Canon Pixma Ts5020 Wireless Inkjet Allinone Printer Reviews

The to the lowest degree-expensive all-in-i printer (AIO) in Canon's new Pixma TS serial, the Pixma TS5020 Wireless All-in-One Printer ($99.99), is a low-cost, depression-volume model designed for home employ. A primary difference betwixt it and the pricier and more feature-rich TS9020 and TS8020 (the latter an Editors' Selection) is that the TS5020 uses five inks rather than vi.

Unlike some other Editors' Choice, the Brother MFC-J985DW ($175.14 at Amazon Canada) (an entry-level office-centric AIO), none of these Pixmas come up with automatic document feeders (ADFs), making them less suitable for home-based part use. Like the TS8020, though, the TS5020's text and photo output is very strong, simply it did struggle some in testing when printing nighttime fills and backgrounds in Excel charts and PowerPoint handouts. Otherwise, it'southward an inexpensive alternative to the TS8020 for depression-book printing of photos and documents for home users.

Blueprint and Features

Like the other TS-series Pixmas, the TS5020 performs three functions—print, scan, and copy—and comes in iii colors: black (the i reviewed hither), white, and brown. Different the other TS models, though, the TS5020 has only i paper input source, a tray that extends out from the rear of the chassis and holds 100 sheets (or 20 sheets of premium photograph paper). The TS9020 ($175.xiv at Amazon Canada) and the TS8020 ($175.xiv at Amazon Canada) come up with non only a rear tray but too a 100-sheet cassette up front end. In addition, at v by 14.7 by 12.5 inches (HWD) and weighing a slight 12.one pounds, information technology's also the smallest of the bunch and thereby petite enough to fit comfortably on most desktops. The command panel consists of a 3-inch color non-affect LCD that you navigate with four directional buttons and an OK push for executing commands. There are four other buttons on the panel: Ability, Dorsum, Finish and, Start. Every bit on the other TS-series models, the control console tilts upward for easier apply, but on the TS9020 and TS8020 the output trays deploy on demand, tilting the panel upwards automatically.

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Basic connectivity consists of USB and Wi-Fi, besides as several mobile and cloud connection features, including AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria, too every bit Canon's own Pixma Deject Link, Catechism Print, and Wireless PictBridge for printing directly from specific Canon digital cameras. You tin can too print from several flavors of SD carte du jour and scan to a network drive or email. The SD card slot is located in the forepart bottom-left corner of the chassis, next to the output tray.

Similar Products

Different the TS9020 and TS8020 Pixmas, the TS5020 cannot impress on CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, nor does it (every bit the other two do) support almost field communication (NFC) for peer-to-peer connections from your mobile device. Even so, Canon's apps provide adequate mobile connectivity. It's also of import to note that all these TS Pixmas support Instagram's 5-by-5-inch foursquare photograph format. Equally it has washed with the other TS-series Pixmas, as well as the relatively new G-Series Pixmas, such as the Pixma G1200 MegaTank Printer ($175.14 at Amazon Canada) and Pixma G3200 Wireless MegaTank All-in-One Printer, Canon publishes neither maximum monthly duty cycle nor recommended monthly print volume specifications for the TS5020.

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Setup and Software

In my testing, setting up the Pixma TS5020 was a snap. Packing cloth consisted of only four pieces of tape, a plastic handbag, and two small Styrofoam-like braces for stabilizing the machine in its box. Unpacking, installing the ink tanks and software, loading paper, and adjustment the print heads took less than 20 minutes.

The software bundle consists of Catechism's standard photo-axial Pixma drivers and programs, which include My Image Garden and Quick Menu. My Image Garden contains utilities for working with photos, such as special effects, correction, and enhancement filters; Creative Park Premium, a collection of templates; a scanning interface; and Total Hard disk Movie Prints for press frames from video shot with Canon digital cameras. Quick bill of fare is a collection of always-on icons for accessing My Image Garden features.

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Printing Speed

Canon rates the TS5020 at 12.6 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome pages and 9ppm for colour. I tested it over USB using our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 ($175.xiv at Amazon Canada) . When printing our lightly formatted Microsoft Word text document, the TS5020 managed 12.1ppm, very shut to its rating, and slightly slower than the TS9020's 12.9ppm and a little faster than the TS8020's xi.4ppm. In addition, information technology printed the same text document 3ppm faster than the Epson Expression Premium XP-640 Small-in-One Printer ($175.14 at Amazon Canada) , a competing five-ink AIO without an ADF. Like several printers we've tested, the TS5020's speed score tanked considerably when I included the results from press our Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing color, graphics, and photos—in this case (and as with the other TS Pixmas discussed here) by about 75 percent. Its score of 4.5ppm was a mite higher than the TS9020'southward 4.2ppm and the TS8020's four.4ppm, simply not much. It did beat the Epson XP-640'southward 3.2ppm past a bit more than, though.

The TS5020 excelled at printing photos, averaging a speed of 19 seconds when printing iv-by-6-inch snapshots. Information technology was a 2nd faster than both the TS9020 and TS8020, and 6 seconds faster than the XP-640. Considering the TS5020'southward photo print quality (meet the next section), 19 seconds is fast.

Output Quality

In addition to the standard three color inks (cyan, magenta, and yellow), the TS5020 comes with two blackness inks, 1 paint based and the other dye based. As mentioned, both the TS9020 and TS8020 come up with a sixth, gray, ink for printing primarily grayscale photos, although Canon says it enhances color images, likewise. As on the TS8020, print quality was above average overall. Text came out dark and well shaped, fifty-fifty at small sizes (5 and half-dozen points). And when I printed photographs on premium paper, the results were terrific, rivaling what we saw from non simply the six-ink TS models, but too previous MG-Series Pixmas (which the TS series replaces), such every bit the Pixma MG5720 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One ($175.fourteen at Amazon Canada) .

Graphics looked good, too, for the most part, though I did run across some banding (a regular pattern of faint striations) in dark fills and backgrounds, particularly black ones. On the other manus, lighter-colored fills and gradients looked fine. The TS5020 wouldn't exist the all-time option for printing PowerPoint handouts, but in that location's no arguing with its photo and text quality.

Running Costs

Due to the fifth black ink, calculating a precise cost per page for the TS5020 isn't really feasible, since there's no fashion to approximate when that cartridge kicks in. That said, when yous use the highest-yield ink tanks, the per-page toll of using the four standard cyan, magenta, xanthous, and blackness inks is 4.ane cents for monochrome pages and 12.vii cents for color. Assume, so, that with the other black ink, the per page cost is somewhat higher.

Running costs this high are not unusual for photo-centric AIOs like this one. The Epson XP-640'southward per-page costs are, for example, 4.7 cents for monochrome and 13.7 cents for color, and it, also, has a fifth ink ("Photograph Blackness") that increases the cost per folio in some scenarios, again making actual running costs impossible to calculate precisely. You lot don't take to put up with these high ink costs to get expert-looking photos, though. The aforementioned Pixma G3200 (with similar features to the TS5020) prints photographs near also equally all of the TS-Serial models discussed here, and information technology, like several Epson EcoTank models, such as the Expression ET-3600 EcoTank All-in-One Supertank Printer, delivers running costs of less than 1 cent per page for both monochrome and colour pages. But then both the Canon MegaTank and Epson EcoTank machines cost $200 to $300 more than the TS5020.

Decision

The Canon Pixma TS5020 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One Printer is indeed an all-in-one printer in that it prints documents, scans, and makes copies, but for the most role these are merely conveniences—it is essentially a photo printer. Like its college-priced siblings, the TS9020 and TS8020, the lack of an ADF and high running costs brand it impractical for annihilation only low-volume domicile utilise. If yous need more, consider a machine with lower running costs, such as the Brother MFC-J985DW, but you won't become anywhere nigh the TS5020's photo quality—which is exceptional for the price.