New York, NY -- Recently announced by Canon, the MG8120 is chock full of features and aimed at home or home office users. It is a 3-in-1 device which offers the convenience of a printer, scanner, and copier in one, nice-looking device. The device benefits from Canon’s new design which traded in the somewhat dull matte gray finish for a shiny black exterior.
The Pixma MG8120 offers print speeds of up to 12.5 ipm for black and white jobs and 9.3 ipm for color jobs. The maximum resolution for printing from the MG8120 tops out at 9600 x 2400 dpi. As an added bonus, the device is fairly compact. It measures 7.9” x 15.5” x 18.5” (HxWxD) and weighs under 25 lbs.
Capable of connecting to your computer via a built-in wireless connection, Ethernet, or USB 2.0, that is just the start of this machine’s convenience. For those who are green or aspire to be green, the MG8120 comes standard with two-sided printing. It also comes with Canon’s Intelligent Touch System which makes the buttons and functions easier to operate.
There are also a lot of photo-centric features which are worth noting. First, the Pixma MG8120 is able to directly scan both slides and 35mm film through the use of a Film Adapter Unit. It also allows for direct printing of photos by inserting a variety of memory cards (xD, SD, Memory Stick, etc.). The photos can be viewed on a 3.5” color LCD screen and a 4x6” photo can reportedly be printed in approximately 20 seconds. There are also some built-in photo features to make your images even better.
The Pixma MG8120 features a six-cartridge ink system which includes pigment-based black (PGI-225), dye-based black (CLI-226BK), gray, cyan, magenta, and yellow (all CLI-226s). Unfortunately, there is no information readily available from Canon as to each cartridge’s page yield. Due to the price of the printer and the fact that there are no high-yield equivalents, we’d have to guess the cartridges have a fairly reasonable page yield.
Pixma printers by and far are very reliable so we think this printer is no different. It should provide everything a home user or home office will need. The things limiting us from calling this a small business printer is the lack of a fax machine and an automatic document feeder. It does come with a 150-sheet input tray which should be adequate for home or home office uses. If you need more than that, you could consider something like the Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 which comes standard with a fax machine and a 50-page ADF. We’d have to say the Lexmark is better for business, but the Canon is better for photos.
