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Canon Pixma iP7250 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £59.12
inc VAT

Canon's A4 inkjet gives superb prints, but it's a little pricy to run

Specifications

thermal inkjet, print speed, USB, 802.11b/g/n wireless, 128x451x368mm

http://www.printerbase.co.uk

The PIXMA iP7250 is the top model in Canon’s range of A4 inkjet printers. As a single-function device, there’s no scanner or fax machine, and there’s also no display or memory card reader for making direct photo prints. While that rules out the kind of direct prints and copies which are possible from a multifunction printer (MFP), the iP7250 can connect to a wireless network, so you can use it to print from PCs, smartphones and various other networked devices.

Canon Pixma iP7250

This well-specified printer uses Canon’s five-ink engine, which employs a pigment-based black ink for bold text on plain paper, and dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks for detailed and vibrant photo printing. There are no light cyan or magenta inks, sometimes used to reduce the appearance of grain in light regions of photos, but the printer’s one picolitre minimum ink droplet size provides a similar benefit.

The iP7250’s two paper input trays slot into the base at its front; the lower of these accepts up to 125 sheets of A4 paper, while the upper tray handles photo paper up to 5x7in. The printer’s front cover releases automatically when it’s switched on, its integrated arm swinging out to form the output tray. It’s a neat design, but the arm needs to be extended manually to support A4 paper, and there’s no lip at the end to arrest pages; the output stack became untidy in our tests.

Canon Pixma iP7250

At its default setting, the iP7250 prints high-quality black text. At a glance, it’s hard to tell the crisp, bold results from laser prints. At 12.1 pages per minute (ppm), it’s also rapid, but it’s strangely no quicker at the Fast setting. At 4ppm, colour prints were acceptably swift, and they looked great.

This is a fast photo printer, delivering each borderless 4x6in print in just 60 seconds. It took just over 10 minutes to deliver two 10x8in photos. The results at either setting were exceptionally good, with a uniform glossy finish, accurate colour reproduction and no grain visible to the naked eye.

Great all-round print quality and practical paper-handling features, such as automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, make this a strong printer, but it isn’t cheap and you can buy a competent inkjet MFP for a similar price. It’s also a little expensive to run, with each page of mixed text and graphics likely to cost just over 8p. If you don’t need the extra functions of an MFP and great prints are more important than cheap ones, the Canon Pixma iP7250 is a great choice.

Basic Specifications

Rating****
Maximum native print resolution9,600×2,400dpi

Tested Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.010m 7s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.06m 15s

Print Quality

Number of ink colours5
Number of ink cartridges5
Maximum number of ink colours5
Maximum number of cartridges5
Quoted photo durability30 years
Quoted photo durability sourceCanon

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfacesUSB, 802.11b/g/n wireless
Optional printer interfacesnone
Size128x451x368mm
Weight6.6kg
Noise (in normal use)44.4dB(A)

Paper Handling

Maximum paper sizeA4/legal
Maximum paper weight300gsm
Standard paper inputs2
Standard paper input capacity145
Maximum paper inputs2
Maximum paper input capacity145
Duplex (code, cost if option)Yes

Photo Features

PictBridge supportNo
Borderless printingA4
Direct (PC-less) printingNo
Supported memory cardsnone
CD printingYes

General

Printer technologythermal inkjet
Supported operating systemsWindows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
Other inkjet featuresSupport printing from Android and iOS devices through free app and Air Print
Other inkjet optionsnone

Buying Information

Price£59
Consumable parts and prices£12 each
Quoted life of supplied black cartridgePigment black 300, photo black 1,795 pages (ISO/IEC 24712)
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
Price per colour A4 page5.2p
Price per mono A4 page2.9p
Warrantyone year repair or replace
Supplierhttp://www.printerbase.co.uk
Detailswww.canon.co.uk

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.010m 7s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.06m 15s