Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Pros:
Effortless set up, even for WiFi
Excellent print and photographic quality
High quality scanning
Faster than older Canon inkjet printers
Slick interface/modern design
Buffed up Canon software
Front loading paper tray
Excellent customer support (see addendum)
Cons:
Memory card reader on WiFi works for Windows but not for Mac
Slow wireless 'upload' from printer
Shiny exterior picks up fingerprints
Completely redesigned ink cartridges means that you are stuck with expensive, proprietary
ones, at least for the time being
No continuous document feed
Long install time for proprietary software
Canon software is much better, but still a little slow and clunky
The PIXMA MG6120 is one of Cannon's newest line of printers. It is long on features and really is an excellent, all around printer for home use. It was easy to set up using the supplied CD and worked without a hitch on WiFi immediately on set up. The text printing on normal paper is excellent and the photographic reproduction is nearly photo-lab comparable.
Note: I am using the printer on an Apple iMac with a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (for the truly savvy, this is a 17" MA590LL/A, late 2007 model). I am running OS X 10.6.4 on the Mac side and Windows 7 home edition on Bootcamp. The printer that I am comparing this model to, is my old Canon MX310[Canon Pixma MX310 Office All-in-One Inkjet Printer (2184B002)], bought from Amazon circa 2007.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX:
The printer is packaged with a quick start up guide, network trouble shooting guide, a starter pack of 6 ink cartridges, power cord, paper for print head alignment, and sample pack of 4 X 6 Canon Plus Glossy II photo paper. Extricating the printer from its box was par for the course, with the usual removal of protective wrapping and unsticking of orange tape.
The printer itself weighs in at 20 lbs, so it is somewhat more hefty than it looks and it is by no means petite at 18.6 x 14.5 x 6.9 inches. It sports a small view screen and innovative touch panel that functioned smoothly. It has a pleasing, modern design, and a glossy finish that really looks cool at first, but is a real magnet for fingerprints.
SET UP:
You hardly need a manual to tell you what to do, as the printer really tells you what to do itself once you turn it on. The carriage centers as you open the device and placing the print head in place is easy. The ink cartridges are color coded and fit in place easily. There is a thick, black cartridge that can only fit in one space, but the color cartridges are otherwise identical. They will fit into each other's slots, but there is a guide on the print head that makes placement a no brainer. As each cartridge is equipped with its own microchip, my guess is that the printer would inform you of any errors in placement. (Not wanting to mess up the color printing for the first runs, I stuck with the program and didn't let the machine prime the ink tanks while placed in the wrong slots.) Once closed, the machine quickly cleans the print heads and then prompts you to place the photographic paper in the back loading slot for print head alignment. A few minutes later, this is done. Plain paper can then be loaded in the front cassette or in the rear loading slot, and you're off to the races.
WARNING!: A word about the ink tanks--these are a brand new style. This means that it will be some time before refurbished or third party cartridges are available for use. Although brand new Canon ink cartridges are likely to function the best, other options do significantly decrease the price per page and not everyone needs 100% full quality prints or an archival photo that will not fade in `300 years.' You can get an idea of ink prices here: Canon PGI-225 BK/ CLI-226 C,M,Y 4 Pack Value Pack (4530B008); Canon CLI-226 Gray Ink Tank (4550B001). Note that at the time that I am writing this there is no value pack that covers all of the MG6120 inks together. Unlike other Canon photo printers you will need the PGI-225 black and FOUR CLI-226 cartridges (C,M,Y, and GRAY). At present prices, refilling the ink tanks twice would cost about as much as buying a brand new MG6120 at Amazon's sale price. (To my knowledge, no 3rd party refill kits or refurbished cartridges are available at this time.)
UPDATE 1/15/2011: Generic inks are now becoming available for the printer. But so far, caveat emptor. I purchased these 6 PKS GENERIC INK CANON PGI-225 CLI-226 Pixma iP4820 MG5220 at a bargain basement price but--as always--there's a catch. The cartridges do NOT come with cartridge recognition chips--the printer WILL NOT RUN unless the chips are in place. The instructions tell you how to transfer the chips from your existing OEM cartridges to a plastic device called a 'chip extender.' Once you understand how to do this it isn't exactly rocket science but lets just say that there's a learning curve here and only 1/6 cartridges were recognized by my printer. I will be contacting the company and trying to figure out where things went wrong and re-updated the review, but at this juncture I CANNOT recommend these cartridges. My guess is that either the chip extender isn't lining the chip up correctly, I glued the chips on to the chip extender incorrectly, or I damaged the chip in the process of moving it. The cartridges themselves DO look like the real thing and appear to be compatible in all other ways. Unless you have experience with such things, I would avoid these. Canvassing the net, there now appear to be some vendors (ones certified by the BBB) that are producing compatible or refurbished cartridges (WITH chips). The only cartridge that doesn't seem to be available this way so far is the grey cartridge, but I imagine that this will soon be available.
THE SOFTWARE:
Loading the software was similarly easy on both OS X or Windows. The supplied CD easily installs the software with a few simple prompts. In both cases, however, the basic software can take up to 10 minutes to load. On Windows, the printer is picked up and is automatically added with a click. On the Mac side, the software is similarly easy to install, but you have to supply the WiFi network password to add the printer.
The present Canon software is definitely an upgrade from the previous generation. The main screen gives you options for photo printing, calender printing, layout printing, album printing, and movie printing (this feature only works with Canon cameras). The photo print option is the most useful and allows you to print single photographs or a number of photographs on a single sheet of paper. Scanner options include autoscan, OCR (optical character recognition), attaching scans to emails, and opening of saved images. There are also options for web services, help/settings, and product information.
None of the software really represents a real photo editor, and, truthfully, most people have their favorites anyway. Nevertheless, there are some basic photo editing features such as red eye reduction, face sharpening, face smoothing, blemish correction, and brightness/contrast/sharpness/blur controls. But these are painfully slow on both the Mac and in Windows. Unless you are doing something very simple, you'll want to use your photo editor of choice.
The scanner interface is much improved from previous generations. In particular, the auto scan feature quickly detects what you are scanning and accurately recognizes if there are different pictures, and saves them as multiple files . Manual controls are similarly easy to use. The OCR is much improved from their 2007 vintage, and is reasonably accurate across different typefaces.
PRINTING TEXT:
Printing text is both faster and better than in the previous model. When magnified, it is clear that the text from this printer is sharper and cleaner than the MX310. That being said, when viewed under normal conditions at zero magnification, I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. Both are certainly acceptable. On the bright side, the MG6120 is almost twice as fast.
PRINTING PICTURES:
I was quite impressed by the MG6120's photo quality. Although this is an all-in-one, it has the capability for near photo-lab quality. With a maximum 9600 x 2400 DPI, there is no visible pixillation to the naked eye when printing a high resolution photo. The colors are true and the blacks are consistently deep black without that line by line variation that is all too common in inkjet printers. The upload to the printer over WiFi did cause a short lag, but this was more than acceptable, even at high resolution. There is a definite advantage in having six, separate tanks of ink rather than four, in terms of producing true colors. I did not show a sample comparing the MG6120 with the MX310 as I ran out of Canon color cartridges for the MX310 and I didn't think that using a refurbished cartridge would be a fair comparison. However, I would never have thought of using the MX310 to print pictures for more than casual use. Even when new, the MX310 had too high a level of artifact to produce photo album quality pictures. The MG6120 may not be a professional level photo printer, but it rivals many online consumer photo print services.
The biggest surprise was the ability of the MX310 to produce quality black and white...Read more›
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