Canon Pixma MP560 Ink Review

Canon has constantly had an eye with regard to design and, in that regard, the Pixma MP560 does not dissatisfy. Resting, this multi-function inkjet printer, with a scanner, two paper-input trays and a built-in duplexer, is a modern black and silver pack. On the job, it's really a printing hub, having a flip-up display screen and iPod-esque revolving controller. Costing close to £100 on the internet, you get lots of printer for the money, with highly detailed results supplied at decent rates, along with built-in Wi-Fi networking capability.

To obtain a substantial review report, a printer must perform effectively whatever you chuck at it, and, generally, the MP560 does. Even on the 'fast' setting plain text is razor-sharp and unspattered. It's slightly greyer than we'd like, however bumping up the setting to 'standard' fixes this, and the 'high' setting provides truly laser-like output.

At none of the settings are pages presented at breakneck speed nevertheless they are around what we'd anticipate for this category of unit. Duplex performance, nevertheless, is notable without a doubt, with the MP560 waiting just 4 seconds for the ink to dry ahead of pulling the page back in to its body and spinning it over in order to print on the back. The HP Photosmart Premium C309g, in comparison, waited a whole 20 seconds ahead of turning over.

The MP560 excelled itself whenever we changed to mixed business output, mixing text and simple graphics. White text upon a black background is legible right down to 4 points at every quality settings, and blocks of solid black are thick and satisfying at both the standard and high configurations. These are best defined as 'fair' at the fast setting, however, with our intricate test page made in only 17 seconds, the overall results are good. Colours are bright and vibrant and we experienced absolutely no difficulties printing black text on coloured backgrounds. You might rightly anticipate a bit of bleeding regarding the black into the lighter colours because the paper becomes saturated, however the MP560 manages to avoid this at all quality levels.

There tend to be obvious variations between the fineness of the print at all three grades, with a rough grain within sections of solid colour printed utilizing the fast setting, and super-smooth shades at the high setting. At all of the settings, nonetheless, the MP560 managed effectively in our greyscale-differentiation test. At all levels, there appeared to be clear differentiation as far as 90 per cent. We often observe this when testing inkjet printers, and therefore it would not give any great cause for concern in the MP560's circumstance.

Picture reproduction is first-class, with deep, satisfying blacks within places of strong shadow, such as night-time skies, and radiant primary colours created with our selection of test photos. Utilizing Canon's own photograph paper, transitions amongst similar tones illustrate well-handled gradations, making for natural skies, and, even within dark areas, we could make out delicate variations in brightness. Furthermore, the half-tone is so fine that our results appeared like lab-printed photographs no doubt in part because of the five ink cartridges.

The Canon Pixma MP560 is a feature-packed all-in-one printer. The sole thing it is lacking is a fax. It's no slouch when it comes to sustaining high standards either, producing some really striking results in our tests. Regardless of this, Canon has held the selling price down to a fair level.


Canon Pixma MP560 ink cartridges are available here.