Labs

Most of Canon's Pixma range is aimed at home users or photo-printing enthusiasts, but the MX850 is targeted squarely at small and home office users. It has a 35-page duplex ADF copier and automatic duplexer, rear- and front-loading paper trays that each hold 150 pages of A4, and full network scan, fax and printing capabilities via a 10/100 Ethernet port. Consequently, the Pixma MX850 is enormous. It has a larger footprint than many small-office laser printers, measuring 258x507x482mm.

The installation disc has step-by-step setup instructions, though we'd have preferred more clarity on network installation. To connect to the printer via Ethernet, you configure it by connecting it to your PC over USB. The installer

ADVERTISEMENT

then configured the printer and mapped its memory card reader as a network drive.

The MX850's draft print speed is a fairly quick 13.4ppm. This isn't the fastest here, but prints are the best looking. Normal-quality text prints were also fast at 7.9ppm, and sharp enough to rival those of most laser printers. A time to first page of just 11 seconds was also reminiscent of a laser. Colour prints were the clearest of any here and their 2.7ppm print speed didn't disappoint. Although this isn't a dedicated photo printer, its photo prints were clear and vividly coloured. Six 6x4in prints took just five-and-a-half minutes. Copy quality was also near-perfect.

The scanner interface is powerful and easy to use. Its scan resolution list in Advanced mode only goes up to 1,200dpi, but you can manually enter resolutions of up to 4,800dpi. The interface closes after each scan by default, but you can configure it to remain open using the Preferences menu.

This is the best printer here, but also the most expensive. Fortunately, it's economical to run, with a mixed-colour print cost of 5.6p per page and a mono cost of 2p with high-capacity cartridges (black and colour replacements cost around £10 each). If you have the money and space for it, this is a great business inkjet MFP.