Customer Reviews

Canon PIXMA MP450 All-In-One Photo Printer

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is not my first Canon, I used them for years and they seem indestructible. I get this MP 450 from Amazon, before it get on the market, and just love it. It is a beautiful little thing, sleek and shiny in black and silver, white a nice adjustable LCD in full colour.

This multifunction is quite small (nice feature if you don't want to clutter your work space) and it does everything his big sister do (I had the huge mp 780 which I was not so found of). The MP 450 works nicely, smoothly and even faster. Scans and copies are sharp and clear, printing is crisp, it's a real pleasure to use.

Often one says it's better to have a cartridge for each colour, I am not so sure: when one is empty, the others follow shortly after. I love having just 2 cartridges to watch and manage (dealing with 4 or 5, you're always running at the shop unless you store a lot). By the way it is really a two (2) cartridges printer (event though I read otherwise on some websites. Furthermore, every time you change one of these, you get a new head, (that means sharp printing). But, even with that, the ink cost is quite low, a very important feature for me as I print a lot of text. It even "duplex print, so you use both side of paper. Furthermore, included are two high capacity cartridges , but I didn't compared theses the regular ones, or found any info on theses, but this is a nice little plus.

Photo and colour printing are astounding, you can modify the setting to your own tastes. The software bundle is full of nice surprises, like Arcsoft photo suite, which reassemble a little to Photoshop but is far much easier to use) , and two scanner utilities.

So I am very glad to have wait for the MP 450. And hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do. Good luck!

I bought this unit to replace my 5 year old Canon F-30. The problem with my old unit was that after replacing the cartridges the colors stop working due to a bad print head. My only choice at this point was to buy a new head for more than I paid for a new MP-400. I look at differnt brands and they all had the same issue. They all use individual ink cartridges running on one common print head. The main advantage of the MP-450 is that you only have to deal with two cartridges that contain their individual heads. the real advantage is that every time you put a newone you put a new head wich translate into good print guality and cost efficiency but not having to buy a new headunit. As far as print quality goes the colors are accurate and pictures have a top notch print quality(for its price range). The speed is more than acceptable for home use. Scaning quality is impresive and color reproduction is very accurate. The number of faetures like direct printing from Digital Camera and the ability to double as a card reader into your computer makes it an amazing deal, not to mension the ability to see and print your picture without using yor computer. I have only own it for a couple of weeks so its hard to comment on long term reliability but around $100 plus low operating cost its hard not to recommed it.

PRINTER:

I've had this printer for about 2 months now. We use it constantly for printing out projects for home school. The print cartridge life was very impressive. We just finished going through the first high yield black cartridge. I was amazed how long it lasted compared to our Epson; that drank ink!

The only draw back is there aren't any generic print cartridges yet, so we are forced to pay the full price for now, that will change over time.

SCANNER:

I have scanned about 80 images and the scanner works wonderfully as a plugin to photoshop. Easy to understand software. The colors looked great to me. Reproduction was true to life. I used the photos to create a movie photo montage and it turned out beautiful.

Overall I am very happy with this printer. Great value!

Bought it for under $100 at Amazon after rebate. Good price for a decent printer. Scans documents well. Good software for OCR and printing utilities. The paper output tray isn't quite long enough but I can deal with it. It's very easy to set up- fairly quiet, and the print qualtiy for b&w and graphics seems to be good thus far. Like most other printers in this category- it's plastic, lightweight and rather cheap overall. But it works well for the price. I'm tired of HP's crap...they load way too much software into the startup file- so I'm glad I tried Canon. Thier utility is very unobtrusive. If you can get it for $83 like I did- it's almost disposable if you decide you don't like it after a year.

I'm a college student who prints mostly text. Nevertheless, after seeing the convenience of having an All-in-One, I'd recommend investing a little more in a printer with more functions. I purchased this printer after my Epson C84 clogged. After looking at some inkjets, I decided to order this Canon based on price and reliability.

1. This printer is large.
The Canon line does not have the compact box design of HP All-in-Ones (1400 and 1500 Series). The scanner/copier control panel hangs over the output paper tray, and subsequently makes the printer somewhat bulky. One would lift that ledge in order to install ink cartridges. It can get a little tricky since the top portion only lifts about 45 degrees, making it somewhat difficult to pop the cartridges in, especially if the printer is on the floor.

2. It has lots of handy features.
- There is a quiet/night printing mode which significantly reduces noise. You can enable it through printer options via the computer.
- Duplex printing means manual duplex printing. Once everything prints on one side, you have to pick up all the papers and feed it into the printer again. It's slightly annoying but better than printing odds and evens in two runs.

3. Print quality is not as sharp as the old Epson.
As I had mentioned, I have not printed photos. However, I did notice that even with text and smaller graphics, the ink tended to bleed a little more. I shouldn't complain though since I paid less than $100 for this.

4. There are two ink cartridges: one color and one black. The cartridges have their own print heads, which reduces the likelihood of clogs. So far I haven't figured out whether or not the ink gauge on the computer reflects the actual ink levels in the printer. Sorry! As far as I know the printer only runs cleaning cycles on the printing heads whenever you turn it off or on. According the Canon people, it takes up minimal amounts of ink to do that.

Overall, this is a nice handy printer, which at the time was a good deal ($80). Except for a few minor things such as the manual duplex and the inability to turn on the printer by sending a document to print, it's been great.

I used to own a Hewlett Packard 5550. But I couldn't take the fact that the printer speed was superslow, and it was constantly jamming. So I finally took it out to the dumpster and began researching other printers and brands. I figured why not get a photo printer if it was about the same cost as a regular one.
I've owned this new machine for less than a week now, but wow, the difference is huge. This machine feeds paper so much faster than my old printer (and no jamming so far). Also, the print speed is wonderful, especially when you're printing 30 and 40 page documents. It gets the job done in a matter of about a minute or two.
I like the fact that this machine has a copier. However, one thing I would change about the copier is that (to my knowledge) you have to put stuff on the glass to copy it. So this means that you can't autofeed longer documents. It is convenient though if you just need to make a quick one to two page copy.
Additionally, it's very convenient to be able to insert the memory card from your digital camera directly into the printer. The printer reads most kinds of memory cards. We have a Kodak camera, and an SD memory card. The memory card reader feature allowed me to take a picture of my Xmas tree, then take out the card, load it into the memory card reader, open the removable drive on my computer, click on the picture, save it my computer, adjust it and instandly email it to friends and family. This is a much more convenient way to upload digital photos if your computer doesn't have a memory card reader.
Also, I've found the directions to be very easy to read and understand. I've only had the printer for a few days, and within hours I had it installed, was printing and making copies and the next day was uploading photos to my computer.
I've printed a bunch of long documents, have photocopied stuff, etc. So far no problems!
This is by far the nicest printer I have ever owned. I am very pleased with it. I would definitely recommmend it.
One thing to note though is that this is larger than a standard printer so you may need to have a bigger place to store it.
This is definitely worth the money especially if you plan to use the memory card feature and need access to a copier or a scanner.
We haven't used the scanner feature yet or printed photos, but I am looking forward to doing that in the next few days. So far everything about this machine has met or exceeded my expectations. I am very impressed by this printer and the Canon brand. I am very pleased with my purchase.

Bought it at a local store (BB). This is a bit bulky but BW printing and scanning/copying is very good and fast.

Color Photo print quality is just disappointing. coloring and shades are horrible and little blurry. I had other printers too but this printer is way below than Epson,HP and even Brother for photo printing. After printing 10 test letter size photots (Canon Glossy paper), I could not withstand and just promptly returned. So I do not recommend this printer if you want any glossy photo printing.

This is by far the worst printer I have ever owned. I have had it for barely 2 months and it is no longer working. The scanner stopped functioning after a month. Then the copier went out. And now the printer won't even turn on! You have to have a separate outlet to provide enough power to run t he printer in the first place. Heaven forbid you need to use an extension cord or surge protector bar. If you can't plug it directly into the wall - Forget about it! The paper does not feed properly no matter what. And to top it off...I can't get it fixed. The nearest Canon repair is over 2 hours away and as far as mailing it back and forth to Canon and paying their fees it is cheaper to invest in a new one - I used to love Canon products but after the last two lemons (this one and the MP360) that I got from them - I will be looking elsewhere!

I gave it 2 stars in my original review because it did print nicely when it was working. With this edited review it won't let me change the amount of stars I gave it but I give it ZERO.

Don't waste your money on this rubbish.

Color shading on prints is somewhat different than what appears on my computer or camera but I have not yet tried playing around with the printer settings, which may improve the situation. Extremely easy to use and set up. Lot's of cool features (print directly from camera, use SD card as a hard drive, direct print from SD card, etc.), which I haven't used yet. Good software bundle. Works as advertised.

This canon is not as good as the canon printers I owned. I have a $40 Canon IP1500 which prints better pictures. What's wrong with my printer: 1)You copy faces from magazines and the face color in the output is yellow instead of brown. 2) Scan a picture and its quality sucks-very strong yellows 3) the blacks are extremely and they come out washed out ang grayish 4) copying and scanning is extremely slow 5) easy photoprint is a horrible software, you could not even change the printer properties from here. The good: At least it is better than PSC1610 which I returned.