Canon Pixma MG6650 review

The Canon Pixma MG6650 has big shoes to fill. Joining Canon’s Pixma range of all-in-ones as a successor to last year’s award-winning MG6450, and as a mid-range alternative to the high-performance MG7750, this £90 all-in-one has the weight of expectation resting on its paper trays.

Canon Pixma MG6650 review: looks & features

If you’ve owned a printer in the Pixma range in the past few years, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the MG6650 looks like. Clad in black matte plastic with a glossy plastic copier lid – it’s also available in bronze and white, if that takes your fancy – it’s as compact and attractive as all-in-ones get.

Canon hasn’t brought much in the way of upgrades – the MG6450 retains both USB 2 and 802.11bgn Wi-Fi connections and an SD card reader on the front edge – but we’re pleased to see that the 7.5cm colour display is now a touchscreen. It’s largely an improvement on the MG6450 and, while it does occasionally require a firm prod, it makes it easy to navigate the onscreen menus or adjust the printer’s various settings.

As ever, the handy Pixma Printing Solutions app makes light work of wireless printing directly from Android or iOS devices – there’s no need to fire up a PC to print out documents stored on your tablet or smartphone. Meanwhile, the Pixma Cloud Link app provides cloud printing and storage services, as well as support for Google Cloud Print, and it’s also possible to print photos directly from a Canon Image Gateway or Picasa account.

Canon Pixma MG6650 review: specifications & testing

Internally, the MG6650 hasn’t seen any significant upgrades from the MG6450. There’s still the same five-ink print engine – the MG6650 still lacks the grey ink tank of the MG7750. As a result, it turns in almost identical print speeds to the MG6450, whipping out A4 mono prints at 13.3ppm and A4 colour documents at 9.3ppm. Print quality is similar, too: text is crisp, with no stair-stepping or smudging, and competent, if very slightly grainy colour reproduction.

One area the MG6650 subtly improves upon is photo printing. Where the MG6450 took 58 seconds to print out a 6 x 4in photograph on Canon’s Pro Platinum II photo paper, the MG6650 printed the same photograph in 52 seconds at high quality and 38 seconds at standard quality settings. We also noticed that colour reproduction and general image quality has also improved, with the MG6650 producing much warmer, more natural colours and skin tones. We did notice some crushed blacks and, again, slightly grainy colours, but for the most part, the MG6650 has the clear advantage over its stablemate.

The good news continues elsewhere, with the MG6650 rattling off scanning and copying jobs at a decent clip. The MG6650 produced a crisp, if somewhat faded, monochrome copy of our single-page ISO document in 12 seconds; a colour copy in 20 seconds; and a decent, if slightly grainy copy of our 6 x 4in photo in 55 seconds.

The specifications may not have changed, but the 1,200 x 2,400 resolution scanner has had a bit of a speed bump. Where the MG6450 took 58 seconds to scan our 6 x 4in photo at 600dpi, the MG6650 completed the job in 35 seconds.

Running costs remain reasonable, too. As ever, we’d strongly advise plumping for the XL-size ink tanks, since they’re only fractionally more expensive than the standard-capacity tanks. Based on Canon’s stated XL cartridge capacities, mono A4 prints cost only 2.4p, colour prints cost 7.7p and colour photos a very reasonable 13.5p. Opt for the standard-sized tanks, and you’ll end up paying 3.4p for a mono print, 10.5p for a colour page and 19.8p for a 6 x 4in photo.

Canon Pixma MG6650 review: verdict

In all, the Canon Pixma MG6650 does just enough to inherit its predecessor’s PC Pro A-List crown. It does everything the MG6450 did right, but does so just that little bit more quickly and cheaply. If you’re looking for an efficient and cost-effective inkjet for home and home-office use, the Canon Pixma MG6650 comes with our seal of approval.

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