Canon PIXMA MP495

The all-black, slightly rounded, glossy case of the Canon Pixma MP495 is neat and functional and the combined printer/scanner is surprisingly compact overall.

The scanner takes up most of the top-surface and has extending hinges so it can scan pages from books as well as single sheets.

The control panel, to the right of the scanner lid, is surprisingly busy, though it has no screen for menus or displaying photos. In fact, it cannot print directly from a memory card at all. Instead, there is a single-character display that shows the number of copies it’s going to make (up to nine, obviously) and some status indications.

There are other indicators for paper size and type, and buttons to start and stop copying and scanning jobs. There is also a special illuminated button, marked Fit to Page, which handily scales pages to fit the paper selected. Paper feeds from a near-vertical tray at the back through to the inside of the front cover, which folds down automatically when printing starts.

Inside are two cartridges – one black, one tri-colour – that clip into the device in a couple of seconds. It can connect directly to your computer or to a wireless network: wireless installation was easy, although it’s necessary to first connect it to the computer using a USB cable.

Print speeds were a bit slower than Canon’s modest claims: it managed 6.9 pages per minute (ppm) printing black and white text pages, and 2.4ppm for colour. A 15x10cm photo took just over 80 seconds. All these speeds are about average for an inkjet printer at this price.

Print quality was also good, with crisp black text and strong colours on plain paper. Photo prints came through a little dark, however. The two cartridges are readily available from online discounters, giving costs of around 3.6p for black text and 8.2p for colour pages. These are competitive – it’s good that Canon is not trying to recoup the low price of the printer with sky-high cartridge prices.

The MP495 is a good printer and scanner given the price, but it lacks a few touches of more expensive models, such as the ability to print directly from memory cards or cameras.