Canon Pixma MP270

Handling

The Canon Pixma MP270 is the definition of an entry-level multifunction printer.  Apart from a few details, it provides the same printing speeds and quality as the manufacturer's professional models, which, if the Pixma MP640 is anything to go by, can cost up to four times as much.  The difference in price is justified less by improved printing performance, but rather by the absence of certain extra features, which are by no means essential for everybody.

That means the colour screen is replaced by a simple display to show how many copies you're making.  WiFi, double-sided printing, Linux drivers and memory card readers are all also off the agenda: to cut costs, Canon has removed all but the essentials, leaving a unit that sticks to the three basic features of printing, scanning and copying.

Unlike more advanced printers, the MP270 uses a single cartridge for colour printing, with cyan, magenta and yellow all in the same cartridge, rather than available separately.

Speeds

When we timed them, the printing speeds were slower than on the MP640, which is a lot further up the range.  They're still perfectly good enough for personal use, though, and 11.3 and 7.5 pages per minute (ppm) respectively for black-and-white and colour pages in standard mode is pretty fast!  They're helped along by the fact the first page arrives promptly in just 18 seconds (see inset).


Canon claims its printer can produce 4 x 6'' prints in 45 seconds in standard mode, but we didn't manage to duplicate that using our test documents, which took 49 seconds for a photo and 1 minute 49 seconds for an A4 page.

Compared to the MP640, printing photos takes a little bit longer, taking 49 seconds rather than 27 s.  You're going to need a lot of patience, but these times still fall within the average over all the printers we've tested.  For instance, a mid-range option like the HP Photosmart Wireless produces 4 x 6'' prints in 45 seconds.

Energy and noise consumption

The MP270 uses 11 W while working and just 0.9 W while on standby, which is excellent.

For noise levels, the 46.5 dB that we measured when printing a photo on A4 make this a relatively quiet printer: inkjets often produce around 50 dB.


Quality

The MP270 produces good quality office printing.  The colours in our graph are accurate and we were impressed by the contrast.  The individual letters in the text are legible and distinct.

Be warned, though: you need to be careful when you pick up a document, especially if your palms are a little sticky.  The black ink doesn't dry quickly enough, and is still a little damp weeks later.  It's easy to smudge the text if you press on it with your thumb.


In a similar vein, photo printing could be better, and it's here that the difference in quality between this printer and a more advanced model is really obvious.  The prints are lacking in detail, the ink drops are visible and the colours have a red/orange tinge.


The photo above is a 300 dpi scan of one of test photos printed on the MP270.  Above all, it's the graininess that stands out, and it's accentuated by the enlargement, so it looks worse than it does compared to the print we're actually looking at.  Nevertheless, this gives a very clear demonstration of the gulf between what this printer can produce and the results from something like the MP640, which produces much smoother prints with more accurate colours.

Scanner and copier

The scanner is very fast, taking just seven seconds to produce a preview, followed by 3.5 seconds for a 75 dpi scan, and 15 s for an A4 photo at 300 dpi.

It's also pretty reasonable, and we only noticed a colour discrepancy of 7% (compared to 8% on the MP640).  In practice, the colours are pretty accurate if a little cold (looking blue), and blacks are noticeably washed out.
Cost per page

The MP270 comes with 'standard' cartridges, but a second variety is also available.  They're more expensive to buy, but the 'XL' cartridges work out much cheaper over time, and we strongly recommend them.

ISO lifespan test for text documents


The total cost per page (adding black and colour cartridges) comes to 11.6 p per page using the normal cartridges, compared to just 8.1 p with XL cartridges.  You can compare that to 9.5 p per page on the Epson PX810FW, 11.1 p per using XL cartridges with the Lexmark S605, 10.4 p per page on HP's latest generation of wireless printers or 7.6 p per on the Canon MP640.  Overall, then, the cost per page is somewhat below average.

ISO lifespan test for photos

Cartridge	Price (Dec 09)	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
PG-510 (black)	£12.20	2 955	0.4 p
CL-511 (colour)	£14.93	83	18 p
PG-512 (black XL)	£13.80	7 275	0.2 p
CL-513 (colour XL)	£16.49	122	13.5 p

That's a total cost per page of 13.7 p when printing photos, and you'll need to add around 20 p for photo paper.  Various photo printing services work out cheaper--but you'll have to wait for your photos, of course.