Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
230 of 233 people found the following review helpful.
Competent all-in-one worth a look
By Eric S. Olstad
The PIXMA MP495 is a fine printer with all-in-one features and WiFi capabilities. The driver and software installation, however, did not go so smoothly (Windows 7 x64). I can't imagine a layman going through the difficulty I went through getting WiFi working with this printer. But once it's configured, it works quite well.
Document Printing:
Funny enough, this is probably the least interesting part of the all-in-one. There's not much that can be said in this category. The MP495 is a very competent document printer with all the features you'd find in any inkjet printer. Paper loads from the back, so it's a bit more intuitive which side of the paper will be printed on, but it also means you need more space heightwise.
Photo Printing:
As a photo printer, the MP495 is both fast and high quality. I found that the supplied 'Photo Paper Plus Glossy II' sample paper outperformed some HP photo paper I had. And the MP495 outperformed another HP photosmart 385 printer I have in both speed and quality. So I am quite pleased with the performance here as I find this to be one of the major draws of this device. Canon claims about 86 photos from one Color ink cartridge. I have not owned the printer long enough to verify the accuracy of their claim.
Scanning:
I don't scan very often, but it's a very useful feature to have when you need it. In a scanner I look for speed, image quality and usable software. I'm quite pleased with the MP495's scanner capabilities. My test involved a sheet from a notepad that had a light gray watermark-like background. The scanner picked it up no problem. From initialization to scan completion took approx. 20 seconds, which I find adequate. There's a scan button on the printer, but pressing it doesn't do anything if the printer is hooked up via WiFi.
WiFi:
One of the main draws of this printer is its wifi capabilities. But since the printer has no controls on the device itself for configuring the connection to your likely secured WiFi access point, it must be configured through software installed on one of the computers on the network. Configuring the WiFi was a bit tricky. After repeated failed attempts, I figured out that the trick is to plug the USB cable (which they call a WiFi configuration cable) in at precicely the right point during setup -- during the detection phase. Plugging it in too soon seems to cause it to fail -- and I waited the first few times too. Regardless, this will no doubt be a hurdle for novices trying to configure this printer. I suggest having a competent computer person around while configuring the WiFi connection on this printer. With that being said, not having to have the printer close enough to my computer for the USB cable to reach is fantastic.
Software:
The software is not very impressive but adequate. There's a utility for managing your scans and OCR text conversion and all that good stuff. Canon boasts an automatic scanning feature that automatically detects the type of document being scanned. I tested it out and it seems to work well as far as being convenient. The software however lacks ability to open the file location in Explorer or even open the file using the default application. So that's quite annoying.
Included with the software is "MyPrinter" utility that allows you to connect to the printer and configure various options. It seems like nothing more than a shortcut to the printer properties utility included with windows. There's no options for configuring the WiFi connection in this utility. You must use the Setup program to do that -- something I find rather annoying since this is something you should easily be able to access without having to pop in the driver disc or dig up the setup utility.
If you decide to go with the Easy install instead of the custom install, the setup utility will dump some annoying shortcut toolbar application called Menu something or other. I removed it right quick.
There's also something Canon calls "Web Print Ex" which allows you to change the layout of web pages to print them out better. I didn't test this software out.
Cost:
At around $80, half the cost of this printer is in the ink. On Amazon, the ink for this printer seems to run around $17 for Black and $18 for Color. Canon reveals the following for ink life:
Black Ink Tank Life Black: 220 pages (PG-510), 401 pages (optional PG-512)¹
Black: 2955 photos* (PG-510), 7275 photos* (optional PG-512)²
* Estimated supplemental yield
Colour Ink Tank Life Colour: 244 pages (CL-511), 349 pages (optional CL-513)¹
Colour: 83 photos (CL-511), 122 photos (optional CL-513)²
Note that I found this info on Canon's European site. The actual cartridge models are PG-210 and CL-211.
So even with those numbers, which are probably the upper bound, you're looking at around 19 cents per photo plus cost of paper. While the photo quality is excellent, I've ordered prints online for around 5 cents per photo. So the ink here is certainly expensive.
Conclusion:
Pros
- Wifi
- Quiet and fast scanner
- High quality and fast printing
- Reasonable purchase price
Cons
- Expensive ink
- Clunky software
- Lack of LCD for independent configuration
Rating the device itself on its merits alone, I give it 4 stars. Whether that ink cost is a major deterrent to you is really up to you.
175 of 186 people found the following review helpful.
Software Needs Work
By J. Flowers
I bought this unit as my laser printer was just too much wrt toner costs. I also wanted a wireless printer to share between all my computers (PC and Mac/iphone).
It is low cost (really low cost), and the print quality (at this price point) is great.
The reason that I'm not happy with this product, like I should be is just how poorly thought out the software is. During install, you basically are going to be loading up with a number of bloatware features (trying to not install these resulted in weird artifacts/or the software you need just not installing).
Also there's a little bubble that sit's on your desktop - really annoying. After all, I wanted a printer and a printer really should just work in the background without the need to be seen by me every time i use my computer.
Finally, the settings. The settings are crazy. First - no matter what I try, I can't get the printer to print in the proper order. Out of the box with all the defaults, I found that when I print a document - it prints in reverse order. Unacceptable. Going through the settings - I can't find the setting to lock this down. So I have to remember each time that I print to 'reverse' print order.
Also, there's a 'silent' feature. I haven't a clue what this does. It does make the printer a bit more silent, but it's not default. If there's some software to make the printer work just as well, but with less noise - shouldn't this be default?
Again, the install was a mess. Installing across computers (PC or Mac) was not fun. The fact that the settings were/are not correct out of the box, not fun. The bloatware/and the weird bubble that shows up on my desktops - really NOT fun. If the unit printed at lightening speed or completely silent, perhaps then I could overlook the poorly designed software - but it doesn't. The printer is just average.
I'm giving the OK rating because the print quality is average, the cost overall is great, and the software is poor. So it's just so/so.
70 of 73 people found the following review helpful.
Affordable entry into a wireless home printer
By Paladin08
Let me jump right into this. . .
1) Wi-Fi. Nuff said! Actually I was scared at first because the unit comes with an 2nd user guide simply to troubleshoot the wi-fi. BUT. . .all you have do to is follow the instructions when running the install disc, which say (if you read them) to plug the printer in via USB cable. You must do this step before you can setup the wi-fi.
2) USB cable provided. Finally a printer that doesn't make you buy this separately. Thank you Canon!
3) Photo printing was impressive. If you have actual photo paper vs. regular copy paper then you can get some very gorgeous pictures printed. It's amazing how the single multi-colored cartridge can perform to this level. Not the same quality as the 5 cartridge inkjets, but comparable to my 3yr old Canon MP520
4) Good and bad of the ink cartridge it uses a single multi-color cartridge for the blue-magenta-yellow. But since you have to replace the entire cartridge when one color goes out...not sure exactly if the cost in the end will be more or less than the multi-cartridge packs. I guess it depends on how efficient the printer will be over the long run in its use of the color cartridge vs. previous models.
Replacements:
Canon PG-210 XL Cartridge (Black) = about $17
Canon CL-211 XL Cartridge (Color) = about $22
5) Scanning = disappointed. Wi-fi can communicate in two directions, but they only set this up for sending to the printer. Thus you must plug the cable in to the computer to scan. If you want more control of your scans get a real scanning software packages that will recognize the printer, because the software the printer comes with is mediocre.
**update July 2011** - found you can scan wirelessly...but it was a chore for me to do and I didn't feel the instruction manual was clear on how to make this happen.
6) Speaking of software...when you look at the feature list above on this amazon product description page, most of the highlights are actually software based. Big deal. Other than needing the drivers for the printer, most of the tasks marketed can be done better and with more features from free download-able software. Also most of the software features seem to be a shortcut to the Control Panel > Printers & Devices section of Windows, not to mention no configuring of Wi-Fi anywhere other than upon initial setup. Guess you'll need to run the installer again to get to those features.
7) Copying is noisy, but pretty fast when doing a black & white copy. I did put a page of Consumer report in and selected the Color copy. The product images came out with good detail and the small ratings on the red bars were easy to read. Nice and clear copies!
8) Nice full black color aesthetics. My old printer (MP520) is mostly a flat grey silver, but this nice high glossy printer looks sleek.
OVERALL:
- Much of the "features" highlighted are so-so software driven enhancements.
- I love how it's wireless!
- I don't see why scanning couldn't be made wireless too, but with the right 3rd party software the quality and manipulation of the scan are good.
- Only time will tell if the move to a single color cartridge will be less or more expensive.
- I'm overall happy with the speed and quality.
Nice Card
Packaging problems persist
SPEED & QUALITY
