If you need an office printer, then get one – even the G650 with its scanner/copier is not really pushing this area. But does it offer enough quality to make our Best Printer list? Here are my thoughts. Design and features

The Canon PIXMA G550 A4 Colour Inkjet Printer is compatible with a great selection of paper types. Handling paper up to A4 in size, you can print on mediums including card and envelopes, offering you a flexible solution to all of your printing requirements. Whether you want to print stunning high definition pictures on the finest glossy photo paper, or you need to produce a selection of business cards to hand out at events, this printer offers the quality you need to make the best first impression. Stunning colour profiles Dye-based ink differentiates itself over pigment ink with brighter, more vibrant colours making it a good choice for colour photographs and also produces slightly sharper prints with text-based documents. Dye-based ink tends to be slightly cheaper too, which is good news for high capacity print requirements. Ink durability and sunlight volatility is said to be slightly lower than pigment based ink, but we’re talking about decades of durability rather than years for both options. UV resistant glass is always recommended if hanging any picture in an environment with direct sunlight.Easy to use, the 2-line LCD allows users to access information and adjust settings effortlessly, while automatic power off saves energy Take complete creative control of your images with PIXMA and imagePROGRAF PRO professional photo printers. Superficially this seems like a dead end for use with Macs. However it is still possible to print the targets, but using whatever is going on inside the AirPrint driver when set to a particular media type. On a Windows setup, you’re fine, it works as with every other printer (Mac or PC) I’ve reviewed for many years. Ok, it prints nicely enough on plain paper – not super sharp, and colour images on plain paper look much as you’d expect.

The versatile PIXMA G650 and PIXMA G550 enable small business owners to provide a wide range of print services to clients at affordable prices. They're perfect for DIY photo booth operators and ID providers or marketing professionals who need to generate large volumes of posters, leaflets and other advertising material. If you're looking for a printer that offers capacity, convenience and low-cost printing, without compromising image quality, you won't want to miss these latest additions to the Canon MegaTank range. Well, partly it was a challenge to see just what I could produce with this little printer. With its extra grey and red inks, what could I get from it? Your Auto-Ink Delivery subscription continues until it’s cancelled by you at any time or by Canon with a 30-day notice period. In printing one of Karen’s iPhone photos, the image looked reasonable, but after importing it into Photoshop and editing on a colour managed system, and printing with one of my profiles, the results were a lot better. An example taken from my i1profiler profiling software, shows the gamut volume comparison between using the Pro-Luster (red) and Other Photo Paper (blue) media settings.There’s the obvious consumer photo printer market – people who just want to print their photos and do it more cheaply than using a lab. For this it mostly works. It’s particularly good in its handling of small print sizes, where it’s fast enough and will churn out a lot of snaps to hand round. Both printers take advantage of an all-new six-colour ChromaLife100 dye ink set that's formulated to stand the test of time: lasting up to 100 years in a photo album when the images are printed onto Canon Plus Glossy II PP-201 paper. Whether you’re printing for customers or for use in personal photo albums, you can be assured of quality that lasts a lifetime. The (60ml) bottles just empty into the tanks – if you listen carefully you can hear the process, which takes some 30 seconds or so. Don’t squeeze the bottles, just let them empty of their own accord. Enjoy high quality performance, low cost prints and ultimate convenience with the PIXMA G series of refillable ink tank printers. Without a proper printer driver for the Mac, this is bound to be a little experimental, but results showed it could work.

The Easy-PhotoPrint Editor software requires an Internet connection and is compatible with the following operating systems; Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit/32-bit), Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit/32-bit), Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit/32-bit), macOS High Sierra v10.13, macOS Sierra v10.12, Mac OS X El Capitan v10.11 and Mac OS X El Capitan v10.10.5. Minimum Windows and macOS/Mac OS X requirements are: 2GB of RAM and a monitor with 1024×768 resolution. The Easy-PhotoPrint Editor mobile application requires an Internet connection and the Easy-PhotoPrint Editor app v1.1.0, available for free on the App Store and at Google Play. Compatible with iPad Air2 (2nd Generation), iPad Mini 4 and iPhone 6s or later devices running iOS 10 or later, and Android mobile devices running Android 5.x or later. Certain exceptions may apply. The following file formats are supported: JPEG, PNG, HEIF (devices running iOS 11 and mac OS v10.13 or later), DLP save data, Poster Artist export data, EasyPhoto+ export data, Easy-PhotoPrint Editor export data. By default, the Automatic Substitution is on for Repeat & Save, but you can disable this setting via the My Account section of the portal. You can modify your Repeat & Save subscription settings anytime by logging into the My Account section of the portal. When signing up to other subscription services (such as Automatic Ink Replenishment), it is your responsibility to amend or cancel Repeat & Save, so you don’t end up getting the same products via the different subscription services.

This means that with suitable paper trimmed from a roll, you can make wide panoramic prints. I’m printing from Photoshop with a 203mm x 1000mm custom paper size. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was able to get some pleasant looking B&W prints from the G550, but as someone who chooses (more expensive) pigment inks for printing B&W, there were issues.

The six ink bottles have a physical ‘key’ built into the top, to prevent attaching the wrong ink to any fill port. I’ve tested several papers and in every case, the B&W results from using one of my ‘Mac profiles’ is better – I suspect this would be the case with Windows as well… Your Repeat & Save subscription continues until it’s cancelled by you at any time or by Canon with a 30-day notice period. Canon Print Service is a print plug-in for Android smart devices, which enables printing from Android v4.4 – v5.0 devices to many Canon printers via a Wi-Fi network. The plug-in does not work as a standalone app. Available for free at Google Play. From a convenience and cost point of view, the G550 is excellent – If Canon were to make an A3+ version I’m sure it would sell massively, but it would need a real printer driver and be supported with software such as the excellent Canon PPL print software. Of course, all of this is dependent on how Canon wants to ‘position’ its products and not have upstarts like this tread on the toes of larger ‘Professional’ printers.Follow the online guide or instructions in the box. I’d note that mine was a test unit, so didn’t have any instructions – I set it up just fine though. It really is quite a simple process and many paper suppliers (here in the UK) will even make you profiles if you buy some paper. I’ve selected my profile to use here. If you don’t have a profile, then it’s set to ‘printer manages colour’ giving you the colour management roulette of AirPrint. I also use both for testing the performance of printer profiles. If you make use of them, then do be sure to read the explanatory notes that go with them. Colour management In terms of speeds, an A4 photo take a couple of minutes at normal quality, and just below 5 mins at the very best quality.