Canon Pixma MG7520 All-in-One Inkjet Printer review

Canon's Pixma line of all-in-one inkjet printers is the Murderer's Row of photography printers. In addition to this year's 7150 model, and last year's iX6850 model, Canon has historically produced quality print/scan devices at affordable prices. Whether you're a photo enthusiast, a small business owner, or someone who just likes to print iPhone and GoPro stills, you'll likely enjoy most aspects of the Pixma printing experience.

The new Canon Pixma MG7520 is no exception.

Priced at $199 (about £170/AU$219) the Pixma MG7520 is eerily similar to the MG7150. Both print documents at a maximum color dpi of 9600 X 2400 with 1pl technology, and both scan documents and photos at 2400 x 4800 dpi.

Features

Like the 7150, the 7520 features six ink tanks, including a tank that holds gray ink, to offer more color accuracy and balance. Most printers feature only one cartridge that creates ink of all colors from the same pool, which means you're forced to throw the cartridge away when the ink runs out regardless of which colors you use most often. If you typically run through a ton of ink, you'll appreciate the six separate tanks: you'll only need to replace the ink cartridges for colors you often use, and you won't need to replace the ones you seldom use.

The 7150 is a small, lightweight model, which is ideal for home users and small businesses with cramped spaces. The 17.4 pound printer is only 17.2" wide and 5.9" tall, so it isn't exactly compact, but it is pound-for-pound a solid device. It's housed in a sleek, black plastic chassis that easily collects dust and fingerprint smudges. You'll want to wipe this machine down often in order to help it maintain its attractive appearance.

You'll mostly interact with the unit's 3.5" LCD touchscreen (same as the MG7150) when you're not printing directly from the Canon Pixma Maxify Inkjet Print app. From the touchscreen, you'll be able to print from the cloud via services like Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive. The touchscreen is awesome if you're able to tap something that immediately appears on the screen. However, if you have to scroll up and down, you'll want to take a hammer to the MG7520 - scrolling is inaccurate and moves the screen too fast, too slow or doesn't move it at all.

One update Google fans will enjoy is MG7520's Google Cloud print compatibility, which lets you take a document from any app, open it in Google Cloud Print, and then print it to your MG7520. Google Cloud was incredibly easy to install and use.

iPhone users will be disappointed to hear that the MG7520, like the MG7150, is still only NFC compatible with certain Android devices. So if you don't have an Android device you'll need wi-fi or an ethernet cord to print documents.

Like the MG7150, the MG7520 features Auto Duplex Printing, which allows you to house two different paper sizes on two separate trays within the printer. This feature makes it so that you can easily switch between printing off of larger format paper, such as Letter, and smaller formats, such as A5, without having to open and reload the tray every time you start a new task. Similar to office printers, the MG7520 lets you pick which tray to print from before the task starts and then feeds the paper from the pre-selected cassette. The lower tray, which holds larger format paper, can hold 125 sheets of Plain Paper, and the upper tray, which holds smaller paper sizes can hold 20 sheets of 4" X 6" of photo paper.

I also enjoyed the Auto Power On feature, which allows the MG7520 to sleep between tasks and then start up immediately. This feature not only helps you save money, but you don't have to waste time booting up the device when you launch a print job from across the home or office - the print will be waiting for you when you arrive.