Canon Pixma TS6250 review: Pricey but packed with features

The Pixma TS6250 is a mid-range model from Canon’s latest line-up of home inkjet MFPs. Like the rest of the range, it’s compact, smart, and wouldn’t look out of place next to a stack of considerably more expensive audio-visual kit. It comes in two colours: the black TS6250 pictured above, and the white TS6251.

Canon Pixma TS6250 review: Features

This MFP is aimed at home users, with a bias towards creative tasks. While there’s no fax modem or automatic document feeder for multipage copies, you can connect and share it over a wireless network, working easily from PCs and mobile devices, and even printing from or scanning to the cloud.

In the base, plain paper is stored in a 100-sheet cassette, while you can keep photo paper and other media stocked in a second tray at the rear; just remember to push the guide rollers down after you’ve loaded it.

Canon Pixma TS6250 review: Performance

The TS6250 isn’t the quietest inkjet in use, with printing characterised by a slight scraping noise as the heads move over the page. At 12.7ppm, its text printing is fast enough, but lags slightly behind the best in class.

It’s a similar story for colour graphical prints, which worked out to 3.9ppm, and for our two 10x8in photos, which took nearly 11 minutes. However, at only around 40 seconds each, borderless 6x4in photos were very fast.

Tested over a short-range, line-of-sight wireless connection, scans were swift at low resolutions, but slower at 600dpi and above. Our 1,200dpi 6x4in photo scan took 1m 40s, which is around twice the time of some competitors. Photocopies were quick enough, with a single A4 page needing 12 seconds in black and white, and 22 seconds in colour.

As we’ve come to expect from most Pixma devices, the results were very good. Scans preserved the full range of detail in light and dark areas, and were sharply focused with accurate colours.

On plain paper, text was bold and crisp, and graphics were punchy with strong colours. As with many inkjets, this was less the case with duplex prints, where the TS6250 uses less ink to reduce bleed-through, and to prevent ink smearing as the paper is flipped over and re-fed.

On coated paper, photos were generally impressive, but we noticed a little grain and some subtle blotchiness in the blue sky of one test subject.

The TS6250 uses a five-colour setup, combining dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks with an additional pigment black. The latter is used only on plain paper, while the dye black is used only for photos. Using the largest, XXL ink tanks, running costs are slightly higher than ideal, at 8.7p per colour A4 page of text and graphics. The black component of this is a considerable 2.9p.

Canon Pixma TS6250 review: Verdict

Overall, this is a strong MFP for the home, particularly if you’re mostly interested in creative work such as scanning and printing photos.

It’s fairly well specified, costs less than the Pixma TS8250 and produces strong results. On the downside, it’s a little pricey to run, and it isn’t especially fast, but we’re still happy to recommend it.