Canon PIXMA MP560 Wireless Inkjet AllInOne Photo Printer

Great All-in-One Printer
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This has got to be one of the best all-in-one printers on the market. It was extremely easy to install, it has one of the easiest to follow instruction manuals I’ve ever used! The colors are spot on when printing and the scanning capabilities are incredible, you can scan more than one photo at a time and it will automatically size your pictures. You will not be disappointed if you purchase this printer and at $98 you can’t go wrong!

Fantastic printer at a great price!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is a fantastic printer. I originally bought the HP Officejet 6500 because I primarily needed a fast printer with a large input capability to print large documents. The HP was bulky and loud, and the photo quality was terrible. This machine is so much better. The photos are impeccable, although photo printing is not very fast. However, I don’t print out photos all that often, so it’s not a big deal. The wireless setup was easy and is working well- just install the software on all computers. We have computers on two different floors and the router in between. I did have some difficulty at first getting a signal, but I just had to fiddle with the router until it connected. Now it’s working perfectly. I love that the printer goes into sleep mode when you’re not using it, but will wake back up if you try to print something- a must for wireless. Duplex printing is a little slower than regular printing, but still pretty fast considering it has to pull the sheet back in and print the other side. It is worth the extra time to save the paper. For its high quality output, the printer is relatively compact and looks very modern and sleek. I am very pleased with this machine. For $99, it can’t be beat!

Is it still 1980?
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Hoping for a photo printer that was wireless and easy to use, I saw the ad for this machine. It seemed the answer to my needs, so I ordered it. Upon opening the box I became suspicious when I saw the multiple instruction manuals. Why so many? There are so many because this machine is a return to the 1980′s, a time when the engineering was primative and the instructions booklets were long, written oringinally in some language other than English, and then badly translated into English.

The multiple booklets are needed because you will find yourself doing the final assembly tasks that are now usually done in the factory. The instructions are mostly in small, poorly-printed diagrams. Place a thumb wrong in opening an ink supply, you are warned, and you will ruin it. Do it right the first time or buy a new one.

Have a Mac? How about a booklet that has 11 pages (or parts of pages) that tell you how to install the software? I guess that Canon cannot afford the engineering to speed or ease the process.

Well, if you long for the old days and were really good with Lego when you were little, buy this machine.

New Canon User
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
After reading reviews, I just purchased the MP560 to replace an HP all-in-one that had a hardware problem after only 18 months and light use. It also replaces an old Epson 880 that finally bit the dust with apparently damaged print head. Repair for the old printers was impractical if not impossible.

Set-up of the Canon is a little more complicated than other printers in that you have to install the print head and 5 ink cartridges. Read all instructions and look carefully at the diagrams and you shouldn’t have too much trouble. The fact that the print head is an installable piece gives me hope that if anything goes wrong with it, you can easily replace the part yourself, instead of junk the entire printer.

Setting up the wi-fi for use with my Mac laptop OS 10.6 was a matter of following the steps for programming the printer to recognize the wireless network. Installing software for 10.6 on the laptop involved downloading a newer driver from the Canon website. The supplied software installed easily on my old Mac G4 with OS 10.4. I connected a USB cable to the tower and it worked perfectly. I love the fact that the printer can be used by both computers, one over wi-fi and the other with USB.

This machine is heavier and larger than the HP all-in-one, but hopefully it is also sturdier. It closes up completely to prevent dust from entering the machine. I like that the paper tray is under the machine and the paper lies flat. The interface is a little more complicated than some, but it makes sense once you familiarize yourself with it. Borderless prints on the supplied photo paper look professional quality, and you don’t have to install a special photo ink cartridge. This printer is relatively quiet but a bit slower than I expected. The output tray opens automatically when you start to print, preventing the paper jams that occur with other machines if you forget to open the output.

I have read complaints of the need to frequently change expensive ink cartridges. I find the cost of these cartridges about average. I think all manufacturers make most of their money on the sale of cartridges, so I don’t know if you can find anything better out there.

Overall, I am very pleased with this purchase which costs little more than a set of ink cartridges for my old machines. The MP560 can do everything I hoped it would. Now the real test is if it still works as well 3 years from now…

Mixed Reaction
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have owned this printer for about one month. It is now priced about $15.00 less than when I bought it. Canon has reduced the capacity of ink in the cartridges by about 1/2, yet the cost is near the same as the older 3e cartridges. Ink cost is therefore about double my old Canon printer.

The performance of the printer is great. Fast spooling of color print jobs. Photos print out very good. Setup was very easy. I am not using the wireless option as I don’t have a router.

Nice printer, nice scanner, great for novice users
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This printer was purchased as a birthday present for my mother, who has been hampered by a Windows Vista computer and a malfunctioning HP Printer (it worked great with XP…). We purchased the Canon PIXMA MP560 printer for $85 (free shipping) on Amazon, and comparing the price to other retailers online (and the retail price), it was no contest.

This printer has some features that you may already know of via the product description page, but I’d like to elaborate on some of these features.

Thoughts out of the box:

-The MP560 has a folding LCD screen that covers the function buttons. The screen is not too large, but it does seem to have large enough text (and a simple GUI) to work well for novice printer users. There are not too many buttons, and they’re large, well-marked, and simple enough for anyone to recognize.

-The printer has a lower paper tray (for regular inkjet/copier paper) and an upper vertical tray (for thicker photo paper and other things). The vertical tray has an automatic two-sided width adjustment/alignment, so any size paper is aligned to the proper position every time (and the thickness is adjustable from maximum printing width of the printer, down to only an inch or so).

-The basic instruction manual is printed on paper, and easily guided me through the process of installation of the print head/ink, paper, software, and wireless network capability. This guide has simple words and illustrations, though it does not include every detail of the printer’s operations (the more complex instruction/user manual is electronic, and is installed with the printer software). There is a Network Troubleshooting guide, as well, that seems to be rather detailed (though unnecessary in my case). The printer comes with a sample pack of 4″x6″ photo paper, which we immediately tested (and it passed the test with flying colors). There’s other throw-away junk included, but nothing that surprising.

-The printer is clearly labeled so as to make it simple to place cartridges in the right location, once the print head is installed.

-The fact that the MP560 has multiple single-color ink cartridges may seem expensive at first, but with tri-color cartridge printers, we would always seem to run out of a single color much faster than other colors… so we were wasting a good amount of ink each and every time we replaced a cartridge. This printer seems to have ink cartridges that would be easier to refill than some other cartridges, as well.

After powering it on:

-It was EFFORTLESS to set up the MP560 on our wireless network. It quickly detected the network (our router is on another floor in the house, on the other side of the house), and it still had a good quality signal, and it only took a few minutes (and only a couple pushes of a button… plus entering our internet security key) before the printer was connected. There is a rotating pad (similar to an IPod) on the printer that lets you select any security codes you may have (and navigate through the GUI)… so it may take awhile if one has an alphanumeric password, but it was rather quick for a numeric 8-key code. Heck, my mom is not too familiar with computers, and I have no doubts that she could have set up this printer with the network.

-The printer comes with easy to use software (again, in Vista), though it does take a few minutes for the software to install itself on a PC. The basic instruction manual makes it rather easy to install everything, whether using Windows or Mac. Once installed, the printer is rather effortlessly found (remember to have attached the printer to the wireless network), and before you know it, you’re ready to print.

-The printer has a laser ink level meter for every cartridge, and it can be displayed on the computer and on the 2″ LCD screen on the printer (actually, pressing one button on the “Home” screen will allow you to see each ink level). So far, it does not appear as if this printer over-uses ink… in fact, printing on glossy photo paper seems to suggest there’s less “gunk” on the paper than some other printers, perhaps due to the finer ink jets this printer allegedly uses.

Using the printer for the first time:

-The printer and software actually WORK WELL with Windows Vista!

-The printer does take a few seconds to warm up, but after the first print job, it seems to be much faster.

-The MP560 didn’t have a single problem feeding thicker photo paper.

-The quality of printed pictures is very good, showing very tight pixels even on plain paper. Photo paper shows an excellent picture quality, and the software included with the printer makes it effortless to print photos with certain photo papers… no need to change printer settings manually.

-The scanner/copier seems to produce quality pictures, although this isn’t the fastest, nor the quietest, copier I’ve seen in a multi-use printer.

-The Duplex printing feature is a great thing to have in a lower-cost home printer, as few documents are of an official, legal nature, hence there’s no need for one-sided printing. It gets to be inconvenient to flip the pages by hand each and every time one wants to print on both sides of a piece of paper, so it is great to find a lower-cost printer that has this feature. This printer does not print internally, it prints on one side and extracts the page, then gathers the page back inside the printer and prints on the other side, so I don’t know how well Duplex printing would work on thicker media such as fabrics.

All in all, this is a great printer so far. It beats anything I’ve ever owned, in terms of print quality and functionality, and I’d say it’s a pretty good value to boot. Mom is certainly happy about this printer, and she’s going to test it with some of her crafts… let’s see how it stands up to the test of time when she puts it to use.

Cool printer, complicated setup
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Canon has fit a lot into this small sleek package. The printer works nicely and produces high-quality images and text on a variety of papers. The straight through paper path is a plus when you’re using stiffer photo papers. The paper tray capacity is rather limited, and you’ll find yourself having to refill it frequently. The scanner is no speed demon, but it’s fine for light use.

My only gripes are about the setup and documentation. In theory, it’s supposed to be easy — point and click on the defaults and away you go. Unfortunately, the Snow Leopard drivers are not on the disk. The setup program is smart enough to detect this, and it will pop up a box to obtain the updated drivers. All this does, though, is point you to the Canon software download web site, which contains no guidance as to which files to download, and exactly how (before installing the old drivers? after?) they should be installed. It comes with a utility program for handling scanning chores — fine, but the built-in file manager is clunky, confusing, and I haven’t figured out how to change the default path for storing the scanned files. The documentation poorly organized, and it’s hard to find what you want. What’s more, it uses some proprietary format that requires its own reader program. Why couldn’t Canon just do something obvious, like provide a user manual in pdf format, and/or reference pages in HTML format?