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Canon MP560 All-In-One InkJet Printer
Price Range:
$289.99 to $379.99
Compact, high-performance inkjet photo all-in-one with built-in wireless and auto duplex printing has arrived! The PIXMA MP560 wireless...
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Compact, high-performance inkjet photo all-in-one with built-in wireless and auto duplex printing has arrived! The PIXMA MP560 wireless inkjet photo all-in-one perfectly blends performance and convenience. Its built-in two-sided printing can save you paper and help the environment so you can be efficient and eco-friendly, all at the same time. The Auto Photo Fix II feature automatically adjusts and helps to correct your photos and you can preview images before you print on its built-in 2.0" LCD. Making copies? No problem. Dual Color Gamut Processing technology enables your copies to maintain the integrity of the original.
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17 Reviews from Epinions.com
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Canon MP560
The Canon MP560- is the mid range model in its current range of All-In-Ones, boasting wireless printing (but not Ethernet, or Bluetooth (an optional extra). This indeed was my main motivation for buying it as I need a printer, but live in a small house so I’ve got little room so the printer has to live in the airing cupboard. My last three printers have been HP, but after my last one turned out to be a useless heap of junk, I jumped ship to Canon. So how does it fare?
Interface
The MP560 boasts an easy to use interface – compromised perhaps by the little 2-inch display, but I could find my way around it and explore all the options without recourse to the manual. The influence of the iPod is blatantly visible in Canon’s current crop of multifunction printers – as a result there is an iPod style circular spin wheel that you use with your index finger to navigate the menu system. All the options that you use most are only a button press, or at most two button presses away, and there are a series of “quick options” that bypass all the setting-twiddling if you just want to scan a document or print a photo quickly. No matter where you are, there is a “Home” button that will always take you back to the master menu. As you would expect, there are one-touch buttons for either colour or greyscale copying.
If you want to print directly from a memory card or a USB pen drive, there is a basic set of photo editing tools on board (cropping and rotating), and they are fairly intuitive to use thanks to the simplicity of the user interface, but with the little 2 inch display they are obviously no substitute for a photo editing package on your PC.
Printing
Full size letter paper lives in the base of the machine (in a rather flimsy slide-out tray – to be expected at this price point), whilst the photo paper is loaded vertically through a slot in the back. As is traditional on Canon printers, all the various media exit and entry flaps all close up meaning that the machine packs into a nice, convenient cube when it’s not being used. Should you forget to open the main exit flap, it will pop open automatically when you do the first print. Some people have said it’s on the big side, but the MP560 is a smaller and more tightly packaged unit than the HP I had before. Quoted print speed is 9.2ppm mono or 6ppm color, but of course that figure is meaningless unless you know what print quality that was selected. I can’t fault the quality of the photo prints however, the colours were vibrant, and not a trace of pixilation anywhere – the quoted res is 9600 x 2400dpi with a photo print speed of 39 seconds (based on a standard 10x15cm print) – this pretty much held up in my experience. Duplex printing for 2-sided prints is also standard, and this feature works well.
Scanning
Scan resolution comes in at 240dpi. You either have the option of scanning in the conventional manner (i.e. from your PC), either directly from the Canon software, or through your photo editing package – which isn’t always reliable thanks to buggy drivers – I use Microsoft Works Photo Premium, and yes you guessed it – trying to fire up the TWAIN driver from within crashed it completely. Intriguingly, on my system doing a “scan to PC” using the printer’s own controls made the TWAIN driver launch flawlessly on my laptop. But to be fair I’ve never owned a scanner (I’ve been through an Agfa and two HPs) that haven’t had flaky drivers to put up with. Alternatively, the MP560 can scan directly to your memory card or USB flash drive and save the result as a .PDF file – a really handy feature, but expect file sizes to be large.
Living With It
I was a bit perplexed to find the sheer amount of assembly work required – the printhead and the five ink cartridges are all supplied in a dismantled state and you have to build it up from scratch. Every component is wrapped individually – has Canon heard of environmental awareness these days?? Once assembled though it was easy enough to wing it through the built in controls, and do a test print – but that’s until you get to setting up the wireless….
The user documentation is really akward to use and was my biggest criticism with the unit. In this day and age, where everyone is worred about consumption of resources and the like, why on earth to Canon supply you with 2 massive manuals (1 user guide, 1 network trouble shooting guide), each written in 26 different languages, resulting in 2 inches thick worth of paper 95% of which is totally irrelevant. The set up guide could be laid out a bit better too, as I inevitably made a cock-up of the wireless set up (the driver installation fell over with a meaningless error message) and I had to retrace my steps a second time and the constant flicking of pages trying to find the bit that was relevant to me became infuriating after a while. The idea of having a printed network troubleshooting guide seemed initially nice, but the problem I ran into wasn’t listed, and Canon’s online troubleshooting was rather rudimentary and therefore wasn’t any help either. I ended up having to Google it and find the solution on a third party tech discussion board.
Overall
If you can live with the little display, the lack of an Ethernet port, and a slightly lower print speed then this will do nicely. Otherwise you’ll need to move up to the slightly more expensive MP640. But I am pleased with this machine and I am happy to recommend it.
Clever Little Box!
| Author's Rating: |
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Pros: Top quality prints, compact size, good looking, fast and really easy to use.
Cons: Small LCD screen, fussy wireless setup, cumbersome documentation and iffy on-line help.
The Bottom Line:
If you are looking for a well engineered, well thought out and value for money all in one that's easy to use and live with, this is it!
The Canon MP560- is the mid range model in its current range of All-In-Ones, boasting wireless printing (but not Ethernet, or Bluetooth (an optional extra). This indeed was my main motivation for buying it as I need a printer, but live in a small house so I’ve got little room so the printer has to live in the airing cupboard. My last three printers have been HP, but after my last one turned out to be a useless heap of junk, I jumped ship to Canon. So how does it fare?
Interface
The MP560 boasts an easy to use interface – compromised perhaps by the little 2-inch display, but I could find my way around it and explore all the options without recourse to the manual. The influence of the iPod is blatantly visible in Canon’s current crop of multifunction printers – as a result there is an iPod style circular spin wheel that you use with your index finger to navigate the menu system. All the options that you use most are only a button press, or at most two button presses away, and there are a series of “quick options” that bypass all the setting-twiddling if you just want to scan a document or print a photo quickly. No matter where you are, there is a “Home” button that will always take you back to the master menu. As you would expect, there are one-touch buttons for either colour or greyscale copying.
If you want to print directly from a memory card or a USB pen drive, there is a basic set of photo editing tools on board (cropping and rotating), and they are fairly intuitive to use thanks to the simplicity of the user interface, but with the little 2 inch display they are obviously no substitute for a photo editing package on your PC.
Printing
Full size letter paper lives in the base of the machine (in a rather flimsy slide-out tray – to be expected at this price point), whilst the photo paper is loaded vertically through a slot in the back. As is traditional on Canon printers, all the various media exit and entry flaps all close up meaning that the machine packs into a nice, convenient cube when it’s not being used. Should you forget to open the main exit flap, it will pop open automatically when you do the first print. Some people have said it’s on the big side, but the MP560 is a smaller and more tightly packaged unit than the HP I had before. Quoted print speed is 9.2ppm mono or 6ppm color, but of course that figure is meaningless unless you know what print quality that was selected. I can’t fault the quality of the photo prints however, the colours were vibrant, and not a trace of pixilation anywhere – the quoted res is 9600 x 2400dpi with a photo print speed of 39 seconds (based on a standard 10x15cm print) – this pretty much held up in my experience. Duplex printing for 2-sided prints is also standard, and this feature works well.
Scanning
Scan resolution comes in at 240dpi. You either have the option of scanning in the conventional manner (i.e. from your PC), either directly from the Canon software, or through your photo editing package – which isn’t always reliable thanks to buggy drivers – I use Microsoft Works Photo Premium, and yes you guessed it – trying to fire up the TWAIN driver from within crashed it completely. Intriguingly, on my system doing a “scan to PC” using the printer’s own controls made the TWAIN driver launch flawlessly on my laptop. But to be fair I’ve never owned a scanner (I’ve been through an Agfa and two HPs) that haven’t had flaky drivers to put up with. Alternatively, the MP560 can scan directly to your memory card or USB flash drive and save the result as a .PDF file – a really handy feature, but expect file sizes to be large.
Living With It
I was a bit perplexed to find the sheer amount of assembly work required – the printhead and the five ink cartridges are all supplied in a dismantled state and you have to build it up from scratch. Every component is wrapped individually – has Canon heard of environmental awareness these days?? Once assembled though it was easy enough to wing it through the built in controls, and do a test print – but that’s until you get to setting up the wireless….
The user documentation is really akward to use and was my biggest criticism with the unit. In this day and age, where everyone is worred about consumption of resources and the like, why on earth to Canon supply you with 2 massive manuals (1 user guide, 1 network trouble shooting guide), each written in 26 different languages, resulting in 2 inches thick worth of paper 95% of which is totally irrelevant. The set up guide could be laid out a bit better too, as I inevitably made a cock-up of the wireless set up (the driver installation fell over with a meaningless error message) and I had to retrace my steps a second time and the constant flicking of pages trying to find the bit that was relevant to me became infuriating after a while. The idea of having a printed network troubleshooting guide seemed initially nice, but the problem I ran into wasn’t listed, and Canon’s online troubleshooting was rather rudimentary and therefore wasn’t any help either. I ended up having to Google it and find the solution on a third party tech discussion board.
Overall
If you can live with the little display, the lack of an Ethernet port, and a slightly lower print speed then this will do nicely. Otherwise you’ll need to move up to the slightly more expensive MP640. But I am pleased with this machine and I am happy to recommend it.
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