Canon Pixma MG6350 review

As you'd expect from a high-end Canon printer, print quality on the Canon Pixma MG6350 is excellent. Text is clear and sharp, and perfectly readable even at very low point sizes. It's very vivid too. Compared to Canon text print-outs, some other manufacturers' efforts look tired and jaded.

Default-quality photo printing on ordinary photocopier paper is reasonably impressive. Some inkjet printers use too much ink when printing on plain paper, making the image overly dark and lacking in vibrancy.

Perhaps the Canon Pixma MG6350 goes a little too far the other way, with skin tones looking slightly bleached, but detail is fine. There was too much banding for our liking, though. In this respect, the Canon Pixma MG6350 puts in a weaker performance than the Canon Pixma MG6250.

Switching to high-quality prints on premium photo paper, the high-end, six-tank printer proved its worth. It really puts in a stellar performance, with strong, vibrant colours, great detail and a very smooth colour ramp.

It was pretty fast too, taking a little over 2 mins 10 secs to print an A4 (US letter) sized test image, a very good result for high-quality photo printing.

The Canon Pixma MG6350 was suitably speedy when it came to large text files too. Our 20-page test document also printed in 2 mins 10 secs, an excellent speed for an inkjet printer built for the home market. An office-orientated printer such as an HP Officejet might print a little quicker, but there's very little in it.

As a scanner, the Canon Pixma MG6350 is every bit as capable as you'd expect from a Canon image capture device. Colours are well reproduced, and it's very fast, scanning an A4 page in under 10 seconds when warmed up.

It photocopied a magazine cover in just over 30 seconds too, which isn't a bad time for a home all-in-one. Photocopied documents were sharp and colours were accurately reproduced, though again there was too much banding.

The software has improved, but you might still prefer third-party and OS applications to those bundled with the printer. Mac users, for example, have Image Capture and iPhoto pre-installed, both of which are more capable and convenient than Canon's own programs.

The smaller form factor makes installing the ink cartridges a little more fiddly than it was with the Canon Pixma MG6250, but it's not a big problem.

A more significant drawback is that it's irritatingly noisy, even for an inkjet printer. You certainly wouldn't want it chugging away in the background while you're watching TV.