Canon Pixma MP530

Reviewed by: countdr

07-06-08

Duration of ownership: 10 Months

Strengths: good text print quality

Weaknesses: Ink consumption,ink cartridges overpriced, uses color ink to produce black text!?

Overall Evaluation: Compare to my previous HP the ink comsumption is very high even in 'fast' mode. I mainly use printing function, so my evaluation is for that function. Too high cost for text print.

Reviewed by: ivan2

12-10-07

Duration of ownership: 11 Months

Strengths: good software, features

Weaknesses: Terrible mechanics. Software written to drain the ink cartidges. The Canon website says that you can configure the printer to only use black in but that is not true. IT ALWAYS USES THE COLOR INK IN SOME WAY. If you never print anything at all, all your ink cartrdges will run out in about 5 months. I have tried never printing in color or grayscale and still my color cartridges get used up.

Overall Evaluation: TERRIBLE> There is an inherrant problem with the print head cleaner design to where it starts making a grinding noise. I took the printer to an authorized repair station under warranty at one month old and they showed me a long shelf with Pixma 530 printers with the same problem. The store said that even some of the replacement parts sent to them by Canon still were defective and that they had a lot of angry customers. Anyway the store repaired my printer for the same problem of grinding and it again failed twice after a couple of months of low usage. I then spoke with Canon again, who played "dumb" regarding the ginding noise but they replaced my machine twice after the call, each one failing in about 2 months or so. So now I am at 11 months of ownership under warranty and Canon replaced my machine again. The only problem is that each replacement machine is only warranteed for the remainder of the original one year and then they are off the hook and you are stuck with a grinding machine again. It was nice that Canon kept replacing the defective machine without a problem but why could they just not produce a non-defective one after 5/5 machines? In the last call to them in 11/07 Canon finally admitted that "very rarely" do these machines have the grinding problem. I told them it was not rare and they can look all over the internet to see the complaints. The gentleman said he doesnt scan the internet? Yeh, right. I.B.

Reviewed by: uccello

08-18-07

Duration of ownership: 6 Months

Strengths: easy to set up, reliable, great print quality, relatively inexpensive

Weaknesses: no audible warning for fax stored in memory

Overall Evaluation: I bought this unit primarily to replace a fax machine, but with the intention to use it with a wireless print server. It has functioned quite well, although I have not used the scan function, since that won't work with the wireless connection. So far it has been quite reliable and produces very good text and graphics output. I have not used it much to print photos. I like the separate ink tanks for CMYK, but it seems to go through ink fairly quickly. One minor annoyance is that it will not print a fax if any of the tanks (not just the black text tank) are low. It stores the fax in memory, but there is no audible warning of this -- only a little light on the console.

Reviewed by: advoc8

07-05-07

Duration of ownership: 4 Months

Strengths: Good price, great quality in multi-function action - especially copies and photo printing. Since I’m more serious about photography, I consider the lack of media card slots and photo viewer LCD an actual plus (see my evaluation). This is the ideal printer for many of us who might otherwise be scared away by those absent items

Weaknesses: It doesn’t cook, wash the dishes or walk the dog... But it almost walks on water.

Overall Evaluation: I really like my Canon Pixma MP530 more the longer I own it. It gives me excellent all-around results, including great copies and excellent photo printing! A big plus (for me) is that it's very easy to refill the inks (it has clear cartridges), and if you follow easy directions on the internet regarding the cartridge chips - how to easily and quickly partially-disable the printer from reading the ink cartridge chips. The Canon MP530 inks are very good, and so are their photo papers, but they can be matched and value-shopped. I’m now easily printing great 4x6 photos on quality glossy paper (sometimes Canon Glossy if it's on a great sale) for as little as 6 or 7 cents each - photo paper plus ink. I’ve seen papers and refill inks from very poor to great (same with refill instructions) - don’t take a companies simple word for it. I almost gave up on finding a multi-function printer under $400 that would do an excellent job in each function, especially copies and photos. Some professionals rated the MP530 tops in all functions but dinged it for not being photo-centric, or slammed or held it back for not having media card slots or a photo viewer LCD. Other photo-serious Canon Pixma MP530 owners, and myself, don’t need and wouldn’t use those two things since best quality photos are done from your computer. Think about it..., those gadgets are for quick-shooting from the hip: lower quality results more likely. It seems that every all-in-one printer has at least one Achilles Heel. This printer has the least, at least for me. The MP530 has the most quality, convenience, versatility and bang for the buck in it’s price range.

Reviewed by: Anonymous

Updated: 26-Feb-08

Strengths: Perfect for home or small office.

Weaknesses: None

Overall Evaluation: After researching several all-in-one printers, I decided to purchase the MP530, based on specifications, size and appearance. It's ideal for a home office and the scanning and print quality are excellent.

Reviewed by: Anonymous

Updated: 06-Sep-07

Strengths: Canon quality

Weaknesses: Ink 3 times price of older models.

Overall Evaluation: I hope printer manufacturers stop the wholesale ripoff of consumers with thier new chipped ink cartridges. You could buy aftermarket ink for the Pixma series for as low as 2.99a cartridge. Now you have to mess with removing chips and putting them on replacement cartridges if you want to afford ink.

Reviewed by: windskisong

Updated: 26-Jun-07

Strengths: pretty good picture printing, very good simplex (non-duplex) text printing, fast

Weaknesses: uses color ink to produce black text with duplexing option, when duplexing black text quality looks vastly inferior, does not work with any color cartridge removed, uses chipped ink cartridges

Overall Evaluation: This printer is getting rave reviews from both PC Magazine and PC World. That said, there's a big problem with this printer that neither review mentions: namely, duplex black text printing from ALL applications produces inferior results than when duplexing is off--and uses colour ink to produce black text when printing in duplex mode. Consequently, until this issue is addressed, the MP530 is difficult for me to recommend. Why? According to Canon technical support, the design flaw is by choice. But more on that later. If I don't duplex print on fast mode, the text looks very good (the problem is duplex text printing). The print quality when duplex text printing looks dotty and washed out. If you turn duplexing off, the text print quality is vastly superior. The difference on fast mode when not duplex printing is quite astounding. Simply using duplex printing makes the text quality significantly worse on fast mode. One might be inclined to believe bad quality from fast mode ...

Reviewed by: qrx22

Updated: 05-May-07

Strengths: Suprisingly useful and intuitive software, duplex scanning (via software), fast print & scan, separate ink tanks for colors, paper tray, nice sleek appearance

Weaknesses: Very heavy, bulky, no built-in networking, start-up takes awhile & makes a loud beep

Overall Evaluation: SOFTWARE: I love the software. Generally I hate installing more than the bare minimum to get a machine going, but this is one exception. The MP Navigator is intuitive, simple, and guides me through every scanning session like a breeze. Every time before I scan, I open up the MP Navigator window, select the most appropriate setting (magazine, photos, OCR text, etc), and do my scanning. Each page from that scanning session shows up as a thumbnail, which you can double click to do simple manipulations like rotate or crop. After you're done, you can save as image files, convert to PDF (either multipage, or separate PDF files), or export to the bundled OmniPage Pro software for text editing. The software is an even bigger bonus when it comes to ADF scanning. Animated illustrations show you which direction to put the stack of paper. If you have double-sided documents, you can scan one side of the stack, then turn the stack over and feed the other side in, and the software will auto...

Reviewed by: yakwoofoo

Updated: 22-Mar-07

Strengths: Fast, versatile, and prints double sided borderless pages with ease.

Weaknesses: Ink can be expensive. Also, you REALLY need to have the instruction manual around to understand how this thing works or what it is trying to tell you.

Overall Evaluation: Wish I could get a color laser printer that would do all of this for the same price, but very satisfied overall. Also wish that I could do wide format printing. (Ledger and A3 size printing.)