Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon Pixma MP610 Photo All-in-One (3-in-1) Printer (Colour TFT Screen, Easy Scroll Wheel)

i have had this printer (bought from amazon) for 6 months. i had to give up a lovely epson that had never let me down as it wouldn't work with my new Mac. the very good reviews the nice customers at amazon gave this machine prompted me into its purchase above a new epson 680.

the scanner is great. it has beginner and advanced user status and is very easy to format. the prints are super fast although the colour management is not so compatible with the new iMac's monitor, eg, the prints don,t look like they do on the screen. but then i take my work up to a local print shop and they use PC's and the colour saturation is always an issue. i have to drop the saturation by 25% to print out what i see in front of me. altering the colour management system so that the printer has control rather than the computer seems to work best.
the canon copies even faster than it prints with no nasty shaded bits and super white crisp edges.
the scroll wheel is a stylish though somewhat pointless addition to the interface, and the machine is very heavy, bulky and on occasions noisy.

however, the overall quality of the prints, the fantastic scanner and the speedy copier system make this a great purchase, BUT and its a big BUT, only if you are prepared to pay top whack for your printer cartridges.

if you print a lot, which i do, you may make the mistake of attempting to fit a CIS system. after the macbeth like scene of ink spattered work surfaces and stained hands, followed by near hysteria as to why was i so stupid that i couldn;t fit the simplest system in the world, i gave up. later discovering from a website that canon have designed the 610 to twart such an action. canon have also got into the cartridge chip and made it tell you that its empty when its not, thereby forcing you to purchase another cartridge. so if say the magenta cartridge is reading empty, the printer will not work. you can,t do anything, no scanning, no black and white printing, nothing. turning the printer off and then on again actually uses more ink...eek the price of endless replacment landfilling cartridges has made me view this very un eco machine with suspicion.

perhaps its becaue i'm working off a Mac that means i can,t tell the printer that the catridges are full, but i searched the web and its seems a vry common problem. i even bought a chip re setter this morning and tried to re set the chips, but no, the techno boys at canon have got that one covered. the printer simply reset them back to empty. if you google printer chips for canon 610 all of a sudden the bad reviews appear. in fact no good reviews appear.

in conclusion, if you are happy to shell out loads of dosh on OEM or Canon cartridges, then this is as good a printer as any in its price range, (probably better). i do have issues about all the plastic that i throw away and i am angry that Canon employ techno staff to force me to do that instead of encouraging recyling and refilling. Rant rant rant

I bought this about 5 weeks ago as a replacement for an Epson r300 which gave up the ghost after a solid diet of "compatible" cartridges. The print head on the Epson finallt blocked and it was cheaper to buy a replacement - £60 for a service!!!!

So to the Canon - the machine is solid and surprisingly heavy, 20lbs plus and much bigger than rivals from HP and Lexmark at a similar price and if desk space is a premium sacrafice quality for a smaller machine. The both latter mentioned printers have lower print and scanning resolutions with higher cartridge costs - they both uses a 3 in 1 colour cartridge, so you have to change even if 2 of the 3 inks are not exhausted, and for those that don't know Lexmark have a reputation for low priced machines and extremely expensive cartridges.

The printer produces very crisp hard copies of documents and excellent photo's - and if you stay with original cartridges they don't fade, or have not noticably fade when left in a well, naturally lit room for the last 5 weeks. The scanner also provides very good performance, about 20 seconds to warm up initially then a couple of seconds warm up delay for each subsequent scan. The photocopy function produces good copies, but they can come out a little light - which can be a good thing if you're photocopying a slightly marked original as the dirt doesn't get copy! The contrast can be fiddled with and darker copies can be made, but the impression is they can be still perceived as being on the "light" side though very readable, even with fiddling with the contrast.

All the functions can be operated from a central control console built in the lid also housing a small (aprox 2.5inch) colour LCD. There are two paper trays - one under the machine that holds about 80-100 sheets of 100gsm paper and a flip-up tray at the rear. The machine can also print suitable blank CD's and DVD's and come with a special holder for the discs. There are also various memory card slots (CF, SD, MMC and MS), PICT Bridge port for printing from a digital camera, or it's memory cards, directly as well as what looks like an infra red window next to the PICT Bridge port - don't have infra red gadgets so didn't really explore that further.

All in all an excelent machine that I would recommend to anyone - this is the first multifunction machine I've owned that I am genuinely impressed with and would recommend.

Incidently, I do not work for Canon or any of their partner companies etc etc etc!

I am very impressed with this printer.

The build quality feels very good, The packaging was excellent and the finish of the printer is very nice. It sits very neatly in the room with no unsightly reams of paper sticking out of it or drawers sticking out.

A lovely feature is the paper out tray cover automatically opens when you print - no more scrunched-up paper stuck in the printer because I forgot to open the cover!

It's very quiet and appears very simple to use (yet to be confirmed by wife and children!).

Print quality is excellent although I haven't played around too much with it as yet. But, copying is very quick as is an A4, photo-quality print out.

Set-up was very easy but there is a lot of un-packing to be done!

Overall, it does take up a bit of space, but, as it looks so neat, I don't mind at all. Much better looking than my old Epson CX3200 which took up the same space.

Highly recommended assuming running costs and durability are as good as my first impressions.

I'm very happy!!!

Over the past few years a lot of printers have passed through our home. Epsons were never very good, nor reliable (in fact I don't know why we bought the second one after the first one had been so dreadful!). More recently we've had a couple of HPs. The first one was brilliant - excellent quality fast prints. But it didn't really like thick card, so eventually it died. Our most recent attempt was another HP, this time an A3 colour inkjet. The print quality was appalling, and at nearly 300 quid I was mightily dischuffed. So, the HP is going to live in the shed, or the attic ... or anywhere far away from me!

The hunt for the perfect printer began yesterday morning! Having finally decided that the HP had to go, and knowing that the mountain of paperwork which had taken over our house wasn't going to scan itself (especially as we don't have a scanner anymore!), an "all-in-one" was the only way to go. Not having a clue where to start looking, the first stop was Tesco's website. I basically just put the all-in-ones in price order, low to high, and started searching the internet for reviews on those models. I nearly managed to convince myself that a couple of them might be okay, even though most of the reviewers said not (I was getting desperate - I'm very impatient!) It certainly looked like you got what you paid for - if you went cheap, you got cheap. If the print quality was good on one, the scanner was rubbish; if the scanner was good on another, the ink consumption was poor. On and on it went until I ended up out of our price range at £140.

That's when I came across this lovely, lovely Canon. Trusted Reviews dot com gave it 9/10 and said it was highly recommended (I think they would have given it 10 stars, but apparently the duplex is very slow!)

So, trusting all previous Amazon reviewers (well, choosing to ignore the bad reviewers!) I am now sitting looking at the said lovely lovely Canon (which luckily wasn't £140!) Everyone else has told you about what it does ... about how quickly it prints lovely quality prints, and how it has Bluetooth, and how it photocopies quickly and easily. So I won't bore you by telling you all this again - it does everything that everyone else has said it does, and probably a lot more besides! I've only had mine our the box less than 6 hours, so there is still a lot of learning to do!

But the scanner ... the scanner has astounded me (I'm easily pleased!). I suppose our old scanner was really cheap and really old and really quite rubbish, so ANYTHING would have been an improvement. But I used my dads expensive Epson scanner the other day (which cost a lot more than this printer did!) and it doesn't even come close to the quality and speed of this scanner.

To conclude ... I suppose an All-in-One Printer shouldn't be able to change your life, but it should be able to make you happy. And I'm very happy!

EDIT: So, it's now the middle of October. I couldn't tell you how many things I've scanned (if it's in my house and will scan, I've scanned it!!), and I have NO idea how many things I've printed ... I've used this printer more than any I have ever owned. And even my husband loves it ... he goes wandering around up hills and mountains a lot, so uses it to print off maps on specialist waterproof inkjet paper - lots and lots of maps. So, today, I FINALLY needed to replace two of the five ink cartridges - Black number 5 and the magenta. So in conclusion, inks may be (relatively) expensive, but boy do they last! I also love that when you open the printer to replace the cartridges (which have a nice glow to them), the ones you need to replace blink their inner glow at you, just to make sure you change the right one ... and so that you can do it in the dark, too, if you feel that way inclined!! :)

Yep, it's big alright! Size wise it reminds me of an 80's video recorder. However, it does look smart, and most importantly of all, you won't be able to fault the quality of it's output. Scanning and print quality are simply superb. I was a life long Epson fan but started to notice how Canon printers seemed to be gaining favour and recommendations. So when my old Epson finally needed to be replaced, the reviews pointed me towards a Canon. I took the plunge, replacing my separate scanner and printer for this multifunction all in one. I have to say that the amount of technology for the price is simply amazing. If I were to be particularly picky I could complain about the lack of a 35mm negative scanning facility - but that's it. I have absolutely no regrets in picking the MP610. If you do choose one make sure you allow yourself an uninterrupted 30 to 45 minutes to get unpacked and properly set up - there's a fair amount to be done before it's up and running. An easy recommendation if size is not an issue.