Verdict

Pros

• Good-quality copies
• Relatively low running costs
• Reasonably quiet

Cons

• No borderless photo print
• No automatic paper type detection
• No duplex scan

What is the Canon Maxify MB2755?

When Canon launched its range of MAXIFY inkjet all-in-ones, the company found itself a ready market among those who wanted a more business-focused device, but with better colour print than that offered by a regular small office/home office laser. The latest MAXIFY MB2755 offers a couple of extras that should make it more flexible.

Related: Best Printers 2016

Canon Maxify MB2755 – Design and Features

The MAXIFY MB2755 is a big black box with rounded edges. An inset in the front of its lid holds its control panel and a 75mm touchscreen. Around the touchscreen sit physical buttons to start and stop copy and scan jobs, making the machine easy to navigate – but also to use as a walk-up copier.

Set into the machine’s top cover is a flip-over feed tray for the 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). This is only a single-sided scanner so you’ll have to feed double-sided prints twice to get both sides.

There are two paper feed trays, each of 250-sheet capacity, so you can load letterheads and plain sheets, or plain and photo paper, without having to fiddle around. Every time you change paper, or just refill a tray, you’re required to inform the machine of the new stock – which is tiresome, but hardly unique.

Sockets at the rear enable 10/100 Ethernet and USB connections, but Wi-Fi is the most versatile. Through it you can connect remotely via a Wi-Fi router or locally from most handheld devices – Windows, iOS and Android. The free downloadable Canon print app is easy to use and offers print to and scan from functions.

Canon Maxify MB2755 – Print Speed and Quality

Canon quotes very good print speed figures for the MAXIFY MB2755, with 24ppm in mono and 15ppm in colour. When you add in preparation time for a typical print job, however, these speeds appear to be a little optimistic.

We measured 11.5ppm on our five-page mono text test, but this rose to 16ppm on the less typical, 20-page document. However, this remains only two-thirds of the quoted speed.

The five-page mono text and colour graphics pages gave a speed of 6.7ppm – again, less than half Canon’s claim. Even so, these speeds are still reasonable for this class of inkjet machine and beat most colour laser printers in the price range.

Canon appears to have addressed the delays typical in printing duplex documents, when inkjets often have to wait for the ink to dry before printing the second side of pages. Here, we had a 20-side document complete in 1min 49secs, giving a speed of 11 sides per minute.

A single-page colour copy took 16 seconds from the flatbed and a five-page mono copy completed in 23 seconds from the ADF. 15 x 10cm photos took between 43 seconds and 52 seconds, depending on the source.

Print quality from the machine is good. Black text is less sharp than from a typical laser, but well up to its main inkjet rivals. Colour business graphics are bright and fills are clean and smooth on plain paper. Colour copy quality is particularly good, with very little difference from our test original.

Photo prints are the strong point of any inkjet and Canon has always been among the best. There was slight loss of detail in the shadows of our test image, but lighter colours were natural, with smooth gradations. MAXIFY machines can’t print borderless photos, which is an odd restriction, even for a machine aimed at SoHo customers.

At the best price I could find, the four high-capacity cartridges gave page costs of 2.1p for a black page and 5.5p for colour. These are decent levels, although still quite a bit higher than either Epson’s EcoTank or HP’s Instant Ink offerings.

Should I buy the Canon MAXIFY MB2755?

If you’re looking for a well equipped small or home office inkjet all-in-one, this Canon device should be on your list. You should also consider Epson’s £150 Expression Premium XP-830, however – although that machine has a lamentably low-capacity paper tray. HP’s £105 Officejet 7510, which can handle A3 as well as A4 paper, has no duplex print.

As always, your choice will depend on your specific needs.

Verdict

Canon’s MAXIFY MB2755 is a fine SoHo all-in-one, offering a good feature set, reasonable speed and acceptable running costs. It’s only a shame that it can’t print borderless photos.

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