Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon Pixma MP500 Photo All-in-One with LCD Viewer

After a lot of research for an all-in -one product, I opted for this printer. My budget was originally £120 - but was persauded to spend the extra (total £144 with p&p) after reading many specs and reviews.

Important to me was ongoing ink costs - though I only use this printer for home use (and a few work items - when I need to make a deadline and time is tight !) I was constantly annoyed by the ink costs of my previous Lexmark all-in-one. Lexmark and Brother machines were therefore not for me. This left Canon, Epson and HP. HP machines always seem to produce good quality and I was considering the HP PSC 2355 for a long time (a close runner-up). But again ink costs and by using my Dads 2355 eventually put me off (I found the LCD positioned towards the back of the printer meant I kept having to lean over it and the paper-feed rollers had a bad squeak). Epson always seems to have cheap ink - but none of their all-in-ones really appealed to me (dont know if it was their aesthetics or what - sorry a weak reason to discount them I know). This left Canon. The MP170 was tempting with its card reader and very reasonable price but the extra features of the MP500 won me over.

Some points to note:

Superb looking bit of kit (ok looks don't give you better printing but its nice to know you're hard earnt cash has bought something classy)!
Printing (text and photos), scanning and copying are all superb - so much better than any printer I have had and if you can spot any faults in its printing with you're naked eye, you must be related to superman! (I have not yet used the CD printing function or pict-bridge support functions).
Two paper trays are an excellent idea - I keep 6x4 photo-paper permanently stored in the lower tray and A4 in the auto-feeder - only takes a push of a button to tell the printer which paper to choose.
Card reader only reads data - just annoying when you could select all files after downloading/printing them to clear your card and can't (ok you can do this from you're camera afterwards, etc...). Also I had a problem with SD cards - I have to push the card in the slot just far enough but not all the way in or it will not read it. Weird - a fault with my machine ?
Paper output tray - very easy to leave up to save dust getting inside but very easy to forget to open it !! But when you press the button and it softly ejects itself down......lovely....!
LCD screen - nice but a little small. I have to confess I use my monitor more often which suprises me as I thought I would find this really useful. But it is very clear, colourful, positioned nicely at the front, tiltable and easy to use.

In summary,

Quite a large printer but it looks stunning
Easy to set up with good software
Card reader is great to have
LCD screen is a nice touch (but did I REALLY need it and is it too small ?)
Dual paper trays - a joy
Build quality is superb
Printing very quite
Five ink system - and ink is cheap
Buttons on the front easy to use (including ability to edit photos from the LCD screen)
Would I buy it with hind-sight ? Yes.
Would I recommend it to a friend ? Yes.

A last point/tip - ordering this printer from Amazon (as you should as at the time of writing its the cheapest place) means the printer actually comes from Pixmania (a large, quality company who delivered the printer within 48 hours).

I've had my printer for just over a month now, and it is performing well.

Easy to download all the drivers and software onto my PC & Laptop. USB cable plugged in, even though the printer doesn't come supplied with one. Power on, and I was printing. I've had no problems printing from my laptop(s) or desktop PC.

All functions work fine. B&W prints come off quick and the software remembers which paper draw to print from. That was easy to set up, plain A4 paper placed in the paper feed at the back of the printer and photopaper placed (and stored) in the cassette.

I've printed off some full, borderless A4 photo prints for my portfolio and I am impressed with the quality of the prints. I've had a few printed off from an internet site on professional laser printers, and the prints from the MP500 are not far off the same quality.

The printing software is easy to use, just select what JPEG files you wish to print, pictures can be edited on the same programme (cropped, brightness, contrast ect), select your paper type and size and the quality of the print. Easy!!!

I have yet to try the CD label print option, but no doubt soon I'll be trying this out.

Copying, this is as simple as printing. Two buttons on the top of the MP500, one for colour copy and one for B&W. How can you go wrong??

The LCD shows all the functions you need. Menu's are easy to navigate. Easy to change the quality of copies, prints, paper size on the menu with the keys.

The photo card slots are nice tucked away under a side cover, and with CF cards is easy accessable. Straight forward options and easy to print from. I haven't used this much as most of my pictures are edited on my PC before printing. The infared works fine to. Printing from my K750i was easy. Switch on the printer, send the file be infared and the picture prints automatically.

Build quality is excellent. It does take up a large ammount of desk space, but what do you expect from an all in one printer, copier. The MP500 runs rings around my old HP D145, even with the lack of a copier feed, this is a great bit of kit.

My MP500 is about to run out of colour ink, but I have printed off over 100, high resolution A4 photo's for work.

All in all, I'll get back my money on this soon. It is a bit of a dust magnet, but it's black and it does the job well. I am impressed with this printer.

I've decided to buy this to support my current printer, a Canon S800 photo-printer. I've always found Canon printers to be well made, reliable and cost effective to own in term of ink costs etc. Whilst it early days for the MP500, I'm very impressed so far.
For starters, the price of this is very good when you consider all the features and quality of the thing. It looks fantastic in black and silver and complements any home or home/office set up. The print quality is very good indeed and with hardly any discernible difference with my old printer which uses "photo inks" in 2 of its cartridges. The speed is superb too and will surely satisfy anyone using it in the home or for light office work.

The copy and scan features work well, simply lift the lid, place document and press one button for black & white copy or another for colour - simplicity itself. Copying is very handy for the occasional times you want to keep a copy of a document for safe keeping or everyday use.

Perhaps the jewel in the crown is the LCD screen and memory card support, so you can quickly print images from cameras (Infra-red port for camera mobiles too) without having to download to computer first - extremely useful. The screen also makes the printer independant of the computer, so you can change things around without having to boot up the computer every time.

In summary, the cost of "all-in-one" printers has come down, whilst quality has gone up. They are extremely useful, neat solutions for the home. If you want perfect A4 photo-prints using specialist inks then look elsewhere. If you want an all round package that will meet the need of the family or home office, copy a signed contract before you send it back, scan in a nice photo from a friend that they want back etc. then you won't go far wrong with the MP 500.

I bought this printer as a replacement for an old hp one that was starting to lose some quality. And what can I say; it's excellent!
Setup is quick and easy, so no problems there. It looks really smart, and the two different paper sources is a realy great idea; i have plain a4 in the cassette and photo paper in thesheet feeder.
The scanner gives clear images and i like the option of scanning in black and white or colour, the same applies to copying.
The simple prints themselves are excellent; crisp, no smudging and quick as well. It really is an excellent all in one printer, and for what you pay it's great value, with other cool bits like the cd/dvd printing function and memory card reader with lcd screen; you don't even need a computer!
The only niggle is that this didn't come with a usb cable for pc, but as i had one from the old printer it didn't matter anyway. 10/10; a superb product

I have to say this was a perfect buying experience. Easy to order, great Parcelforce delivery and the easiest installation possible. Even my ageing laptop coped with the new software etc with no troubles.

It was easy to set-up and start using straight away. I haven't used all the features yet but so far everything seems great. My key points are:

·The quality of the photo output is excellent, just as good as some photos I recently had processed professionally.

·The separate paper-cassette and paper-feeder mean that I can always have A4 paper in the feeder ready for photocopying etc with photo-paper stored in the cassette. Very thoughtful design feature.

·The LCD screen is very useful. I was concerned that it might be a bit small, but not at all. It's perfect, easy to read and navigate.

·Overall it's just so easy to use. Just pick whether you want to print, copy or scan, then select whether you want colour or B&W and off it goes. So simple even an idiot like me can figure it out.

·It is a big printer and takes up quite a bit of space on my table, but looks cool with it so won't mind having it sitting out all the time.

·Make sure you buy a USB cable separately if you want to connect it to a computer.

All in all, a great printer at a great price. Personally don't think you could find better.