Canon Pixma MP830

The Canon Pixma MP830 is an affordable colour inkjet multifunction printer that will work equally well in a very small (read: one PC) office and at home. At AU$549, it boasts an impressive list of features: an automatic document feeder, a built-in duplexer, a media card reader, and a USB port for printing straight from a camera. While it prints and scans quickly, the quality of the prints left something to be desired. To the naked eye, the text looked fine, but upon closer examination, we noticed some problems. Graphics prints proved to be even more problematic, but the printer does do a good enough job with photos for casual snapshots. Print quality is acceptable for home use, but if you work in a graphics-intensive work environment and need high-quality prints, consider the more expensive HP OfficeJet 7410; with the 7410, you'll also gain networking capability -- a handy feature for any multi-PC office.

Design
The black-and-slate Canon Pixma MP830 is all smooth curves and rounded edges -- rather stylish for a printer designed for small offices. It's reasonably compact for an office all-in-one printer, at 500mm wide by 487mm deep by 292mm tall. It weighs 14.7kg. Clearly, the Canon design team put some thought into the overall design. For example, the automatic document feeder (ADF) is integrated into the scanner lid, making for a solidly constructed unit. The paper-support flap of the ADF folds down when not in use, which helps the unit look tidy. Unfortunately, although the scanner lid's hinges do lift a bit to accommodate thicker books, it doesn't lift out entirely. In fact, the user guide says the cover can handle originals only up to 0.8 inches thick, so copying the anything bulkier than that will require you to hang out and do the cover's job yourself. The ADF holds about 35 sheets of A4 or letter-size paper and up to 30 sheets of legal-size paper.

The front panel of the printer houses the output tray, which flips out smoothly with the touch of a button. An additional flap folds out to catch legal-length papers. A little door to the side of the output tray houses the media card reader, which accepts CompactFlash Types I and II, Microdrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, SD, and MultiMediaCards. You can also use xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Pro Duo, and MiniSD cards with an adaptor. Under the card reader sits a USB port for printing directly from a digital camera, a digital video camcorder, or a compatible camera phone (with PictBridge). Below the output tray is the cassette feeder, or input tray. The input tray has adjustable paper guides and slides out of the printer's body smoothly -- almost too smoothly, as there are no stops. An additional input tray flips out of the rear of the printer, for paper types you might use less commonly. This, too, has an adjustable paper guide, but we found it hard to slide.

Jutting out of the front of the printer is the control panel, which houses a wealth of buttons and a 2.5-inch colour LCD, which flips up to allow easy viewing from a variety of angles. Dedicated function buttons allow you to switch between copy, fax, scan, and printing from a memory card. You can also switch between paper sources, enlarge or reduce pages, access a photo sheet, initiate two-sided printing, fax to up to eight preset numbers, and change the fax quality at the touch of a button. To the right of the LCD are buttons for accessing the menu: Menu, Settings, Back, and a four-way rocker switcher with an OK button in the centre. The menu options change depending on which function you're in. For example, if you press the Copy button, then hit Menu, you'll find yourself faced with various copy options. Common to all the menus is a maintenance and settings option, where you can perform routine tests, trigger a cleaning cycle, or change the date/time format. Menu options are conveyed through text and graphical representations. Drilling down through the menus is a simple task, and a dedicated back button makes tooling around the menus pain-free. Finally, a numeric keypad, a stop/reset, and two start buttons (one for black only and another for colour) round out the control panel.

Replacing the five ink tanks (cyan, yellow, magenta, black dye, and black pigment) is a simple task. The top of the printer flips up to reveal the ink tanks and the printheads, and by flipping a lever, you can pull out each tank individually. Being able to replace individual tanks is a boon, as you won't waste colours you use less frequently. Also, you won't need separate photo ink to print photos, which we appreciate. Canon ships the Pixma MP830 with full ink tanks.

Features
The Canon Pixma MP830's wealth of features makes it attractive for a home office user. It prints, scans, faxes, and copies, and you have a broad range of options for each function. When you're copying and printing, you can shrink to fit, make double-sided copies with the built-in duplexer, or make two-on-one and four-on-one copies -- that is, you can shrink the originals so that two or four pages fit on a single sheet of paper -- and you can even restore colours on a faded original.

With faxing -- a feature not found on the cheaper, home user-oriented MP500 -- you can program up to eight numbers for one-touch speed dialling and assign a two-number code for additional coded speed-dial numbers. You can also set up a one-touch or coded speed dial for groups for fax blasts, for example, though you have to register all the numbers in the group first. Depending on how you set up your telephone, fax, and answering machine, you can have the fax machine answer all incoming calls (if you have a dedicated fax line) or have the call ring first to the answering machine, which will boot the call over to the fax machine once it determines that it's an incoming fax. If your machine has paper problems or is low on ink when a fax comes in, it can hold the fax in memory until you rectify the problem.

For scanning, the included MP Navigator software can help you choose your task and find the right program for it: Easy PhotoPrint prints photos, ScanSoft OmniPage SE converts scanned documents to text using optical character recognition software, and Presto PageManager assists with organising photos and documents. You can also scan through any TWAIN- or WIA-compliant software. Scans can be saved on your PC as JPEG, TIFF, PDF, or bitmap files.

As hard as the Canon Pixma MP830 works, it plays, too. You can print your vacation photos directly from your PictBridge camera/camera phone or from a variety of media cards. Aside from handling standard paper sizes, such as letter and legal, you can print 4x6 or 5x7 photos straight from the paper tray and even borderless photos. When printing straight from a memory card, you can optimise your photos via the menu in a number of ways, including correcting red-eye, reducing noise, brightening faces, and adjusting brightness and contrast. You don't even need to touch your PC when printing from a memory card; you can preview your photos on the LCD. With the LCD and the menu, you can crop, rotate, or print an index of the photos on the card. When copying, you have a load of options: shrink to fit, double-sided copying with the built-in duplexer, two-on-one (and even four-on-one) copying for those looking to save paper, image repeat, and fade restoration, which helps brighten faded colours.

The HP OfficeJet 7410 offers many of the same features but adds networking capability, both wired and wireless. This is crucial if you have more than one person in your household or office who uses the printer. The catch is, you'll have to pay a bit more.

Performance
The Canon Pixma MP830 was impressively speedy for an inkjet printer. It printed black text at an impressive 7.7ppm and a PowerPoint presentation file at 3.03ppm. It was quick on photo printing, too: it generated 4x6 photos at a rate of 1.83ppm. (We used to test photo printing speed by printing 8x10 photos; the MP830 was the first printer we've tested using the 4x6 format, so we can't make direct comparisons of printing times with older reviewed units.) Scanning, though, was where this printer really impressed us: it completed a black-and-white scan at a rate of 11.61ppm and a colour scan at a rate of 10.75ppm.

CNET Labs' multifunction printer performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Copy speed

Colour scan speed

Grayscale scan speed

Photo speed

Text speed

Canon MP830*

5.8 

10.75 

11.61 

1.83 

7.7 

Epson Stylus CX6600

3.49 

5.25 

9.27 

0.19 

4.63 

Canon MP500

4.25 

5.31 

5.17 

0.56 

7.08 

HP OfficeJet 7410

1.79 

3.15 

3.02 

0.52 

7.06 

Image Quality
To the naked eye, the Canon Pixma MP830's black text looks good. The letters are well formed and the edges smooth. Under a loupe, however, we noticed that the edges weren't as clean as we'd thought. At very small point sizes, this problem becomes worse. The quality further degrades with colour graphics prints, which mixes text and graphical elements. The text here has noticeable -- to the naked eye -- jagged edges at all point sizes. In fact, nearly everywhere that there was black ink, we saw fuzzy edges. Additionally, the black was a bit washed-out. It also had some trouble with the shadows of the colour graphics, losing some details to general darkness. Colour blocks showed graininess and the colours were both overly dark and not as saturated as we'd like. The more expensive HP 7410 handled colour graphics better, producing better colour representation and better-quality text. The greyscale scan was decent, though in the shadows, it lost some details, as it couldn't handle the extreme dark end of the greyscale. The colour scan looked good, with accurate colour representation. The printer did its best work with colour photos. The colours were bright and saturated, skin tones looked realistic, and it showed nice detail. In sum, the Canon Pixma MP830's print quality suffices for home users and small-office users who don't need high-quality graphics prints.

CNET Labs' multifunction printer quality
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Colour scan

Grayscale scan

Photo

Graphics on inkjet paper

Text on inkjet paper

Canon MP830

Good 

Good 

Good 

Fair 

Good 

Epson Stylus CX6600

Excellent 

Excellent 

Good 

Good 

Excellent 

Canon MP500

Fair 

Fair 

Excellent 

Excellent 

Excellent 

HP OfficeJet 7410

Fair 

Good 

Excellent 

Good 

Excellent 

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