Canon Pixma MP240 review

Canon's latest budget MFP is the Pixma MP240, an all-in-one inkjet printer, scanner and copier.

It uses a tri-colour cartridge plus a cartridge of pigmented black ink for standard document printing. It lacks a dye-based black suitable for photo printing, so makes photographic black by combining cyan, magenta and yellow. We were initially concerned about the quality of the MP240's photo prints. Light colours were vivid and accurate, but grey shades and dark tones looked pale and greenish when they emerged from the printer. Dark colours became more intense when our prints dried but were still poor compared to those from printers using a dedicated photographic black.

The MP240 isn't astoundingly fast, but a standard quality print speed of 5.6ppm is quick enough for most tasks, and document quality is up to the high standard we expect from Canon's inkjets. Colour illustrations were bright and accurately shaded and the pigmented black cartridge produced sharp, smooth-edged text. Even in draft mode, which prints at a swift 7.5ppm, text was clear and well defined. Both colour and mono copy quality were excellent, with clear reproduction of text and accurate colour and shading on images.

The ScanGear scanner software has been simplified and streamlined. Fortunately, Advanced Mode features such as software-based dust and scratch removal and tone and shadow correction are still present. By default, the scanner interface closes after each scan but can be set to remain open. You can also control whether your preview image is retained between scans. A maximum resolution of 1,200dpi is higher than those of most budget MFPs, but the integrated Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scanner is nonetheless best suited to scanning photos for the web or documents for archiving. Colours and shading were accurate, though.

The MP240 lacks the features of more expensive MFPs, such as Canon's £170 Pixma MX850. There's no screen, automatic duplexer or photographic black ink cartridge. It's not ideal if you want to print a lot of photos or scan images at very high resolutions, but it put in a decent performance in most of our tests. It has a PictBridge port for direct printing from digital cameras, but no memory card slots. Many budget MFPs are inexplicably limited to only nine photocopies in a single run, but the MP240 can make up to 20.

Print costs of 7.3p per mixed colour page and 2.9p per mono page are a little high, and the use of a tri-colour cartridge means you'll have to replace the whole thing if you run out of one colour. Print speeds are slow compared with those of Canon's more expensive inkjets and MFPs but print and scan quality are both good. If you don't print very often or in great quantities, this home MFP is a good buy.