CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/03/2006
- Released on: 08/24/2005
The Canon Pixma MP500's built-in memory card slots accept most common camera storage cards, but you'll need an adapter to use xD Picture, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Duo Pro, and MiniSD cards.The Canon Pixma MP500 is simple to set up and to install, as the clearly labeled drivers and software load automatically. Bundled apps include MP Navigator, Easy-Photo Print, Easy-Web Print, ScanSoft OmniPage SE, and ArcSoft Photo Studio. OmniPage turns paper documents into digital files, and ArcSoft Photo Studio provides a well-rounded menu of photo-editing tools.
The MP500 connects to PCs or Macs with a USB 2.0 cable that you'll need to buy yourself. For wireless printing, Canon sells its BU-20 Bluetooth adapter for $80. If you have a cell phone with an IrDA port and support for IrMC version 1.1, you can print small JPEG files on the MP500 wirelessly from your phone.
Unlike most all-in-one inkjets in the $200 price range, the Canon MP500 prints automatically on two sides of a page, which helps to save paper and to create booklets. This is a handy feature for a small office, but a small business that needs built-in faxing should opt for a model such as the Canon Pixma MP780 or the Epson Stylus 5800F. The Canon MP500 uses four dye-based inks in black, cyan, magenta, and yellow and a larger size of pigment-based black ink. The MP500 uses the pigment black for text printing, and the cartridge currently costs $16.25 to replace; the other cartridges are $14.25 each. Based on Canon's cartridge yield numbers, we estimate that ink costs for a page of black text will be an affordable 2 cents.The Canon Pixma MP500 printed text at 7.08 pages per minute (ppm), slightly slower than the fastest inkjet multifunction we've seen, the Dell 962. The MP500 took almost 2 minutes to print our color, full-page test photo, more than twice as fast as Dell 962, though less than half as fast as the HP Photosmart 3310. The MP500 turned in average scanning speeds and photocopied our grayscale text document faster than many rival all-in-ones.
Speed
CNET Labs multifunction printer performance (page per minute) (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Quality
CNET Labs multifunction printer quality (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Text on inkjet paper |
On our graphics test print, curves were smooth and sharply rendered, but we saw quite a bit of banding in gradients, especially in the grayscale. Our test photo, which prints using the driver's photo settings, delivered very good color fidelity and detail, with only slightly cyan-biased skin tones. However, the photos printed as part of our graphics test, in which most printers use settings more suited to PowerPoint than to photos, rendered skin tones with too much magenta and gray tones with too much cyan.The Canon Pixma MP500 comes with a one-year limited warranty and a year of toll-free telephone support, available weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on nonholiday Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET. We'd appreciate some Sunday hours to help weekend hobbyists. If your MP500 fails during the warranty period, Canon will exchange it for a working unit within a couple of business days and pay the shipping both ways, a nice touch, though an extended warranty costs a pricey $95. The MP500 comes with a 148-page printed user guide and an onscreen manual on CD-ROM that covers driver and software use and how to print from Bluetooth devices. More help is available at Canon's Web site, which offers FAQs, troubleshooting topic lists, and an e-mail link to tech support.
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Where to buy
Canon Pixma MP500:
$289.99
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$289.99 | Yes |
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