Canon Pixma MG5350 review

The Pixma MG5350 sits squarely in the middle of Canon's current line-up of multi-function inkjet models.

It offers touch control, duplex support and direct CD/DVD printing, but lacks the film scanning and six-ink engine of the company's higher-end models.

Still, it's very affordable, as you can buy it for around £105 online.

Bold design

The Pixma MG5350's squat profile, curved corners and glossy black finish make it a good-looking model. At the top of the printer you'll find the flip-up 7.5-inch colour screen. Unfortunately, unlike the displays on the latest models from the likes of HP and Lexmark, this isn't a touchscreen.

Instead, Canon has placed a number of touch buttons directly beneath it that are used to select the various options shown on the display. A touchscreen would have been better, but this isn't a bad compromise; it still makes the printer's menus quick and easy to navigate.

Instead of a touchscreen, the Pixma MG5350 has buttons beneath its display.

This model has two paper trays. There's a cassette-type tray at the bottom, which takes up to 150 sheets, and a vertical tray at the back that has the same capacity. The dual trays mean that you can have A4 and photo paper loaded at the same time and select between them using the printer driver, which is handy.

This model can also print directly to CDs or DVDs. There's a special plastic tray that you load your disc onto and then place into a slot, just above the paper out tray.

Set-up is hassle-free. Once you've installed the ink cartridges and loaded the drivers onto your computer, it'll print an alignment page, after which you're ready to go. You can connect to this model locally via USB. Alternatively hook it into your network using Wi-Fi. This model also supports direct Internet printing from Google Picasa and Canon's own Image Gateway services.

Scanning and copying

The flatbed scanner at the top of the Pixma MG5350 has a resolution of 4,800dpi. Its lid lifts up slightly to allow you to scan thicker object, such as books and magazines. The scanners on Canon multi-function models haven't always been that great, but the one used here actually performs very well. Scanning speed was fast, text looked sharp and it captured finer detail well.

The pace of scanning helped the printer to put in a fast performance when it came to copying. It produced an excellent copy of our test page in just 13 seconds.

Print speed, quality and cost

The Pixma MG5350 shows a decent lick of pace when it comes to print speed. It pumped out our 10-page black and white text document in 1 minute and 1 second, which is very quick for an inkjet model.

With duplex printing enabled, it delivered the same document in 3 minutes and 7 seconds. The printer was similarly speedy when it came to our 10-page business and graphics test documents. The former was completed in 2 minutes and 10 seconds, while the later took just 2 minutes and 51 seconds. It didn't hang about when it came to photo printing either, completing our 4x6-inch snap in just 35 seconds.

Colour prints were impressively warm and natural-looking, with crisp detailing.

This model produces some of the sharpest text that we've seen from an inkjet model. Its graphics and image performance was also top notch. Colours were warm and natural looking while detailing was crisp and refined. It also did an excellent job with photo printing, producing fantastic-looking snaps.

The printer uses Canon's five-ink engine rather than the six-ink variant found on the company's high-end models, such as the MG6250, which has an extra grey ink to help with contrast in black and white photos.

Print costs are middling; it's neither extremely expensive nor as cheap to run as Kodak's models. A black and white page costs around 3.4p to print, while a colour page works out at around 8p.

Conclusion

The Pixma MG5350 is an easy model to like. It offers most of the features that the average person is going to need from a printer, but at the same time it delivers documents with crisp text and brilliant colours.

Photo printing is top notch and when it comes to speed it's among the fastest on the market. Running costs may not be the cheapest, but speed and quality go a long way towards making up for this.