Customer Reviews

Canon PIXMA MX350 Wireless Office All-in-One Printer (4205B002)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Several years ago while my wife was in college and suffering through painfully long print times when printing PDFs, I looked around and found the printer with the fastest PDF print speed: a mid range Cannon inkjet. I reluctantly jumped to Canon after owning HPs for years and I've never looked back. I've switched my family over to Canons and everyone agrees: these are just easier printers to use. Except for the high-end professional photo printers, Canons are known for "average" photo quality. Good, but not the best (HP generally wins there). If you are looking for the best picture quality at this price, you probably want to look at an HP. If you are looking for good picture quality but mostly want a reliable, easy to use printer that never jams, read on.

The Canon PIXMA MX350 currently (as of 10/14/2010) sits at the top of the 300 series of printers Canon multi-function printers. The 350 shares the same print engine at the 340 but includes a better scanner and faster fax. The 320 has an older and slower version of the print engine found in the 350 and 340. The 320 lacks wireless lan connectivity found in the 350 and 340 (note none of these have Ethernet). The best overall value is the 340, but for the $30 extra dollars the faster fax and better scanner are worth it to me. All of these printers use the Cl-211 black and multi-color cartridges (unlike many Canons these models do not use individual color cartridges).

I personally find the print quality for text, graphics, and photos to be very good, but not "the best". The print speed is above average for text and photos.
Here are some independently measured print times (Canon's advertised print times are close to this)

Text 7.7 pages per minute
Cost = 6.5 cents

4x6 photo 1.8 minute
Cost = $0.55

8x10 3.2 minutes
Cost = $1.80

The print cost is low, but not the lowest (if you care, Lexmark tends to have the lowest text print cost and Kodak tends to win on color).

As mentioned before, the entire MX300 series use two ink cartridges: one black and one combined color. The cartridges are designed so you can't put them in the wrong slot. The black is a very good water resistant, pigment-based ink. The color inks are less expensive dye-based inks.

The button lay out is good and it's easy to get started using all the features. The wireless lan setup was pretty easy and the range is very good (better than my laptop). The 350 has the best LCD (backlit) of the 300 series. It also has flash card slots and a 30 sheet document feeder. I've printed hundreds of documents on mine and have never managed to jam it or end up with a double paper feed. This is an easy to use home-office workhorse that I think would satisfy most users. I also happen to have a higher-end MP970 Canon all-in-one and I've done quite a few comparisons. Aside from better photo quality (and inks) and a little more speed I can't find much difference between them. If I was just going to buy one I'd probably go for the MX350 and save some money but if photo quality is very important to you I'd look at a higher end Canon MP series or HP Photosmart. Both rate excellent for photo quality and the higher end models use better inks.

I needed a printer/scanner/fax to replace a broken machine. This had good reviews, high star ratings, and a fantastic price - so I bought it. Most of this machine is excellent. Packaging is secure, ink is included, and you get a small trial pack of photo paper. It's quick to plug in and set up. The "Getting Started" paper guide has you printing in minutes. Print quality is very good. Wi-fi connection worked beautifully and only took a few extra minutes and installation of the software on the CD to get connected to all five machines on my network.

The main flaw? I need to receive faxes, and good grief! I'm still struggling. The directions in the "On-screen Manual" are very poor and badly organised - requiring me to flip back and forth between information scattered across many pages. There is no troubleshooting provided for the fax side of this machine. The small, cutesy display is sufficient for print options, but fails badly when trying to navigate the myriad fax options. There are so many options and functions that I don't know whether I've accidentally chosen some that are incompatible, or whether my fax is broken, or (most likely) Canon hasn't encountered the concept of plug and play...

Summary: Printer - excellent. Wi-fi - easy. Scanner - good quality. Fax - consider buying another machine unless you have a lot of free time or a resident geek.

I've been so tired of the bloatware software/drivers that come with HP's. My company has one of the high end Canon machines in the office so I thought I would try one of their home machines. Setup was easy. The software/driver install was easy, did not take forever and did not load up my machine with bloatware crap. It is a straight forward easy to use software and machine that works. I have no complaints. I will be buying Canons for now on at home.

The print quality is very good for my use which is mainly printing black and white pages or printouts of web pages. Quick printing speed. Using the scanner and copier are also easy to use, which is less frequent, but handy to have in this all in one. The wireless took a slight amount of figuring out: you will need to input some information about your wireless router (mine is a Buffalo which I highly recommend) in the printer settings. Once it's set up everything has been working well with the wireless. I have the printer in an office room and I can print from my living room and have never had a problem. I love not having to use cables and it allows you to put the printer where it doesn't have to be seen. The printer also looks good, has an off-white color. This is priced fairly cheap so quite a good purchase. I bought my parents a non-wireless version of the printer several years ago and they've had no problems. The wireless is even better.

Having owned an MX850 and MX860, I was a bit apprehensive about the MX350 being too home-oriented for someone as self-important as I am. Surely, you can't get a decent printer at this price, Canon or not.

Canon proved me wrong.

With the previous experience, setting up the MX350 to work on my home network was pretty straightforward. I'm using three Macs and a Windows 7 machine in my house, and anticipated that Canon would put ancient drivers on their installation disc. Not willing to chance it, I downloaded the latest software from Canon's site, and was on my way in a matter of minutes.

If you're planning to skip the disc, and use a Mac, you'll want to install the IJ Network Tool first, to reduce frustration. From there, go with the driver, and then the MP Navigator software. Trust me, you'll skip a lot of frustration this way, if you're not using the disc.

As expected, the text output was "cheap laser" quality, if not a touch better. Scanning was surprisingly quick, for text and simple graphics. Not surprisingly, doing any sort of higher-res photo scanning is on the slow side, though the image quality is better than acceptable for most home users. Printing out photos produced better than expected results, though not without some edge bleeding even on decent-quality paper.

One thing you may be contemplating is whether to go with the MX350 or Canon PIXMA MX340. If you're trying to decide between the two, here's the only difference I found after a side-by-side comparison: the MS340 doesn't have an LCD screen.

What's the LCD screen worth? That really depends. If you're planning on connecting your camera directly to the MX350, it definitely makes it easier to find your pictures (assuming your camera isn't capable of displaying the pictures when connected to a PictBridge-capable device). On faxing and scanning, the on-screen instructions can also be helpful to less technical users. Ultimately though, they're both solid printers that are a steal if you're going to use the scanner and / or fax.

I liked this Canon all-in-one printer a lot. I am a very non-tech person, and I was able to read the directions and set it up myself. I own a Mac Powerbook, and while I can troubleshoot a few minor things, that's about it. As I worked my way through the instruction pages it went surprisingly smoothly, and the illustrations provided by Canon really helped. Even though I got temporarily caught when I didn't have the MX340 on while trying to install the ink cartridges I was able to determine the problem with Canon's clear instructions.

Like with the Canon MX340, the instruction manual is well-illustrated and explained in a clear manner that made hooking up the printer a straightforward process. It took me only a half hour to install the software, and that includes the time I spent registering.

For me, the quality of the printing and the speed of the printer is good - I do not use this printer for professional reasons. I had a HP all-in-one before this, and although the print may have had a slighter higher quality resolution, the HP used up ink way too quickly. I do not think that's the case with this Canon although I have to use it more to find out. The cost of ink replacement is obviously an important issue.

Note that you can get the Canon MX340 for less money, and to me it seems like the same product, minus a LCD screen. If that is important to you, then you should go with this newer model. Otherwise, that may even be the better deal.

Recommended, especially for the price.

My father has been wanting a new printer for a while. I recommended to him that he should go wireless, since he likes to sit on his laptop in the kitchen. I received the unit and headed over to his house to set it up for him. Packaging was nice, and the unit seems sturdy and strong. Setup out of the box was easy enough (windows xp). I had it up and running in 20 minutes or so, and I was printing wirelessly soon after. The speed was adequate for a $100 wireless printer, and the colors reproduced were fine. He does not print in color so I did not get to test out the color quality. The machine was quiet and didnt jump on his table when it was printing, unlike his old HP printer did. If your looking to get a new semi-cheap printer, I definitely recommend this unit for the bang for the buck features.

I just got this beautifull piece of equipment and I just love it, the seetting up right out of the box was so easy to load the sofware it didn't take more than 5 minutes, the on computer screen control feature is really nice, setting up the the wireless was as easy as getting a new computer on your network and the the printer setting with all the options that it gives you is a nice option.
Over all a nice all in one machine if you get it you will be happy.

This morning the Canon printer arrived. My kids helped me install the printer and it was very easy to set up. My kids helped me set up the computers on the printer network. We were able to install all the printers on the network except the Mac. The Mac runs OSX 10.6 and it should have installed it using the Canon software provided. The printer was installed using Apple's Bonjour software instead.

Navigation:

Navigation was easy to use as a scroll wheel is used to select the wanted features.

As to printing:

*Color pages are washed out and not true to color.
* Black and white pages were clear and crisp.
*Pages are slow to print. PC World rated the print speed at 5.7 pages per minute for black and white. Canon does not seem to provide an actual page count.
*Duplex printing is automatic and easy to use for PCs. The Mac never seemed to access this feature.
*Scanning was excellent. The scan was done in 8 bit color and was reasonably fast.
* I could never get a PDF file to fully print. The printer would quit in the middle of the print job and never finished printing the document.

FAX:

We did not try the FAX feature as this is something we do not normally use.

Canon Research:

Canon as part of its set up procedure asks users if they would like to participate in an anonymous on-going survey. The survey is fine except the request seems to want to include information from your computer's software logs. The survey would be on an ongoing basis and is truly voluntary. You can easily opt out, if desired.

I would recommend researching and finding another printer, if possible. For some this printer may work, but for me I will take a pass.

Really happy with this printer - it replaces an all-in-one older Lexmark that had had one problem after another.
I was in a hurry to get this one set up - called Canon's customer service #. Wow! English-speaking, patient and thorough - it was an unexpected joy to deal with them. Got the printer up, running, connected to wireless easily and quite quickly. So far am more than pleased with the printer. A good choice at a very reasonable price.