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Canon PIXMA MG6650 review

Front right view, PIXMA MG6650
Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £80
inc VAT

The PIXMA MG6650 is a great all-round MFP for the home

Canon’s PIXMA MG6650 is a smart looking inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) for general home use. It can print, scan and make copies, but not send or receive faxes, and Wi-Fi support lets you share it easily over a home network. There’s no USB port for direct prints, but there are SD and Memory Stick card slots, plus support for scanning to or printing from cloud services like Dropbox. NFC support lets you quickly pair a mobile device, but we’re still to be convinced that this is much more than a gimmick.

Editing AirPrint settings using the web admin interface, PIXMA MG6650

Use the web interface to monitor and configure advanced features. Here we’re customising the AirPrint settings

Configuring the PIXMA MG6650 as our printer in the PIXMA Android app

NFC support can help pair mobile devices with the printer, but it’s easy if they’re already on the same wireless network

The compact design is attractive, but not perfect. The paper input tray is uncovered, allowing dust to gather. The output tray is also very short: you need to extend a paper rest from the front of the input tray to catch pages which would otherwise spill over. The five separate ink cartridges are inserted in a slot revealed by lifting up the control panel, but the access is a bit cramped. More importantly, there’s no physical keying to stop you inserting tanks in the wrong slot.

Putting these grumbles aside, this is a great device. It only costs about £10 more than the excellent PIXMA MG5650, yet adds faster print speeds, memory card slots, NFC support, and a touchscreen control system. That last addition is significant, as most mid-range PIXMAs make do with clumsily arranged buttons. This is much better, even if the touchscreen isn’t perfectly responsive – especially when you’re using it to control cloud-based services.

Canon's XPS print driver interface, PIXMA MG6650

Canon offers standard and XPS drivers; the latter may offer speed and quality benefits. The user interface is the same

The MG6650 is a reasonably swift printer, doling out our 25-page text test at a rate of 13.5 pages per minute (ppm). Draft mode might save ink, but at 13.8ppm it was barely quicker. Colour printing was less impressive, with the complex graphics of our test slowing to 3.7ppm – a middling result. Photo prints weren’t especially rapid, either, with each 6×4″ borderless photo needing slightly over two minutes. Text, colour graphics and photo prints were all extremely good, however, as were black and colour photocopies. Continues on Page 2

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Hardware
TechnologyThermal inkjet
Maximum print resolution4,800×1,200dpi
Maximum optical scan resolution (output bit depth)1,200×2,400dpi
Number of colours (cartridges)5 (5)
Maximum number of colours (cartridges)5 (5)
Quoted photo durability (source)40 years (Canon)
Standard interfacesUSB, 802.11b/g/n wireless
Optional interfacesNone
Dimensions (HxWxD)148x455x369mm
Weight6.4kg
Duty cycle (pages per month)Not stated
Paper handling
Maximum paper sizeA4/legal
Maximum paper weight300gsm
Standard paper trays (capacity)1 (100)
Maximum paper trays (capacity)1 (100)
DuplexYes
35N/A
Photo features
Borderless printingA4
Direct (PC-less) printingMemory card
Memory card supportSDHC, Memory Stick Duo/PRO
Supported operating systemsWindows XP or later, Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, Windows RT, Android, iOS
Other features7.5cm colour touchscreen
Buying information
WarrantyOne year RTB
Price£80 inc VAT
Consumable parts and pricesPGI-550PGBK XL pigment black 500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712) £10, CLI-551BK XL dye black 5,565 pages (Canon estimate) £9. CLI-551C XL cyan 715 pages £10, CLI-551M XL magenta 645 pages £10, CLI-551Y XL yellow 715 pages (ISO/IEC 24712) £11
Quoted life of supplied black cartridge(s)Pigment black 300 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), dye black 1,795 pages (Canon estimate)
Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s)Cyan 345 pages, magenta 306 pages, yellow 347 pages (ISO/IEC 24712)
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT6.6p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (colour part)4.3p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (mono part)2.3p
Supplierwww.currys.co.uk
Detailswww.canon.co.uk
Part code9539B008AA