Review of the Canon PIXMA MP530 Office All-In-One Photo Printer and Fax

After about six months of ownership, the Canon PIXMA MP530 Office All-In-One Photo Printer and Fax seems to be a great machine, with the slight drawback of its ink cartridge prices.

I got my PIXMA MP530 to replace my previous, much simpler printer, which, after about a year of service, had conked out. All I really needed was something that could do a good job of text, with the occasional photo, but I was impressed by the PIXMA MP530's, well, niftyness, as well as its price. For about a hundred fifty bucks, it was not much more expensive than any of its competition, so I decided to go for it.

Upon getting it home and trying it out, I was impressed. It proved to be capable of cranking out text in a hurry, and did an excellent job of printing pictures. The scanner worked well too, giving me a good image, if not particularly quickly. As a copier, it proved to work well for occasional use, being much simpler than messing around with both the scanner and the printer, but not coming close to a real copy machine in either speed or quality. I have not yet had occasion to test the fax function.

As the PIXMA MP530 aged, however, I ran into some problems. Although Canon claimed the printer had an "economical" system of using single color ink cartridges, I was disappointed to find that a replacement black cartridge cost more than fifteen bucks, with each of the individual colors costing around thirteen each. To avoid paying through the nose for ink, I looked online for generic cartridges. I found some, but to my dismay they did not include Canon's chip, without which they would not work. Next, I tried buying bulk ink, and refilling the cartridges manually. For twenty five bucks I got about enough ink to last for the lifetime of the printer. Although I found refilling to be a somewhat messy and annoying process, my refilled printer printed just as nicely as it had in the beginning.

Once I had had the printer for a few months, however, I found that the quality of its work had began to decline. Text became streaky, and pictures didn't look very good. As happens to all printer ink heads, my PIXMA MP530's print head had become somewhat clogged, and needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, such a replacement was not available. My printer's days now seem to be few.

Although it is obviously more expensive, printers by some companies, like HP, include new print heads with every cartridge, eliminating the problem I had. Perhaps I'll get one of those next time.