Canon Pixma MX860 review

The printer comes with a driver installation CD with a robust software suite that will definitely appeal to your creative side. The settings let you cycle between commonly used quality templates, like standard, business, paper-saving and photo printing, which automatically adjust paper size and orientation, paper type, and output quality. The driver lets you dive deeper into photo editing, with options for vivid photos, no borders, monochrome effects and even manual colour adjustments, while the pop-up status monitor gives you a heads-up view of the job status, document name and printer status, and a rough idea of the current ink levels. We much prefer the status monitor on the driver that comes with the MX860 to that of the MX330, which doesn't show print progress.

The MX860's driver also automatically installs Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint EX software onto your computer. It lets you print simple snapshot photos on the fly, create whole albums of artwork, print calendars with custom pictures, and print custom stickers using Canon's proprietary sticker paper. The explorer window on the main page works just like a Windows Explorer pane, but we prefer HP's Solution Center layout, which automatically scans and detects printable pictures on your hard drive for you. Canon's creative suite is incredibly easy to use, however, and even lets you make simple photo edits like red-eye correction, face sharpening and blemish removal, which is great for users who don't want to deal with the hassle of third-party editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.

The copy functions on the MX860 are relatively standard for a multi-function device: you can make up to 99 copies at once and easily adjust the contrast and magnification of a document from 25 per cent to 400 per cent, all directly through the settings on the LCD menus.

The scanner gives you two options: either scan single photos and documents, or a stack of documents using the automatic document feeder. You also have several choices in terms of where you want to send a scanned document, such as directly to a PC as a JPEG, TIFF, BMP or PDF file, or attached to an e-mail with the option to scan and convert to text using optical character recognition. All scanned files are placed into your custom 'my box' directory, which displays all scanned and imported images, as well as recently saved images on the hard drive, for future projects.

Performance
When it comes to print speeds, the MX860 has the upper hand on the competition (see the table below). It stayed ahead of the MX330 in all of the tests except for text speed, where it only printed at 4.47 pages per minute compared with the MX330's 5.54ppm. It really shone in the scanning and text copy tests, registering an impressive 3.48ppm when copying a 10-page stack of text documents, and 4.1 pages per minute when scanning a page of black-and-white graphics.

The MX860 is equally competent in terms of graphics quality as it is with output speeds. The text in our sample prints came out a rich black, with fully formed characters and thick lines, and the colour spread retained its quality as well. Our 4-by-6-inch photos were evenly saturated and smooth throughout colour transitions.

We do, however, have a complaint about graphics printed on plain paper. While the details are all sharp, we noticed some blotches in pictures with multiple colour transitions. The result is a series of white specks spread across the image. These flaws are visible at arm's length. While the specks don't affect images printed on Canon's glossy photo paper, this may be an issue for offices that print out presentations and graphics on plain paper.

Printing speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Text copy (ppm)

Greyscale scan (ppm)

Photo speed (one sheet)

Colour graphics speed (ppm)

Text speed (ppm)

HP Officejet J6480

1.84 

3.27 

0.83 

2.17 

5.54 

Canon Pixma MX330

4.1 

3.5 

0.93 

1.88 

5.54 

Canon Pixma MX860

3.48 

4.1 

1.28 

2.29 

4.47 

Kodak ESP 5

3.81 

1.37 

2.13 

4.39 

Brother MFC-5890CN

0.81 

2.37 

3.95 

Conclusion
The Canon Pixma MX860 is a very good multi-function printer that's likely to boost productivity thanks to it quick output speeds, auto-document feeder and useful LCD screen. Most importantly, its output quality is generally great.

Additional editing by Charles Kloet