Canon Pixma TR7650 review: A good all-rounder for a light office workload
The Pixma TR7650 has all the features you might need from a reasonably priced all-in-one, but those printing in bulk should look elsewhere
Pros
- Full suite of multifunctions
- Affordable
- Surprisingly good at photo printing
Cons
- Fragile construction
- Cartridge refills are pricey
- Disappointing text quality
While some of the other best printer manufacturers appear to be eschewing the humble inkjet cartridge, Canon still sees life in the format, with the Canon Pixma TR7650 swallowing up five at a time. Although it’s unlikely that the system will ever rival ink tank printers for value, the cost of printing remains fairly reasonable here, as long as you opt for Canon’s XXL cartridges.
What it does mean, however, is that Canon’s left with plenty of room to create an affordable office all-in-one printer with most of the features you could wish for, at a price that undercuts its rivals.
Canon Pixma TR7650 review: What do you get for the money?
There isn’t that much in the Canon Pixma TR7650’s box, except for the printer itself, the cartridges and a power cable to connect it to a wall socket. You also get a bunch of quick-start guides in various languages, but that’s it.
The printer uses five individual cartridges, including the usual dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow, but also a second pigment-based black, which should kick in when printing mono text documents. The dye-based colour cartridges are better for printing photos, as they tend to be more liquid and soak into the paper, so you get better-looking gradients and blends.
The printer itself is a multifunction device, operating as a printer, scanner, photocopier and fax machine. It can hold 100 sheets of plain paper in a tray at the bottom of the device, or there’s a second 20-sheet tray at the rear that can take thicker paper stock.
The output tray is between the two, under the control panel, and needs folding out whenever you want to use the printer.
Six buttons on the front offer quick access to basic functions, such as taking a colour or mono copy, but most of the direct interaction with the printer is performed through the 3in colour touch screen.
On the top of the device is the scanner and a 20-sheet automatic sheet feeder. This means you can either place documents to be scanned or copied directly on the glass, or you can drop a multi-page document into the feeder and have it make a copy for you.
Considering it has all these features, the device is relatively compact, measuring 438 x 350 x 190mm (WDH). Extend all the trays out, though, and it grows to 438 x 652 x 300mm. Some of these extending parts feel a little flimsy, so if you’re a bit clumsy, you might want to make sure you’ve got enough room to place the printer with all its bits extended without overhanging your desk.
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Canon Pixma TR7650 review: Is it easy to use?
Those who mostly print from their computer should find the Canon Pixma TR7650 relatively simple to use. Drivers are downloaded from Canon’s website, and it’s essentially the same software Canon has been using for years. As a result, it isn’t the best looking when you get down to the printer and scanner driver level, but it has been well-honed and offers straightforward control over the printer’s numerous features, such as duplex printing and high-resolution scanning.
Canon’s mobile app is newer, better looking and I found it just as easy to use. I was able to print things from my phone, scan or copy documents with my phone’s camera and print photos from connected online services such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
When you need to make a photocopy straight from the printer you’ll need to use the onboard controls. In my experience, basic operation proved very simple, with buttons on the device for making colour or mono copies, either from the scanner bed or using the document feeder.
The screen is a 3in touchscreen but it’s a resistive type, so has a matt finish and doesn’t feel as slick as the touchscreens we’re used to from our smartphones. It’s small and the menu options are often similarly small, which meant I found it a bit fiddly to use, but fortunately, I didn’t find myself needing to poke around these too often.
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Canon Pixma TR7650 review: How fast is it and how much does it cost to run?
Cartridge printers don’t tend to have the lowest running costs and the Canon Pixma TR7650 is no exception. Based on 5% coverage, using the ISO/IEC 24711 printing pattern, Canon suggests that its best-value XXL pigment black ink cartridge can print 600 pages. It costs £25 from Canon, making the price per print around 4p.
Colour printing is a little more complicated to work out because the four cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) all have different page yields, but using Canon’s figures and prices, I worked out that the cost per colour page is around 9p.
Neither of those prices is terrible for a cartridge printer, coming in cheaper than HP’s cartridges for the Envy Inspire 7220e. However, Brother manages to keep cartridge printing costs a lot lower, and there’s no competition when it comes to an ink tank printer, such as the Epson EcoTank ET-2876, as you can see from the chart below.
Print speeds are reasonable for an inkjet, sailing past the Epson EcoTank ET-2876 with a speed of 10.6ppm when printing in mono. It outpaces the HP Envy Inspire 7220e, too, though it can’t get close to the high-speed office credentials of the Brother MFC-J4540DW. This was despite being slow to warm up, taking at least twice as long to produce the first page as any of the other printers we compared it to.
When it comes to printing photos, however, the Canon won the day. It churned out six 6x4in photos at a phenomenal rate, taking less than 4mins 30secs. That blasts its rivals out of the water.
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Canon Pixma TR7650 review: What’s print quality like?
I was a little surprised by the text output of the Canon Pixma TR7650 as I was expecting it to be reasonably sharp. You wouldn’t particularly notice when reading a letter printed on this printer, but when I deployed a magnifying glass to get a close look, the edges of the letters showed more rough edges than the printers I’ve compared it to from Brother, Epson and HP.
When it came to printing business graphics, I noticed some banding on areas of black, though the colour sections appeared fine. Colours were boldly printed on plain paper, producing the best-looking documents of the group in its standard settings, if you can turn a blind eye to that minor banding.
Switch to high quality, as I did with my test photos on glossy photo paper, and the Canon pulls well ahead. Dark backgrounds in my test prints were inky black, and bold, colourful pictures popped out of the paper. If anything, it might have overegged subtleties such as skin shades, making them a little too bright, but it’s a forgivable situation when everything else looks so rich.
Canon Pixma TR7650 review: Should you buy it?
The Canon Pixma TR7650 has quite an unusual mixture of features that will suit a particular type of customer very nicely. It’s an office all-in-one with a myriad of physical features, right up to the ability to send faxes, and includes useful options such as double-sided printing and a document feeder for the scanner.
However, the construction is a little flimsy for a workhorse; its paper tray is attention-hungry, only holding 100 sheets at a time; and there’s the whole question of cartridge printing, which isn’t unreasonably priced here but will cost you if your printing workload is on the heavy side.
The final oddity is how good it is at printing photos. That’s not unusual in a Canon printer but this arguably produced some of the best photo prints I’ve seen from such an office-focused, general-purpose printer. Again, however, running costs are likely to spike if you take photo printing seriously.
For a stronger office experience, the Brother MFC-J4540DW would be worth considering. It’s similarly priced but can print documents much faster. It’s also of a sturdier build and can hold more paper, making it better suited for an office environment. It’s not as good at colour work, though.
If you’re on a budget you can get similar functions for a fraction of the price from the HP Envy Inspire 7220e. Apart from mono letter printing, its output isn’t up to Canon’s standard, but it feels a bit less fragile, despite being cheaper.
Ink tanks are the way to go for volume printing, though. Models with similar features to the Pixma TR7650 tend to be expensive to buy but can help you save money in the long run thanks to significantly cheaper prints. Epson’s EcoTank ET-2876 is my pick of the reasonably priced options and only lacks the office-like fax, document feeder and automatic duplex printing functionality found on the TR7650.
