Canon Pixma MX330 - Printer Review

The Pixma MX330 is a solid effort on the part of Canon to produce a good printer with nice features and still at a reasonable price. This 4-in-1 (print, copy, scan, and fax) provides a versatile machine for homes on a budget. The most useful and surprising feature on a machine at this price is the auto-document feeder for handling the copying or scanning of multiple pages of documents. The document feeder will handle approximately 30 pages at a time, so enough for an average consumer, but probably not powerful enough for a small business. Compared to other multifunction printers, it will take up less room on a desk; it measures only 7.8" x 18.1" x 16.2" (H x W x D). Another nice feature of the Pixma MX330 is the 1.8" color LCD screen located in the middle of the control panel. While the LCD is not angled at all, the competition lacks them altogether at this price point. Unlike some models, to save costs to the consumer, the machine used only two ink cartridges, one for the black ink (PG-210), and one tricolor cartridge (CL-211). The scanning capabilities are in line with other machines at a solid 4800 x 1200 dpi.

One downside to this machine is the lack of slots for easy input of memory cards, though there is a PictBridge slot for transfer of photos via a USB cable. Another detriment is the overall print quality. Despite Canon's Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) technology(1,472 nozzles on this machine) which creates ink droplets as little as 2 picoliters, some edges can appear choppy upon closer examination and smaller fonts can appear a bit fuzzy. It should be noted that for an average user, these details may go unnoticed and the Pixma MX330 is still a solid choice especially at around $110.