 The Canon MP450 printer is a solid all-in-one ink jet printer that prints, copies, and scans with lots of quality and little fuss.
While most types of computer hardware and peripheral devices can have frustrating issues, printer problems seem to be inevitable. If there is one type of computer-related device I have owned that always has some kind of problem, it is the printer. That's why I am pleasantly surprised that my experience with the Canon MP450 has been relatively hassle-free.
The software installation on my Power Mac G5 was a breeze, taking less than 20 minutes to install the printer drivers and included software. Immediately after installing the software, I was able to select the MP450 from the printer list and print text documents and color images with no problems. Since I use Adobe Photoshop for both image editing and scanning, I have not had much use for the included software. However, I played around with the included Easy-PhotoPrint software, and found that it offers some useful image enhancement tools and makes it super easy to print on various sizes and types of paper.
The print quality of the Canon MP450 is impressive. Text is clean and accurate (finally -- no faded lines!) and pictures are crisp and vibrant. However, make sure to choose photo quality and photo paper when printing onto photo paper unless you prefer very faded images. When printing in photo quality mode, the images do take awhile to print, but the quality is solid for such an inexpensive printer. Granted, the colors are not quite as bold as those from professional color ink jets, but for this price, I am impressed.
The printer does take a few seconds -- up to half a minute -- to warm up if its been sitting for a few days. But once its finished making all its funny sounds, it gets to work and prints very fast. Pages of text take less than seven seconds each in regular quality, and photo-quality 4x6 images take about 25 seconds apiece. The printer is also very quiet when it prints, which is a nice improvement over my old Epson that let everyone in the house know when it was printing.
The MP450 includes a flatbed scanner that doubles as a copier. The first thing I did when I got the printer was make a few copies and it worked just as I had hoped. The included LCD allows you to adjust the contrast, paper size, and number or copies, just like a standalone copy machine. Just press the Black or Color copy button and make quick black and white or color copies. This feature alone is worth the price of the printer.
The scanner scans both grayscale and color images, with an outstanding resolution of 1200x2400. Most consumers never need to use a resolution any higher than 600x600, so there is no shortfall of quality here. The included scanner driver makes it easy to scan from other programs like Photoshop or Image Capture (Mac). It provides a simple mode (which is good enough for basic scans) and an advanced mode. The advanced mode includes a plethora of options that even made me, a graphic editor, a little intimidated. Did I mention there is a simple mode? You can also choose "Multi-Scan" to scan multiple images on one platen and have them saved as individual image files.
One feature I especially like about the scanner is its quick preview feature. This option does a quick pass over the image and crops only the part of page where there is image data to be scanned. This saves editing time and unnecessary scanning time, especially when scanning in a high resolution. The scanner output is high quality and the colors are accurate. I seldom have the need to scan anything higher than 300 dpi, but even that quality is impressive.
The Canon MP450 prints and scans with great quality, but what impresses me most about the printer is its ease of use. I had no problems installing the software or getting the printer to work, and I have not had any annoying issues, even after several months of use. The Canon MP450 has turned "hassle-free printer" from an oxymoron into a reality. |
