Canon PIXMA MP800R review

The PIXMA MP800 sits at the top of Canon's large range of inkjet MFPs.

It's a highly specified device aimed at photographic and creative use. To this end, its scanner has a high optical resolution and transparency backlight, while its printer has a very high resolution and uses tiny one-picolitre ink droplets to reduce grain.

The standard MP800 model has the PictBridge USB port and memory card slots that you might expect from a photo-oriented device, as well as an infrared receiver. As if that wasn't enough, the MP800R version reviewed here can also connect directly to a wired Ethernet or wireless network.

It isn't immediately apparent from its instructions, but this MFP must initially be configured over a USB connection, even if you plan to use it on a network. We hoped to connect to it using a wireless connection, but the MFP wasn't able to detect our 802.11g access point, which was configured to use wireless channel 13. Digging in Canon's help files revealed that the MP800R supports only the 11 American wireless channels. Europe gets an extra two channels: 12 and 13.

After changing our router's channel, the MP800R successfully joined our network. The installation program's automatic performance measurement routine warned us that we might experience slow performance. This proved to be the case, and prints and scans frequently failed despite a good wireless signal. We moved the MFP to within five metres of the access point, but its wireless performance remained unusable. We conducted the rest of our tests over a wired network connection.

The printer put in a strong performance across all our print benchmarks. Draft and correspondence-quality text was up to a high standard and it appeared quickly. As with other PIXMA inkjets equipped with automatic duplex (double-sided) printing, identical settings produced inferior results to regular single-sided prints. Colour plain paper prints looked good, and were almost as fast as we've seen from an inkjet, while glossy photo prints were impressive with no visible grain.

The quality of images captured by the scanner was equally high, with accurate colour reproduction and good light and shade detail. Film scans weren't remarkably sharp, but the results were competitive for a flatbed. Unfortunately, scan times were slow, particularly at high resolutions. The MP800R took a tedious four minutes and 53 seconds to complete a scan of a 6x4" photograph at 1,200dpi. We wondered if scan speeds were being limited by the MFP's network connection and reinstalled it using USB. Scan times were dramatically improved, with the same 1,200dpi scan taking a competitive 52 seconds.

The MP800R produces quality scans, prints and copies, but it's expensive. We were also disappointed with the wired networking, which was slower than its USB connection; we found the wireless interface pointless on our review unit, as it often cut out, leaving a job incomplete. A better option is the USB-only MP800, which has the same scanner and print engine but costs £74 less. If you must have support for wired networking and don't mind slightly more grain in photo prints, we'd recommend HP's Photosmart 3210.

Author: Simon Handby