Just picked up a new printer / scanner / copier, a Canon MP620 . Apple was kind enough to offer $100 off a printer of your choice with the purchase of a computer, so I took them up on this offer, knocking the retail price of $150 down to just $50 out of my pocket.

The machine features a built in wireless 802.11b/g, an ethernet port, USB connection (for camera or memory stick), LCD screen, several memory card slots, two paper trays with a dedicated manual feed, and a flatbed scanner to boot.

Print Quality - As expected, out of the box print drivers are marginal at best. Using the supplied sample of premium Canon media, along with the associated profile, yields a slight green cast and somewhat washed out colors. Using a spectrometer, calibration is possible to yield superior results. Printer uses a 4 dye based color system, with a separate pigment based black. While dye inks do offer an increased color gamut and often times a reduced cost, their durability and longevity is inferior to that of pigment inks. Maximum print size is 8×10. Print time was managable, with a 4×6 taking 43 seconds on normal photo resultion, 1:26 with everything set to highest quality. Text pages take on average 16 seconds, and the printer does not feature a duplexer.

Features - Wireless was easy to set up and relatively responsive to submissions. I have not tried the ethernet connection, although printing by USB (a slower protocol then ethernet) is as fast as can be expected.

From the LCD screen you can do several things. Copying in either black or white, initiating a scan to be sent to the computer, a memory card, or a USB memory stick. Printing pictures direction from a memory card, memory stick, or camera, while making minor adjustments and changes. There is even a relatively nifty option of printing a piece of lined paper. One small but incredible helpful feature is that the front print door is motorized – swinging open from a shut position when a job is sent to print.

Performance - Card Reader – Using a SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0GB card, I was able to achieve transfer speeds (printer to computer) of approximately 11.28MB/sec. Contrast to this an average transfer speed of 26.81MB/sec using the SanDisk Firewire card reader directly attached to a main USB port; a 58% speed decrease. It does feature a SD, MS Duo, and CF slot, making it a convenient but somewhat sluggish method of transfer.

Scanner – The scanner offers a maximum resolution of 2400×4800 dpi with a max 24 bit depth. A scan of a X-Rite ColorChecker chart displays the color accuracy of the scanner using 600 dpi with a 16bit depth (left side – scanned color / right side – correct color). Colorspace used was AdobeRGB converted to sRGB – no gamut clipping occured. Click here for a higher resolution version. Color rendition was fair for an uncalibrated system, although it could be better.

Overall Impressions - All in all, one of the nicer multifunction printers I’ve had. Not exactly a work horse, but it certainly does get the job done. Integrated well with both Mac and PC, and comes with a very rich feature set for its price point. Its use of dye inks places it low on my serious photo printers list, but excellent for color douments and day to day tasks.