Verdict

Pros

• Very low printing costs
• Duplex scan and print
• High quality photo and text printing

Cons

• Touchscreen is a bit spongy
• Doesn’t print borderless photos
• Could be quieter

What is the Canon Maxify MB5350?

Canon’s Maxify business inkjet range, launched last year, tops out with the MB5350, a machine boasting nearly all the extras you could want in a small business all-in-one, including duplex scan and print, twin paper trays and full wireless connection.

Canon Maxify MB5350 – Design and Features

Big, black and cuboid, the Canon Maxify MB5350 is also quite tall due to its twin 250-sheet paper trays. At the top, a sloped control panel set into the lid of the scanner includes a 75mm touchscreen which handles many of the control functions, supplemented by six push buttons.

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If you’re used to the touchscreen on your phone, you’ll find the plastic face of the Maxify one a bit spongy, though it’s reasonably responsive if you use firm pressure.

The flatbed scanner is fitted with a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) with twin scan heads, so you can scan and copy duplex documents in a single pass. This is much quicker than having to pass the paper through the scanner once for each scan and a third time to re-collate the sheets.

There’s a front panel USB socket, so you can use a USB drive to upload documents for printing or download pages from the scanner. The lower of the two paper trays takes only A4 paper, but the upper one can take smaller sizes, down to 10 x 15cm photo blanks. Printed pages feed out to an extending support above the upper tray.

Each time you change the paper size or type, you have to enter the new details on the touchscreen and register them with the machine, so it knows what it has available. It’s a pity there isn’t some way of sensing this automatically.

Canon Maxify MB5350 – Cartridges and Software

Pulling down the front cover gives access to the four individual ink cartridges, which have high yields of 2,500 black pages and around 1,500 pages in colour. When a cartridge runs out, the machine automatically moves it to the correct position for replacement and won’t let you continue printing. There doesn’t appear to be a way to change cartridges before they’re empty, though.

Supplied software includes Canon’s Easy WebPrint and My Printer utilities. There’s also a free Android app to download for printing from mobile devices and you can use AirPrint for iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Canon Maxify MB5350 – Print Speeds

Canon claims speeds of 23ppm
for black print and 15ppm for colour from the Maxify MB5350. Under test,
those figures look a bit fanciful. Our 5-page mono text test gave a
speed of 14.3ppm, though this increased to 17.1ppm on the 20-page
document. These are both healthy speeds, just not up to the claims.

When
it comes to colour print performance, we saw 7.7ppm in our 5-page text
and colour graphics test, only just over half the claimed speed, but
again reasonable in comparison with other machines of the same type, and
even colour lasers in the same price bracket.

Duplex
print is standard on the machine and Canon seems to have got round the
drying time issue common to most duplex inkjets as there’s very little
pause between sides. We measured 9.8 sides per minute on the 20-side
duplex document, another respectable result.

A single page colour
copy took 19s, while five pages from the ADF completed in an impressive
26s. 15 x 10cm photos took around 50s, independent of source, though
it’s not possible to print borderless photos.

Canon Maxify MB5350 – Print Quality and Costs

Print
quality is very good, with sharp, densely black text, not as clean as
laser output but close. Colours in areas of fill are bold and unbanded
and black text over colour is clean, without any haloing. Photo prints
are up to the high standard of colour photos from all four-colour Canon
machines.

The device is quite noisy, with a measured output of
66dBA at 0.5m, but it offers a quiet mode, which reduces the noise,
though reducing speed at the same time.

Using the high yield
cartridges, which seem to be the only ones generally available, gives
page costs of 1.4p for mono and 4.2p for colour, both including 0.7p for
paper. These are very low, well below the costs from any colour laser
we’ve tested and below those of many inkjet rivals, too.

Should I buy a Canon Maxify MB5350?

Canon’s
range of Maxify all-in-ones looks like very good value and the MB5350
compares well with both Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-5620 and HP’s much more
expensive Officejet Pro X576DW.

While
the HP blows both of the others out of the water on print speed, it
can’t match the running costs of the Canon machine. The Epson, which is
around £20 cheaper than the Maxify MB5350, can’t match its print quality
and is also slightly slower.

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Verdict

Canon
has done most things right in the Maxify MB5350. We might want it a
little quieter and it’s very keen on filling its display with messages
and requests, but it’s quick, produces high quality print and is cheap
to run. In our book, those are the three things that make a good
all-in-one.