The Canon PIXMA MX320 has the now accustomed design with an angled surround at the top, in to which the control panel is placed. In the center of the surround is the ADF, complete with a fold-over feed tray, which in turn enhances the machine’s clear design.
There is only a solitary paper feed path from a fold-up support along the rear towards the inside the machine’s front cover, which folds down to become an output tray. In a smart small innovation, Canon rigs this front cover to go down automatically, in the event you neglect to open it before starting to print.
The user interface is effectively laid out, with three substantial mode control keys upon the left along with black and colour copy buttons on the right. In the middle there exists a fax number pad plus a two-line by 16-character mono Liquid crystal display.
Although there is no colour Liquid crystal display, or memory card slots, you do get a single USB port at the lower right of the front panel, that doubles as a PictBridge feed for digital camera models. You can even use it to scan right to a USB drive, which is a useful extra.
The flatbed scanner system uses a Contact Image Sensor (CIS), but still provides relatively decent black and colour page images. At the rear are sockets for a fax line as well as for a telephone handset, along with a sole USB data connection. There isn’t any Ethernet socket since, although the MX320 is intended for small business, it is still made for just one desk.
Both ink cartridges, one black and the other tri-colour, clip into the print head carrier, if you lift up the scanner portion of the device and rest it on the blue ‘bonnet support’ which in turn springs down.
Speed claims have come down to much more realistic amounts due to the development of the ISO test standard, and Canon now quotes 7.5ppm for black print and 4.5ppm for colour. Our 5-page black text print took 58 seconds, which totals to 5.17ppm in addition, on the longer, 20-page document this goes up a little to 6.06ppm.
The five-page text and colour graphics print only gave 2.23ppm, however, less than half the listed number. Picture prints came through fairly rapidly, with a 15 x 10cm image at high-quality needing 1:34 and then a similar picture, in normal quality from a PictBridge camera, required a pretty zippy 57 seconds.
Text print quality is good, even though we did observe just a little fuzziness about emboldened characters in printed headlines. Colour business graphics are generally pretty vivid, although a little dithering is noticeable. Black text registration is nice.
Photo prints, despite this specific device being mainly targeted at business, are superb, having clean colour gradations as well as an abundance of detail in light and dark regions of a picture. Colours look and feel genuine and this specific device is really competent at printing off pictures at a good home standard.
Canon states a noise level of 47dBA, however when copying and feeding paper we assessed it at peaks of 66dBA. This really is pretty noisy for an inkjet machine but, as normal, it’s the paper feed not the print apparatus which makes the actual sound.
The two ink cartridges are the only consumables for this all-in-one and because of its specific market, it is reasonable not to get individual colour ink cartridges. There’s two obtainable capacities with regard to the black and tri-colour cartridges.
The Canon PIXMA MX320 presents benefits for many home office uses and then the integration of the ADF and fax facilities remains very useful in transferring paper documents rapidly. Print quality is more than sufficient for general use and even though colour prints can be a little bit lethargic, black print draws near the headline figure. Operating costs tend to be on the high side, though, which is really a pity.
Canon PIXMA MX320 ink cartridges
Theodore Beach is a long time member of the Cartridge Concept team which specialises in printer cartridges.
