Canon Pixma MX340 review-MobilePhoneUseSkills

Canon has consistently impressed us with the quality of its recent MFPs, but they haven't had much appeal for the budget conscious, with most of current models priced at over £100.

At just over £80, the Pixma MX340 is a fully-featured four-in-one MFP with print, scan, copy and fax capabilities, as well as easy-to-configure 802.11b/g wireless networking. It has a modest 100 page paper tray and a 30-page Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) to make multi-page faxes and copies easy.

To include all these features at this price, Canon has made a few compromises – there's no memory card reader for starters. Unlike most of the Pixma range, the MX340 doesn't use individual ink cartridges. Instead, there's a pigment-based black cartridge, which is used to produce sharp, quick-drying mono text; plus a tri-colour cartridge, which contains dye-based cyan, magenta and yellow ink. Both these have integrated print heads.

There's no dye-based black, so black areas in photo prints are made by combining the three coloured inks. The use of a combined colour cartridge also means that you'll have to replace the entire cartridge if one ink runs out before the others.

The MX340's print costs, although expensive, aren't prohibitively high if you use Canon's high yield PC-512 and CL-513 cartridges – 8.7p per page of mixed colour and mono printing. A mono page is an alarming 3.6p, though. These costs are too high to make the MX340 a good choice if you print every day, but they're acceptable for occasional use.

Mono text was as sharp as we've come to expect from Canon, but we found that colour documents on plain 80gsm photocopier paper were printed with slightly too much ink, producing damp waves in areas that were filled with solid colour. Fortunately, they didn't smudge and dried smoothly when laid flat. Photo quality was surprisingly good for a printer that uses composite blacks – dark areas were a little pale in comparison to those from printers that use dye-based black for photo printing.

Thanks to Canon's use of the ISO/IEC 24734 standard, print speeds are almost exactly as advertised. Standard quality text emerged at reasonable 6.9ppm, but colour documents printed slowly at 1.7ppm.

The 1,200x2,400dpi Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scanner makes an unpleasant whining noise when operating, but produces accurately coloured scans and clear photocopies. Canon's ScanGear interface provides plenty of advanced options for tweaking your scans and can be configured to either close or remain open after each scan, which is particularly welcome if you want to scan a batch of documents or photos. You can also control whether your preview image is retained between scans.

If you're going to print regularly, you'll ultimately save money and get better print speeds and quality by investing in a more expensive device, like Canon's non-fax MP640. However, the MX340's combination of quality and features are great if you need a printer than can do everything, but not very often.

Basic Specifications

Rating

***

Maximum native print resolution

4,800x1,200dpi

Max optical resolution

1,200x2,400dpi

Output bit depth

48-bit

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4

8ppm

Quoted speed, colour A4

5ppm

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0

6m 19s

Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0

4m 37s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces

USB, 802.11b/g wireless

Optional printer interfaces

Bluetooth adaptor (BU-30), £66

Size	198x458x410mm

Weight

8.6kg

Noise (in normal use)

47dB(A)

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size

Maximum paper weight

300gsm

Standard paper inputs

Standard paper input capacity

100

Maximum paper inputs

Maximum paper input capacity

100

Duplex (code, cost if option)

General

Printer technology

thermal inkjet

Supported operating systems

Windows 2000/XP/7, Mac OS X 10.4.11+

Other inkjet features

mono LCD screen, automatic print head alignment

Other inkjet options

none

Buying Information

Price

£81

Consumable parts and prices

220 page black cartridge PG-510, £12, 401 page black catridge PG-512, £14, 244 page colour catridge CL-511, £14, 349 page colour cartridge CL-513, £18

Price per colour A4 page

5.1p

Quoted life of supplied black cartridge

220

Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s)

244

Quoted life of supplied photo cartridge(s)

N/A

Warranty

one year RTB

Supplier

http://www.office999.co.uk

Details

www.canon.co.uk

Print Quality

Number of ink colours

Number of ink cartridges

Maximum number of ink colours

Maximum number of cartridges

Quoted photo durability

30 years

Quoted photo durability source

Canon

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview

11s

A4 document at 150dpi

19s

A4 document at 300dpi

25s

6x4in photo at 600dpi

33s

6x4in photo at 1200dpi

1m 30s

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.0

28s

Time for single A4 colour copy 1.0

45s

Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0

3m 18s

Photo Features

PictBridge support

Yes

Borderless printing

up to A4

Direct (PC-less) printing

Supported memory cards

none

CD printing

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies

Max mono copy resolution

1,200x1,200dpi

Max colour copy resolution

1,200x1,200dpi

Fax Features

Max mono fax resolution

300x300dpi

Fax memory (maximum mono pages)