All-In-One printers have become the Swiss Army Knife of office and home equipment, enabling a user to be increasingly efficient by replacing a handful of standalone devices and one of the emerging shining stars in this field is the Canon Pixma MG8120.
For many if not most an all-in-one is the way to go. While you may think that you will not use a scanner, or that printed color photos from an ink-jet will not meet your standards, you could be very surprised. Let’s look at the Canon Pixma MG8120 ($189.99).
Ease of Use
A scroll wheel enables users to quickly navigate between the printer’s wide range of features that includes both 2-way paper feeding and the ability to automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper without the bother of manually turning the pages over. All of the many advanced features of the machine are displayed in Icon form so that users can quickly and easily find the features and functions that they are seeking.
Printing and Photo Capabilities
The Canon Pixma MG8120 comes with a 3.5” LED display that enables a user to view, edit, and select images for printing without a computer by connecting directly to a camera. In addition for users of Canon’s EOS Digital SLR or PowerShot cameras, it has the ability to turn paused HD movie frames into prints with its Full HD Movie Print feature.
It has a maximum color resolution of 9600×2400 dots per inch, or 600×600 dpi in black-and-white. It uses a six-color ink system that consists of five color inks and a gray ink-tank. Aside from enabling the creation of high-quality photographic prints, it also lets users swap out individual inks as they run out rather than replacing the entire batch if one color runs out. It has the ability to print a borderless 4×6” photo in roughly 20 seconds, and can handle photos in sizes ranging from 4×6” to 8.5×11” as well as #10 envelopes.
A key asset for photographers is the Auto Photo Fix II feature that will automatically categorize images into one of five basic types: Portrait, Scenery, Night Scenery, Snapshot with Scenery, and Snapshot with Night Scenery. It then applies a multi-zonal exposure correction technique that will help enhance areas that are backlit and underexposed by automatically brightening them and correcting color cast in the photos.
Additional printing features include wireless printing, a feature for calendar print, grayscale printing, smartphone photo printing, and photo direct printing from a variety of memory cards. It supports a range of papers ranging from plain paper to High Gloss, Glossy, Semi-Gloss, and Matte.
Scanning and Copier
The Canon Pixma MG8120 operates as a flatbed scanner and can handle documents as large as 8.5×11.7”. Several features are designed to take the pain out of scanning. These include Auto Document Fix that has automatic area-by-area data correction. This feature has the ability to darken documents to provide sharp contrast with the text and also enables true color and tone reproductions from photo scans. The scan function also includes Auto Scan Mode that has the ability to recognize and the saves the scan with what it calculates as the proper settings for that type of scan.
Aside from the copying features already mentioned above, the device can also reduce and enlarge from 25% to 400%, Zoom, Image Repeat, Manual Color Adjustment, multiple copy from 1-99 pages, Photo Reprint and trim copy.
Connectivity
The printer’s built-in Wi-Fi capabilities can eliminate the need for cables between it and Wi-Fi enabled computer in a house or office, or it can be connected via a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable. In addition it has built-in Ethernet so that it can be connected to a home or office LAN.
The printer also offers a range of features for users that do not wish to use a computer in getting their images or pages printed. It accepts over a dozen different memory cards and then can display the images on its LCD display enabling a user to easily select the appropriate items to print. There is a great deal of support for remote printing from cameras and other devices. Its Smartphone Printing feature supports a range of Android, iPhone and iPod Touch devices and enables wireless printing from them. It also supports PictBridge so that a user can print from a DV camcorder, digital camera or smartphone and for fans of Bluetooth it has an optional BU-3- wireless Bluetooth unit available.
Software and Support
The printer supports Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Vista operating systems as well as Apple’s MacOS X v10.4.11 and beyond. It ships with a range of software and drivers including PIXMA MG8120 Printer Driver, Easy-PhotoPrint EX, Easy-PhotoPrint Pro, Easy-WebPrintEX for Windows systems only, Full HD Movie Print and others. The 23.6 lb device comes with a one year limited warranty that includes one-year toll-free technical phone support.
Conclusion and Recommendation
The Canon Pixma MG8120 has a list of features that should meet a huge range of users needs, from color printing to copying and scanning. Robust enough to serve in the office environment it contains an array of features that will meet with small office and home and personal users as well.
