Canon Pixma MP495 Review
The Pixma MP495 is a capable printer with a good series of essential features at a low cost. Its photo capabilities do allow it; however, at this cost, it's difficult to consider it more important than an entry-level version that still offers good value for the money. As a casual choice to enhance efficiency at home, it's a good fit if professional-quality picture output isn't a concern.
If you're looking for a sub-$100 multifunction printer for regular use at home, the Canon Pixma MP495 will certainly satisfy your needs. It prints, scans, and duplicates files, and the built-in wireless print web server means you won't have a bundle of cable televisions entangling the office. We have a few nitpickable defects, but overall, Canon rates well with the Pixma MP495.
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| Canon PIXMA MP495 - canon.com |
The price of All-in-One (AIO) printers is dropping dramatically, and the Canon Pixma MP495 is just one of the first to break the triple digits at $80. The gadget can print, scan, and duplicate wirelessly via its 802.11 b/g wireless feature, and we're also a fan of its shiny black executive aesthetic.
Approved: the print speed needs a boost, and the absence of an LCD display on the front panel became irritatingly evident during our lab screening; however, we think it's a rewarding trade-off for $80. Amateur digital photographers and business specialists will certainly get better gas mileage from the step-up models; however, the MP495 delivers reliable results that meet the needs of the laid-back printer user.
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Layout
The Pixma MP495 is part of Canon's latest round of consumer-level all-in-one printers and gets an upgraded look that's both aesthetically pleasing and functional. In contrast to last year's silver-and-black color pattern, the brand-new lineup includes a glossy black finish that repels fingerprints and gives the printer an executive air.
Physically, the build retains the rounded sides and the little footprint at a workable 18 inches vast, 13 inches deep, and 6 inches tall, however the MP495 maintains the expense low by departing from the timeless LCD screen we saw on previous designs, for a side panel with buttons for typical printing functions like begin, stop, color vs. black and white, toggling between plain and photo paper dimensions, and, obviously, a power switch.
There's also a specialized scan button, although we're unclear why Canon doesn't have one for copying as well. The absence of an LCD display can be frustrating if your printing routines involve numerous duplicates and several setting changes, and during testing we found ourselves wanting a pre-programmed favorites switch that would allow you to auto-program frequently used settings.
Snapshot photographers will also loathe the absence of a memory card slot, a feature typically found in many entry-level printers that come through CNET. That said, we stand by our referral of the MP495 if you plan to use it intermittently —frequent printers ought to consider a higher-end model with a screen and additional features like an auto-document feeder for hands-free scanning.
2 opposing trays regulate the paper handling: the input tray folds up out of the top and can stand up to 150 sheets of plain 8.5-inch-by-11-inch paper, and a tilted output tray on the bottom can just hold 50 sheets of paper; however, it conveniently folds up into the gadget while not being used.
The scanner lid props open with a thin plastic arm to reveal a small two-ink cartridge bay underneath: one dye-based tricolor cartridge and another pigment black cartridge. Sadly, the compromise for a printer with an affordable initial price is the expense of ink, which you'll need to replace more often than with a pricier model with a 5- or even 6-ink cartridge bay that separates the colors.
Canon offers compatible cartridges for the MP495 at $20.99 for shade and $15.99 for black, but you can save cash in the long term by purchasing extra-large-capacity Canon cartridges that sell at a reduced price.
The Pixma MP870 prints, scans, and duplicates over a USB 2.0 link by defau;t; howev,er, you can also connect to a computer system wirelessly via the built-in 802.11 b/g print web server. The easiest way to do this is to first create a wired link, then add wireless access via proxy, as indicated in the easy manual. Unfortunately, you cannot share the printer over a wired network because the MP495 lacks an Ethernet port.
The printer features a motorist installation CD that lets you choose from commonly used templates such as standard, business, paper-saving, and picture printing, which adjust the media type, paper size, and resources. Furthermore, the driver offers options for borderless printing, vivid pictures, grayscale prints, and hands-on control of color intensity in character increments.
It likewise includes a pop-up print-stand monitor that displays the current task, record name, device owner, status, and a graphical representation of the ink cartridge levels. Conveniently, this pop-up automatically disappears once the task in the lineup is finished printing.
The MP495 offers a basic set of duplicate features for a multifunction gadget: you can make up to 99 duplicates at once and conveniently adjust the comparison and magnification of a paper from 25 percent to 400 percent, all directly through the settings on the LCD menu selections. The scanner offers two options, allowing you to scan either individual images and documents or a stack of files using the automatic document feeder.
You also have several options for where to send a scanned file: you can send it straight to a computer as a JPEG, TIFF, BMP, or PDF, or attach it to an email with the option to check and convert it to text using optical character recognition. All checked files are put in your custom "My Box" directory on the site, which shows all scanned and imported photos, as well as images recently minimized on the disk drive for future tasks.
