. Having to move your fingers to those buttons is a waste of time and effort; the OK button and four-way cursor control would suffice. The Pixma MG4120 also features SD Card and Memory Stick slots for printing photos or offloading scans.

Paper-handling features on the Pixma MG4120 are modest, though adequate for home use. You get a single 100-sheet letter/legal input tray at the front of the unit, and a 50-sheet output tray directly above it. The unit doesn't have an automatic document feeder for the A4/letter-size scanner, but it does offer an automatic duplexer for hassle-free two-sided printing. The lid for the scanner telescopes to accommodate thicker material.

The Pixma MG4120's output is about the same quality as what you see from other Canon Pixma MG-series printers--that is, quite good. Text is sharp, if not laserlike. Color graphics have an orange skew that can make faces look spray-tanned, but the tint also makes for warm-feeling landscapes and still-lifes. Photo details are nicely rendered.

Speed is good for everyday tasks and the odd photo. In our tests the Pixma MG4120 printed text pages at 6.5 pages per minute on the PC and 7.1 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size photos printed at 2.6 ppm on plain paper, and at 1.2 ppm on photo paper. Color PDF pages and full-page photos printed on the Mac took twice as long as the average. Scans and copies at normal and higher resolutions were decently fast. And, in case you were wondering, the Pixma MG4120's performance falls right in line with the numbering convention of the MG series--it's faster than the MG2120 and MG3120, and slower than the MG6120 and the newer MG5220.

Similar to its brethren, the Pixma MG4120 has higher-than-average black-ink costs. The PG-240XL Extra Large black cartridge costs $21 and lasts for 300 pages, or 7 cents per page. The $38, 600-page PG-240XXL black cartridge reduces costs only slightly to 6.3 cents per page. Color, on the other hand, is relatively cheap. The unified-color CL-241XL costs $30 and lasts for 400 pages, or 7.5 cents per page. A four-color page using the PG-240XXL and the CL-241XL would be 13.8 cents, about average in cost for an inkjet MFP. Note that with a tricolor cartridge (containing cyan, magenta, and yellow), when one color runs out, you have to replace the entire cartridge even if ink remains for the other colors.

If you're looking for alternatives with lower black-ink costs, both the HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One ($150) and the Brother MFC-J625DW ($130) are worth considering. However, the Pixma MG4120 is otherwise every bit as competent, and it's decently inexpensive for mixed-color pages and photos.

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Canon Pixma MG2120 Color Inkjet MFP: Basic With Pricey Black Ink and a Short Warranty

Depending on how much and what you print, the $70 (as of 03/07/2012), USB-attached Canon Pixma MG2120 color inkjet multifunction printer may be adequate for a home user. But its black ink is hardly a bargain, so if you print mostly text, you won't like the ongoing costs. On the other hand, if you normally print mixed text and color graphics, this MFP costs about the same to operate as most of the competition.

The Pixma MG2120 will handle low volumes of printing, copying, and scanning easily. Not surprisingly, given the price, it has no amenities such as an automatic duplexer, or an automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanner. On the plus side, the lid for the letter/A4-size scanner telescopes to accommodate thicker material, and you can even push-scan by changing a setting in the scanner dialog. The single input tray handles about 100 sheets, and the output tray directly above it handles 50.

The control panel is rudimentary. The single-digit LED and array of flashing-light indicators can be hard to decipher, despite some good labeling. There are no media-card slots, nor is there a display for navigating menus or previewing photos.

Canon, unlike HP with its Photosmart 5010, offers a full-featured PC printer driver. The unit has the regular panoply of layout options such as booklet and "n-up," or tiled, pages (multiple pages reduced in size and printed on a single sheet of paper).

Mac users, however, will be disappointed: You'll find no manual duplexing support for the Mac, and Canon's solution for supporting Lion (OS X 10.7) was to send me to a website where I could find no download specifically for the Pixma MG2120, only those for more expensive models. Fortunately, Apple's own Add Printer installation found, downloaded, and installed a suitable driver for the unit.

The output from the Pixma MG2120 is decently fast considering the price and its intended low-volume usage. Text prints at about 5.8 pages per minute on the PC, and 5.7 ppm on the Mac; 4-by-6-inch photos print at 2.4 ppm on plain paper and at about half that rate on glossy photo paper. The full-page photo we print from the Mac takes a little less than 4 minutes, or 0.3 ppm--a bit slower than the norm. Scans and copies on the other hand, are a on par with, or quicker than, those of most MFPs.

The quality of the Pixma MG2120's output is about the same as that produced by other Canon Pixma MG-series printers. Text is not laserlike, but certainly serviceable, even for business correspondence. Color graphics have a warm, friendly vibe. They’re not terribly accurate in terms of their color palette, skewing orangeish even on Canon’s own photo paper. They do, however, show nice detail.

The Pixma MG2120's black ink is expensive no matter which size of cartridge you purchase. The PG-240XL Extra Large black cartridge costs $21 and lasts for 300 pages, which is a pricey 7 cents per page (cpp). The $38, 600-page PG-240XXL black cartridge is only slightly cheaper at 6.3 cpp. The tri-color CL-241XL cost $30 and lasts for 400 pages, or 7.5 cpp. That makes a four-color page 13.8 cpp at best, which is about average for an inkjet MFP.

Canon offers only a 90-day warranty on the Pixma MG2120. Before discovering that, I would've estimated that the construction of the unit would have it lasting far longer than three months. However, Canon's brief commitment to the unit should be noted.

If you print in low volume--a few pages a few times a week, or an occasional photo--then the economics of the Pixma MG2120 might work for you. For more frequent use, opt for something a tad pricier with better black-ink costs, such as the Brother MFC-J430W or the Epson Stylus NX430. Both of these units also carry a more reassuring one-year warranty.

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Canon Pixma MG3120 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Review: A Nice Bargain Sabotaged by Consumables Costs

The $80 (as of February 3, 2012) Canon Pixma MG3120 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One is one of the least-expensive color inkjet multifunction printers you can find that offers paper-saving automatic duplex printing. It also prints reasonably quickly, produces good output, and is easy to use. Unfortunately, that collection of positives can't make up for the unit's extremely pricey black ink.

Setting up the Pixma MG3120 is easy, though it lacks an LCD, so you'll have to use the USB connection to perform the wireless setup (unless you have Wi-Fi Protected Setup on your router). The documentation is top-notch, and the control panel is very simple: A two-digit LED shows copy quantity and messages, and Canon provides clearly labeled buttons and LED indicator lights for copying, scanning, and maintenance tasks. A Wi-Fi indicator sits on the front of the unit, but there are no card slots and no USB/PictBridge port. Paper handling on the Pixma MG3120 is rudimentary (aside from the automatic duplexing feature): A front panel unfolds to reveal a 100-sheet input area.

The Pixma MG3120's output quality belies the printer's price. Photos on Canon's own paper looked quite good, despite a slightly unnatural orange tint that was especially noticeable on human faces. On plain paper, color graphics looked reasonably accurate, and text appeared dark and sharp, though grayscale graphics tended a bit toward purple.

Performance was quite good for an $80 MFP. Full-page color glossy prints took nearly 4 minutes to print, but text pages printed on plain paper print at 6.2 pages per minute on the PC and 5.85 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size photos emerged at 2.4 ppm on plain paper and 1.2 ppm on glossy paper.

In the category of "most useless answer ever on a website," Canon has a serious contender: In the Product Q&A section for the Pixma MG3120 online, a user asked, "how many sheets does each cartridge print?" Canon's response: "The actual ink yield obtained from each cartridge will vary depending on texts/photos printed, applications software used, print mode selected and type of paper used." That's it--the answer doesn't even hazard a ballpark estimate. Why not point the user to Canon's own page-yield documents, which are nearly impossible to find otherwise?

The reason for the evasive reply just might be the dear cost of the Pixma MG3120's black ink. Two sizes of black replacements are available: the 300-page XL, which costs $21 (a whopping 7 cents per page); and the 600-page XXL, which runs $38 (or 6.3 cents per page). The XL unified color cartridge (which includes all three colors) is somewhat more affordable, relatively speaking, at $30 for 400 pages (7.45 cents per page) for all three colors. A four-color page (printed with the XL color cartridge and the XXL black cartridge) would cost a pricier-than-average 13.8 cents. You'll need to visit the store fairly soon after the initial purchase, too: The Pixma MG3120 ships with 180-page starter cartridges that didn't even make it through our testing.

In our years in San Francisco, we've seen multitudes of inkjet printers, including Canons, left on the sidewalk because of their ridiculous ink prices. In some cases, buying a new printer with fresh ink costs no more than buying replacement cartridges for a model you already own. Despite the Canon Pixma MG3120's competence in multiple areas, its high ink prices make it difficult to recommend. Instead, consider the Epson Stylus NX430 or the Brother MFC-J430W.

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