Canon Pixma MX7600 review

The Canon Pixma MX7600 answers the issues of speed and advanced faxing left unsolved by previous Canon models. The MX7600 features superb photo print quality that you simply won't get with a laser printer. This, coupled with a new proprietary print head system, autoduplexer and significantly faster output speeds, makes the £260 MX7600 an excellent option for anyone in the market for a high-grade, photo-capable all-in-one.

Design
The MX7600 uses gunmetal greys, matte blacks and glossy finishes to enhance its visual appeal. This printer demands a lot of desk space at 500 by 535 by 257mm, and it's certainly not meant for personal use. It's also heavy, weighing a hefty 16.6kg. You'll find the automatic document feeder on the rear of the printer behind the flatbed scanner and it can hold 20 pages of A4 paper. The feeder itself also folds down and out of the way when not in use.

In general, the MX7600 is a space-saving device, despite its large footprint. The paper trays extend out to corral sheets and fold away into the body afterward. The media card slots -- Compact Flash, SD, Memory Stick and MMC -- are also covered by a foldout piece of plastic to protect them from dust.

Next to that, there's a PictBridge USB port for connecting a camera directly into the printer. We also like the design of the main output tray that, like the auto document feeder, can fold into the printer during downtime, but it automatically opens when it's processing a document. A front-loading input tray can hold up to 150 sheets of paper.

The front of the MX7600 is taken up by the comprehensive control panel. Alongside the standard buttons -- directional keys, alphanumeric keypad, start, power, functions -- the MX7600 also includes eight buttons for speed dialing individuals or groups. There are also dedicated buttons for search, two-sided printing, fax quality and image enlarging/reducing. A 46mm (1.8-inch) angle-adjustable colour LCD sits in the middle of it all for onsite editing, photo selection and general functionality display.

Features
The copier on the MX7600 contains all the standard functions you'd find on a full-size office machine. It has options for special copying, including two-sided, two-on-one, four-on-one, borderless, image repeat, collated copy and fade restore. You can also control zoom magnification in 25-400 per cent intervals, through preset ratio increases, or a fit-to-page option.

The scanner relies on the PC for connectivity; you can't scan to the MX7600's internal memory and print from there. The scanning options are mostly handled by the MP Navigator EX software that comes with the unit. The software is pretty standard, allowing for minor edits and page formats for printing.

Scanned data can be saved to the PC, sent directly to an email or saved in PDF form on your hard drive. A limited optical character recognition functionality is available through the Navigator EX program. The MX7600 can save files as JPEG, TIFF, bitmaps and PDF. Unfortunately, the MX7600 still doesn't have the capability to scan directly to a USB card or memory card.

One of the most outstanding features on the MX7600 is the fax machine. We love that Canon included eight one-touch dial buttons in addition to 100 coded speed dial buttons. You can also print out a sheet of these destinations to serve as a visual reminder. The MX7600 includes sequential broadcast faxes that lets you send the same document to up to 109 recipients in one session.

If you frequently send documents to the same set of numbers, registered group dialing is also available. Finally, the machine is also capable of remote receiving. If the fax machine isn't set to memory receiving, users can pick up the handset of the telephone connected to the machine, dial a number and begin to receive faxes.

The MX7600 can print from a computer, through a direct PictBridge compatible camera or from a memory card. This time around, Canon lets users select one of four ways to print: single photo display -- one at a time or all at once, multiselect prints, special photo prints and photo index sheet. Within the selection process, you can choose to view via full-screen, enlarged view via digital zoom, or in a slide show with 5-second intervals. There are also a handful of other options including trimming (edit by cropping), time stamp and bordered prints.

Special photo prints include various layout prints, index prints, DPOF prints -- prints according to the order format settings on the camera -- and printing with the photo's Exif information in the margins.