With the recent debut the $149.99 Pixma MG5320, which replaces last year's Pixma MG5220, Canon continues its trend of offering well-built, reasonably priced all-in-one (AIO) inkjet printers with the distinction of being the best-looking printers in their class. This model’s sleek, modern design is almost a work of art in itself. In a word, this machine is pretty. No matter where in your home or small office you decide to put it, it will look good.
Granted, attractive is low on most people's list of desired AIO features. More important is how well it prints, copies, and scans; ease of use; speed; and convenience and productivity features. Overall, the Pixma MG5320 rates high in most of these criteria. Like most other Canon Pixma models we've reviewed, print quality is excellent. It also scans documents better than many of its competitors, and, for the most part, it copies very well. We weren't particularly impressed with how well it copies photographs of people, but then many entry-level printers struggle reproducing skin tones accurately. This model also lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF), which means you'll have to load multipage documents onto the scanner bed one page at a time. If you scan and copy multipage documents frequently, there are several AIOs in this price range with ADFs.
Encased in glossy high-impact plastic with appealing slopes and rounded corners, the Pixma MG5320 doesn't look much like a printer when the paper trays are closed. Only the control panel, a series of buttons laid flush into the scanner-bed lid surface, gives it away. Weighing 18.3 pounds and measuring 17.8 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep, it has a little bigger footprint than many AIOs around this price, but since it lacks an ADF, it's only 6.6 inches tall.
Aside from the conspicuous absence of an ADF, the Pixma MG5320 doesn’t lack much else. It supports automatic duplexing for printing unassisted two-sided pages. It has memory card slots and a USB 2.0 port that, between them, support nearly every memory device you can think of. And in addition to USB flash memory sticks, you can also connect to and print from digital cameras and smartphones, as well as several other USB devices. You can print wirelessly from your smartphone or tablet via Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint app or by purchasing Canon's $49.99 USB Bluetooth adaptor.
A feature uncommon to AIOs in this price range is the ability to print CD/DVD/Blu-ray labels directly onto printable discs via an included adaptor. With that and the bundled label-design software, you can create some decent-looking discs. Considering that most AIOs that support disc labeling typically run about $300 to $500, this is a nice touch and, perhaps, a trend for Canon. Its new $99.99 Pixma iP4920, a standalone photo-centric printer, also prints disc labels.
Similar to other Pixma models, this AIO uses a five-cartridge ink system, which includes the standard cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) process color cartridges and an additional black pigment cartridge. Canon says the black pigment ink helps produce better-looking text. This is the same ink system used in the Pixma MG5220 and several other Canon printers, which, in terms of per-page operational cost, is disappointing. Kodak has recently introduced printers with re-engineered ink cartridges that significantly reduce the cost of using its printers. We'd like to see some other manufacturers follow suit.
The Pixma MG5320's per-page cost of replacement cartridges, or cost per page (CPP), is on the high side of average. Monochrome (black-and-white) prints run about 5.3 cents per page, and color prints run about 12.3 cents. Canon offers only one size of each cartridge, so you can’t reduce the CPP by purchasing so-called high-yield cartridges, an option offered by several other manufacturers. Canon does, however, offer combo packs that you can mix and match to reduce the CPP—some. (Read more about how we calculate cost per page.)
Setup
Setting up the Pixma MG5320 couldn't get any easier, especially if your router supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). You simply tell the printer's setup wizard to use WPS. It goes into discovery mode and prompts you to press the WPS button on your router, and then connects to the router. If your router doesn’t support WPS, you’ll need to have your wireless network password handy. The one step that's somewhat unusual, except on some other Pixma photo printers, is a calibration procedure, which entails printing on a special form included with the printer. The printer prompts you for the calibration form during setup, though, making this an easy step.
Aside from that extra step, all you need to do is remove the protective packing film that covers nearly the entire device, protecting the glossy finish from scratches. The installation CD helped our PC find the printer immediately and installed the drivers and bundled software without a hitch. The setup software did force us to reboot our PC, though, which is a bit of nuisance and somewhat unusual nowadays.
Control Panel
Most functions are controlled from the 3-inch color LCD that you scroll around on with a navigation wheel. Aside from the Home, Back, OK, Start, and Stop buttons, the control panel is sparse. The LCD's menu structure is intuitive and easy to figure out. You can scan to a memory device or a PC on your network. You can also print from online photo-album Web sites, such as Google's Picasa, and Canon's Image Gateway.
Paper Handling
The Pixma MG5320 has two input trays: a 150-sheet drawer that slides into the front of the device (beneath the 150-sheet output tray) and a specialty input tray that folds out at the back. The rear input tray is handy for printing photos and envelopes without having to reconfigure the main input drawer. When you tell the print driver to use any media other than 8.5x11-inch plain paper, it automatically switches to the rear tray. You can also configure the drawer for envelopes, 4x6-inch photo paper, and so on—just in case you need to print a bunch of envelops or photos in one print run.
During our tests, we experienced only one paper-handling mishap. While printing in Fast mode (Canon's equivalent to Draft), the printer pulled in a couple extra sheets of paper, placing blank sheets in the middle of our test document. Aside from that, our test unit printed several hundred pages, including two-sided prints with the automatic duplexer, without incident.
Printing Performance
The Pixma MG5320 printed everything we threw at it with exceptional quality. Even the Fast (Draft) mode prints looked good. We printed each of our test business documents in the printer's High, Standard, and Fast modes, Canon's equivalent to Fine, Normal, and Draft modes. The print times between the Standard and High modes were substantial. In Standard mode, our test documents printed four or five times faster than they did in High mode. The difference in the output quality, though, was negligible, especially when printing text.
Our test unit printed our 20-page text document in Standard mode in 1 minute and 57 seconds, and the first page out (a subset test that measures the time from when the unit begins printing to when the first page lands on the output tray), in 13.6 seconds. Compared with other photo-centric AIOs we've tested, the Pixma MG5320 was faster for all 20 pages, and about average on the first page out. HP's $129.99 Photosmart C4780, for example, printed all 20 pages in 3 minutes and 10 seconds and the first page in 13.6 seconds.
We saw similar results on our 10-page mixed text and graphics test. Considering the lack of quality difference, the Pixma MG5320, in High mode, took far too long to print the document, about 9 minutes and 8 seconds. However, it took only 1 minute and 35 seconds in Standard mode, and 17.9 seconds for the first page out. This beats most other photo-centric models we've tested, such as the $99.99 Kodak ESP C310, which printed all ten pages in 2 minutes and 44 seconds and the first page out in 21.2 seconds. More impressive, the Pixma MG5320's score on this test was comparable to Canon's much higher-end $299.99 Pixma MG8120, which printed all 10 pages in 1 minute and 43 seconds and the first page in 16.5 seconds.
The Pixma MG5320 is first and foremost a photo printer. From that perspective, especially when considering the entry-level price, this printer shines. In fact, photograph output is comparable to the Pixma MG8120, which churned out some the best prints we've seen, short of professional-grade photo printers, that is. The Pixma MG5320's print times on our photo test were not remarkable, but they were better than average. For example, it printed our 4x6-inch test photo in High mode in 55.1 seconds. The same photo took 30.8 seconds in Standard mode, and, frankly, we liked the Standard mode output better because it had slightly better color and detail. Our 8.5x11-inch photo took twice as long to print in High mode than in Standard—2 minutes and 5 seconds compared to 1 minute and 3 seconds—and this time the High-mode print looked better. Again, these speeds don't break any records, but they are on the high side of average.
Scanning & Copying Performance
Aside from muddying up the skin tones on our test photos during the copy tests, the Pixma MG5320 is a capable scanner and copier. As mentioned, though, it doesn't have an ADF, so scanning and copying multiple pages is a time-consuming hassle. You can, however, scan multiple small photographs, and the scanning software will save them to separate files. The scanner interface software, ScanGear, is easy to use, and it has an Advanced Mode that provides extensive pre-scan correction controls. During our scanning test, though, we didn't need them: We were quite satisfied with the default results. Speed-wise, scan times were in about the top 50 percent of all the AIOs we've tested, and this includes several higher-priced models. It scanned a page of text in 11.6 seconds, and an 8.5x11-inch photo in 23.1 seconds.
In our copy test, we found copy times were good, too. But many entry-level copiers just don't like reproducing human flesh tones from glossy photograph paper. The Pixma MG5320's results were not the worst we've seen, but they weren't good enough to use for business purposes. Aside from that, though, our business documents copied just fine. The Pixma MG5320 copied a page of text in 15.8 seconds, and a page of mixed text and graphics copied in 20.9 seconds.
Conclusion
This AIO targets users who need a good photo printer but also need to print the occasional business document. Photographs use several times the ink required to print the average business document page. The Pixma MG5320's somewhat high per-page consumables cost leaves makes it a poor choice as a high-volume printer. And the lack of an ADF makes it a less than a perfect choice for small and home-based offices that scan and copy a lot of documents.
That said, the Pixma MG5320 prints beautiful photographs and top-notch business documents. It copies most documents well and scans accurately without a lot of fuss. For many families and small offices, excellent photo quality is worth an extra penny or two. When you throw in the ability to print on optical discs; automatic duplexing; respectable print, copy, and scan times; and support for all types of memory and external devices—all in a stylish case for about $150—the Pixma MG5320 is a great printer at a good price.