Canon Pixma MX882 All In One Printer Review

The thing that first grabs your attention about the Canon MX882 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One ($199.99 direct) is its front panel—its backlit buttons change depending on what function you’re using—but that’s only the beginning of its appeal. This multifunction printer (MFP) combines superior text and graphics quality with a formidable feature set for both home and business use.

Pixma MX882 Review
A built-in, fully integrated 35-sheet Duplex Auto Document Feeder means fast copying scanning and faxing of your originals so you can multi-task while the printer is at work. To increase home office efficiency and productivity, Built-in Auto Duplex Printing prints 2-sided documents without having to manually flip the pages. This can reduce your paper consumption by up to 50%. Additionally, Super G3 High-speed Fax3 and networkable Ethernet ensure efficient communication and thanks to Dual Color Gamut Processing Technology, your copies will maintain the integrity of the original while producing scans at 4800 dpi. It could be used in a small office, but its ideal environment is perhaps a business based in a home with a family that would also use it for photo printing. The Pixma MX882 is a black plastic box that measures 8.6×19.4×16.4 inches (HWD). Weighing in at just under 26 pounds, the unit tapers on the top and bottom. Its design is sleek and stylish, even if the body is a little larger than other AIOs in this class. We could see it fitting into a living room as well as an office, as long as you have the desktop real estate for it.

Canon bundles its excellent set of utilities for both PC and Mac. The tools handle everything from basic scanning to OCR and photo editing, as well as layout and printing. The setup routine is simple, requiring minimal user intervention. On the Mac, you can register both the printer and the scanner without having to delve into the System Preferences dialog boxes manually. In our speed tests the Pixma MX882 landed in the midrange or better. Plain-black text and simple monochrome graphics averaged 7.5 pages per minute on the PC and nearly 8 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size color photos exited at 3 ppm when printed on plain paper at default settings, and slowed to 1.9 ppm at better settings on Canon’s own photo paper. Scans and copies were relatively quick, as well. You can achieve much greater speeds in draft mode.

The text and monochrome graphics that the Pixma MX882 produces are excellent–precisely drawn and deeply black in default mode, and nearly laserlike in high-quality mode. Color quality is affected by paper type: On plain paper, our images looked overly pink or orange, and very soft. Switching to Canon’s own glossy photo paper resulted in smoother, more natural results. Color scans showed the same ruddy tendencies, but monochrome scans were fairly precise. Monochrome and color copies appeared crisp and fairly smooth even on plain paper.

Both wireless and USB setup are easy and straightforward. Connecting the Canon MX882 All In One Printer to our wireless network was a breeze; just enter the setup menu by hitting the Setup button on the control panel, navigate to the WLAN options, choose the correct network, and enter the wireless password using the alphanumeric keypad on the control panel. Canon’s software and drivers installed without a problem. The software provided a simple, straightforward interface for scanning and printing photos as well.