Canon Pixma MX525 review

Print quality is excellent. Standard-quality mono text is as sharp as anything we’ve seen from a laser printer and even draft text looks better than many printers’ standard-quality prints, with only the faintest hint of a wobbly edge on some letters. However, given that draft text prints at 8.5ppm and standard text at 8ppm, you’re best off sticking with the sharp perfection of standard-quality printing. Our colour document looked fantastic, too. We saw lines on large images, but this was only visible on very close examination. Colours were accurate, shading was smooth, and fine 8pt text was clear, with only faint imperfections on some curved characters. Colour prints emerged a little slowly, at 2.2ppm, but this isn’t markedly sluggish by inkjet standards.

Photocopies took 15 seconds for a mono reproduction from the platen and 34 seconds for colour. Our colour photocopy looked great, with sharp text and accurate colour reproduction, but we noticed some grey lines on our mono photocopy. Apart from the 19s 150dpi A4 scan, scan speeds are a little slow, with a 300dpi scan of the same document coming in at 59s and a 600dpi photo scan at just over a minute.

Scan quality is better than that of most CIS scanners you’ll find built into an MFP, with plenty of smooth shading and sharper-than-average reproduction of areas of fine detail. It’s not perfect: some dark tones blend into each other and become indistinguishable and small text at 150dpi is a little fuzzy around the edges, but 300dpi document scans are perfect for archiving important correspondence and invoices. The scanner interface is to Canon’s usual high standard, with options that’ll keep both basic and advanced users happy.

With good print quality, plenty of connectivity options and surprisingly low running costs, this low-cost MFP isn’t perfect, but it’s a great Budget Buy.