14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
The MP530 works adequately, but demands sacrifices in the form of ink cartridges.
Date of Review: Aug 26, 2008
The Bottom Line: No one can afford to keep this printer fed. I want to give it away for free, but I can't because I would feel too guilty.
I bought this device to replace a Brother HL-1040, for two reasons: I was buying a home and I knew I would be doing a lot of scanning and faxing, and I wanted to be able to do occasional colour printing of photos and other documents such as maps.
Scanning
The unit has a flatbed scanner on top, and also a sheet feeder that holds up to 15 pages. The feeder will allow you to do full duplex scanning -- you can also do this with the flatbed of course.
Scanning quality is adequate. Scans through the sheet feeder are always slightly crooked. The scanning software that comes with the printer has an option to straighten crooked scans in software, which works okay, but seems to result in scanned pages that are slightly trapezoidal in form. For this reason I generally used the flatbed.
Scanning via the flatbed is also a nuisance. The underside of the scanner lid is supposed to be blank and featureless. This is so that the boundaries of the scanned document are clearly delineated. The scanning software will allow you to define the size of the document being scanned, or you can set it to 'auto-detect'. In auto-detect mode, the scanner will do a very quick pass to find the end of the document, then a slower pass to scan it in.
However, the underside of the lid is not featureless or uniform. The scan lid has a piece of white plastic on a foam backing. But the foam backing is not attached properly to the lid, and is not centered over the flatbed glass. This results in the edge of the lid being scannable. So in auto-detect mode, the scanner will always scan the entire surface. Scans then have to be cropped by hand. The scanning software will let you do this, but it has limitations, particularly when it comes to large documents that don't fit on screen. So I found myself using third-party software to crop my scans. This is reason enough not to recommend this product. If you do a lot of scanning, or faxing of hard copies, this will be extremely aggravating.
Faxing
Sending faxes was fine. However, receiving faxes was sometimes iffy. I did not have a dedicated fax line, but I did have distinctive ring. My fax sometimes picked up incoming faxes, other times it dropped them. To reliably receive faxes, I had to use the manual receive mode. This made the fax virtually useless, as generally faxes come in when I am at work, and not able to set the fax mode. I think there may have been an option to call the device and tell it to pick up the next call, but that only works if you know you're about to receive a fax.
I ended up buying fax service online, which I am much happier with. It only costs twice what the distinctive ring was costing me and unlike the fax, it works every time. Had I known I was going to purchase an online fax service, I would not have purchased this device.
Printing
It turns out I don't print out a lot of colour photos. In fact, I printed exactly one, just to see how it would turn out. I printed it on the special photo paper sample that came with the printer. It was magnificent. Better than a print from an analog camera.
I do print the occasional colour document ... maps for example. There are some issues with ink bleed on low quality (i.e. "photocopy") paper, which is what I was using on my laser. The quality is much, much better with higher quality bond paper specifically designed for inkjet printers. Everything is really crisp.
Most of my printing is black and white. The same quality issues apply as for colour when printing on low-quality paper.
Consumables
The real story here is how fast this printer goes through ink. Frankly, I am baffled as to how it can go through ink so quickly. It uses up ink so quickly that I feel as though it is a deliberate insult by Canon. That is an emotional response, but Canon definitely presumes upon my generosity.
There is one ink cartridge for each colour, plus two black cartridges, one small and one large. At first this seems like an advantage, because you can replace only the cartridge that is out of ink. But what I have found is that they all have to be replaced at pretty much the same time anyway. The first time I replaced a cartridge, two of the colours were reporting that they were empty. I went to the store and bought replacement cartridges. Immediately after installing them, the printer stated that the OTHER two cartridges were out. Less than twenty printed pages later (of low-density documents), one of the first two was reporting low ink, as was the small black cartridge.
Sometimes it feels as if I am a slave in service to the printer, I have to go buy ink so often. I've started just ignoring the low ink and empty ink warnings and printing anyway. But to do that I have to hit a button on the printer. It is as if Canon is punishing me for choosing their product.
Well, message received, loud and clear. I'm looking for a reliable laser printer again.
I realize the technologies are different, but when I bought my Brother about 8 years ago, I was warned that it only had a starter toner cartridge installed. That cartridge was still going strong when I gave the printer away 6 years later to buy this embarrassment. Even my previous printer, a Canon BJ-5, only needed about one new ink cartridge a year over its entire working life. Maybe this ink usage would seem more reasonable if I was printing photos, and maybe that's what Canon is counting on.
