Canon PIXMA MG6450 – Print Speeds

Canon rates the PIXMA MG6450 at 15ppm for mono print and 9.7ppm for colour. In our tests, it achieved 11.1ppm on the 5-page mono text test and 12.1ppm on the 20-page long document.

These figures are not far off the claim, though the 5-page black text and colour graphics document only gave 4.8ppm, which is only around half the speed Canon lists. Part of this is due to our including processing time in our print speeds, which the ISO standard doesn’t require.

The duplex speed is hampered by two pauses between printing first and second sides of each page. The overall speed we measured was 3.3 sides per minute, which may well deter people from using the duplexer in normal printing.

A colour copy took 24s, which is reasonable and a scanned image was faster and produced a clean, well-balanced image at 300ppi. 15 x 10cm prints took from one minute to 1:11, depending on source.

Canon PIXMA MG6450 – Print Quality and Costs

The prints themselves are pretty good, with clear black text not as sharp as laser, but easily up to the standard of most of the machine’s inkjet rivals. Draft print is lighter than normal, but still very readable, which is as it should be, and business graphics are well formed and with solid fill colours and good registration of text over colour.

Photo prints are also well reproduced, and the machine manages to retain some detail in darker shades, so they don’t all tend to black. Colours are natural and bright, with images benefiting from the extra photo black, when compared with three colour print.

The ink cartridges are available in two yields, with the XL versions giving very good running costs of 2.8p for black and 6.8p for colour, some of the best we’ve seen from an inkjet in this category.

Should I buy a Canon PIXMA MG6450?

One comparison you might want to make, is with the PIXMA MG5450. At around the same price, this earlier model offers double the enhanced print resolution, direct CD/DVD print and twin paper trays. It’s a bit slower than this machine, but still represents better value. Others you might consider include the https://www.trustedreviews.com/epson-expression-premium-xp-615_Printer_review Epson Expression Premium XP-615 and the https://www.trustedreviews.com/hp-officejet-6700-premium_Printer_review HP Officejet 6700 Premium.

The Epson is a bit more expensive to run, but has higher resolution print, while the HP is aimed more at the home office and includes an ADF and fax functions, but has no memory card slots.  It costs a bit more to run, too.

Verdict

Although prints from the Canon PIXMA MG6450 are spot on and running costs are commendably low, there are still a few shortcomings in this machine. It’s very slow printing duplex pages and there are several missing facilities when compared with earlier models at the same price. What you get is good, but you might expect to get more.

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