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Canon’s MG6250 is one of the best-equipped photo inkjet MFPs around, with five dye-based inks for photo printing, a dedicated pigmented black cartridge for document printing and versatile connectivity via 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi and USB, as well as the usual PictBridge and memory card slots. The printer has a 7.5cm screen and a touch panel that shows different buttons depending on which of its stand-alone features you’ve selected.
Two paper trays can each handle up to 150 sheets of plain A4. Both can take photo paper, too, and the type of paper in each tray is auto-detected. Photo printing is the MG6250’s most obvious strength. It has a dedicated grey cartridge alongside its dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink tanks.
This means that it produces black and white photos with true monochrome shading, rather than having to create composite grey tones from the other colours. Colour photos also look stunning, with fine detail, vivid colour and beautiful shading.
They print quickly, too – our full-quality 6x4in borderless photos took about 50 seconds each to appear. Document printing is also fairly quick, at 8.8ppm for mono text, 3.5ppm for illustrated colour and 2.5ppm for a duplex version of the same colour document.
For duplex printing in particular, you may want to use heavier 100gsm paper rather than cheaper 80gsm or lighter copier paper, as ink can leave heavily printed areas a little wrinkled. Once again, prints are sharp and smoothly shaded all round. Copy quality is also excellent, with good black and white reproduction of dark areas and only a slight touch of graininess in colour copies.
The MG6250’s scanner has a high optical resolution of 4,800×4,800dpi and a wide colour gamut. It managed an accurate reproduction of our test image’s subtle shading, even in high-contrast areas. We were also impressed by the clarity of finely detailed areas, such as the iris of an eye. We’re fans of Canon’s versatile scanner interface, which retains previews and settings, as well as allowing you massive control over colour and image correction in its advanced settings.
Like many printer manufacturers, Canon has begun providing support for cloud-based printing, primarily via Google’s Cloud Print service. Canon’s new Pixma Cloud Link service will be launched in October. For now, users can still link the MG6250 with their Canon Image Gateway and Picasa web accounts. Canon hasn’t taken the route of Lexmark and HP, with full app centres for its printers, but the MG6250 isn’t lacking in bells and whistles. The large colour screen at makes it easy to preview images for direct printing and scanning using memory cards or PictBridge.
If you’re a keen photographer, this is the MFP for you. Its high quality image printing and 4,800×4,800dpi scanner also make it an appealing option for anyone wanting to archive or copy at high quality. For under £140, it has all the features you need, plus reasonable mono print costs of 2.9p per mono page. The slightly high 8.2p per mixed-colour page is the only slight drawback. The Canon Pixma MG5350 costs less to run, but it can’t match the speed and quality that make the MG6250 our Best Buy.
