Canon Pixma E510 is a satisfying MFD. Review on Canon PIXMA E510

Canon is a trusted name among photography enthusiasts. Canon has made some excellent Digital Point & Shoot and DSLR cameras and also manufacturing more and more. In case of printing, India's most trusted name is HP I guess. They really build some robust printers. Canon also has been making many printers for many days and many of them are cheap and good.

I bought Canon Pixma E510 from Flipkart 7-8 months ago. This was my first canon printer and before that I used a HP one which gave me uninterrupted service for 3-4 years. Some problems occurred all in a sudden and I got rid of it as my'paisa' was'vusool' fully. Then I bought it from WSRetail of Flipkart who gave an exchange offer of Rs. 500/- discount for the HP printer. I was happy with the deal.

Features:

It is an Inkjet multi-function printer(some call them MFD -Multi function device) with Print, Scan. Copy ability. It has Print resolution of 4800x1200 dpi, Scan resolution of 1200x2400 dpi. It only deals with A4 size papers. A3 etc papers are not supported. It can also print Photos though I have not tested it yet. Front Tray can hold up to 100 sheets. Print Speed for color docs is 5-6 ppm and for black& white it is 9-10 ppm. Copy speed is approx 24-25 second. Scan Speed is approx 15-16 second. So feature wise it is pretty standard for an entry level multi-function printer.

Build Quality:

It comes with glossy black color. There is another variant available with Blue-Black dual tone. Anyway, the printer looks cool. Build quality is good but not as good as HP printers. On the upper left corner there is Power button and under it a 7-segment display lies. Some indicators displays are there for A4 plain paper, A4 photo paper, Fit to Page etc. U will also find a dedicated Settings button and Scan button. At the bottom there are buttons for Black & White or Color copying and a Stop/reset button. All the buttons are well placed and have a good feedback. Front Tray(paper feed) and Output Tray are there and they are somewhat folding type. All connectors and ports are in the back side. After opening the front tray and output tray there is another drawer opening which u can access the Ink Cartridges(Black and Color). All the trays are not so strong for day to day use. It seems they can be broken suddenly although they wont, but the impression of their build quality is not convincing. On top, maximum space is occupied by the flatbed Scanner Glass. Scanner Glass is covered by the Upper Lid. Overall, ergonomics is very good but build quality can reduce your confidence in case of rough use.

Functionality & Performance:

U will of course find a Driver CD in the package. Installing it is simple. After it is installed, a shortcut icon for Canon Quick Menu will be created in the bottom right corner of the desktop. Through it, u can access all the functions of the printer. It has 5 separate tabs - i) Print, ii) Scan, iii) Web Services, iv) Manual & Device information and iv) device settings. Apart from no. iii, all of them are very useful and self explanatory(though at first some of them may be overwhelming).

Print output(whether color or b/w) is Superb for an entry level MFD. Blacks are deep and color saturation is pretty good. Its quality is far more superior than my previous HP MFD. Scanning is also simple and the scanned output can be saved in PDF or JPEG format. Here also, the scanned docs or images come out very sharp and clear. U will be more than satisfied with the ultimate results u get from this printer. Copying is also damn easy; put the original on the scanner bed, cover the glass with the lid and press any of the Color or Black button and u are done. Output is good and justified considering its price. I did not check photo printing, but my guess is that will be of pretty nice quality too. The Demo Cartridges(Black-PG88 and Color-CL98) which came with the printer are up and running till now. So I dont actually know their duty cycle, but I can safely say that till date I have taken at least 180-200 outputs. No Low Ink Level warning till now. Also the cartridges are not very pricy .

Conclusion:

I bought it for approx Rs. 4500/- as far I remember. It is cheap. Build quality is its weak point as it is not convincing enough but.the performance is very very good. Another issue which I experienced is, sometimes it gives 'no paper' message while the input tray has 2-3 sheets or more. And u have to take proper care so that the printer does not get exposed to too much dust. Dust can cause trouble to this printer, even some serious one.

My old HP MFD had very good build quality but performance was much inferior to Canon. HP also offers some entry level MFDs with competitive price as well as Brother, Epson etc. So its up to u what to choose - performance over build quality or vice versa. Anyway, price-performance ratio of this printer is very high