Best printer brands Canon printers

Canon

Canon received the 2011 Which? Award for Best Photography brand

Canon is a big brand name in the printer and camera world, producing a wide range of all-in-one inkjet printers and standard inkjet printers.

Canon printers range in price from about £30 for a basic inkjet printer up to £300 for a top-of-the-range all-in-one inkjet printer for the home office, but most printers cost between £100 and £200.

Testing Canon printers

We’ve tested more than 25 printers from the Canon brand and more than a quarter of them are Best Buys. In previous years we’ve seen similarly good results from Canon.

Canon printers - visit our reviews to find the best performing Canon printers in our tests.

Running costs and cartridges for Canon printers

Ink cartridges

Generally the mid to high-end Canon printers take separate single-colour ink cartridges. We prefer printers that take three separate single-colour ink cartridges – cyan, magenta and yellow - because if a colour runs out you only need to replace only one cartridge to continue printing. 

Cheap Canon printers often use combined colour cartridges, which can work out to be more expensive in the long run. You'd be wasting perfectly good ink by throwing all three colours away when one ink runs out.

Save money on printing - changing your printers settings and other tips can help you save ink. 

Canon ink cartridges

Ink cartridges have a huge impact on printer running costs

Running costs

Canon printers generally have very reasonable running costs. Part of the reason for this is that the cartridges do not have print heads on them. Instead, Canon printers have a print head built into the printer itself.

When these print heads reach the end of their lifespan they need to be replaced, which means additional cost.

We print thousands of pages in each printer we test and have never had a problem with the print head needing to be replaced.

Reported problems with Canon printers

Some Which? members have reported problems with the waste ink absorber (a built-in sponge that, as its name suggests, collects waste ink) becoming full. 

We've never experienced this in testing, so it’s likely that it won’t happen for several years (as with replacing the built-in print heads).

We contacted Canon about these problems and it said that these parts were designed to last the lifespan of the printer. 

We think this means you get at least three years of reasonable use out of a Canon printer before you experience any issues.

Canon printer ranges

Printer models names give you some clues as to their capabilities. When you’re in a shop and there’s a range of Canon printers on display, the highest number will be the model at the top of the range. The lower numbers are the models at the bottom of the Canon printer range.

Here's what the model names mean:

  • Canon Pixma iP printers - These are standard Canon printers (models that don't include a scanner and copier), aimed at general home use. 
  • Canon Pixma iX printers - iX printers are also standard printers, aimed at home office use.

If you're looking to buy a standard Canon printer that doesn't include a scanner or copier it's best to decide which features you want and then look for suitable models in both the iP and iX ranges as some iX printers are perfectly suitable for general home use.

Printer features explained - get more information on useful features you might want to look out for in a printer.

Canon Pixma MG5250

The MG5250 is from Canon's popular range of Pixma printers

Canon All-in-one printers

Canon all-in-one printers also use 'Pixma' in the name and a prefix of either MP, MG or MX.

  • Canon Pixma MP printers - These are aimed at home users and often have lots of photographic features – such as memory card slots, LCD preview screens and, at the top of the range, a 35mm film scanner.
  • Canon Pixma MG printers - MG models are also aimed at home users, but are newer designs, the first of which launched in 2010.
  • Canon Pixma MX printers -  These are aimed at office and home office users. They have business features such as wi-fi, automatic document feeders and faxes.

Read our Epson printers and HP printers brand reviews to find out how Canon printers measure up against the competition.

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