Canon MAXIFY MB2720 Wireless Color Printer

This is my third Canon Printer, I am guessing it’s about three years old. It replaced an earlier Cannon MB2500 (as I recall, may not be the correct designation) all in one printer. This printer has so far been flawless. I get through a complete set of “XL” cartridges in about 12 weeks. I user premium 28 gram weight paper. Based on this profile the print quality is superb. Color is very good. Its not the “best” for photographic the color rendition is a little skewed and muddy compared to high quality photographic printers. I do very few, and simply send those that I do out to Walgreens. Admittedly I have not tried running through dedicated photographic paper, so that may be worth a shot. The scanner is okay, it has developed in the last 6 months a very fine black line on some scans. It is not an issue for what I use it for.

I believe the printer will perform acceptably with lower grade paper. I have run through a couple in the past. But it does need to be inkjet paper. Now a note in inks. My previous Canon printer I switched later in its life to generic brand inks.The quality was pretty variable, but the cost savings were huge. I was happy to save the money. That was until the last bull purchase (a deal with four sets of cartridges.) One month into those cartridges I started getting problems… they quickly degenerated as well. The print quality went off the cliff, I started even getting occasional bobs. No amount of deep cleaning helped. In fact it made it worse. I did manage to extract the cartridges and replace with a set of canon cartridges. However, the damage was done. I tried cleaning the heads. No improvement. It clearly damaged the nozzles at a very fundamental level. I gave up and donated the printer to Goodwill. I have seen a number of complaints in the reviews on print quality, clogged heads etc. In my experience if you try to save a buck it will be at the expense of longevity of the printer. It may even be worse for a home user where the print volume is perhaps much lower than a commercial office.

On cartridge page volume I have ,measured this relative to paper ream usage. In my experience with normal letter type publication, web printing and so forth the cartridge life seems to vary between 1,100 and 1,500 pages. The variance is also in part due to the duplex printing mode. That said a solid page of one color will totally throw off those numbers. I know because it has on occasion happened. Remember you can go into the print que and abort! Alsoa. solid page of black looks pretty uneven in color depth presentation. Laser printers are way superior in this regard.

Finally connectivity. The is an easy printer to set up in my opinion. The Canon drivers are solid and support the product well. I use this printer with Chrome books, Windows 10 Laptops, iPads and Macs. One of the Macs is at OS 11 (Big Sur). The last point here, there are new drivers available on Canon’s website that support Mac OS 11 even though that is not called out in the Amazon listing. It is possible they may not come with your printer, and you may ave to search them out. I don’t know as I bought my printer several years ago. I’ve used this printer with USB in the past. I used it with Ethernet, and currently with Wi-fi. Works well with all three.

In conclusion, good medium-low volume all-in one printer. Features good connectivity, reasonable paper tray capacity (might be a little small for a commercial office), it is in my experience reliable. Scanners are however prone to failed bits (black lines). My current and previous Canon all-in-one’s experienced that degradation. Printer life, of my last printer was severely shortened using non-Canon ink cartridges. As with all printer manufacturer cartridges they are too highly priced, although these do have reasonable page life. You can recycle these with Office Max/Staples. Recommended for Home Offices Everywhere! Commercial high volume use might be pushing this investment – check the manufacturer’s specified duty cycle. Alternatives would be all-in-one laser printer solutions, but the starting price is typically considerably higher. Also those units typically come with low volume starter cartridges which cost a lost to replace.

Works great; installation was fairly easy though a lot of steps. All PCs, Macs, tablets and iPhones in our home can now print wirelessly! My home office computer is a Mac and I probably will use the printer most often, but this is the first printer we have had everyone in the household can seamlessly print to. I love that it has an auto power function that can turn itself on automatically when someone needs to print. I have it set to turn off after an hour automatically as energy saver. The fax capabilities are needed less and less these days, but once in a while comes in handy. I am having an issue trying to figure out which phone cables plug in where with our voice-over-IP digital phone lines and modem/router. I have to call the phone carrier to help figure it out. With one wiring configuration, I could send and receive faxes, but lost phone signal to the other phones (land line) in the house. Now I have all phones connected but am only able to send, but not receive faxes.

Other than that fax wiring issue, the print quality is great, scanning is a snap, and ease of of use and touchscreen is very intuitive. I haven’t yet tried printing on photo paper yet. I wouldn’t be disappointed if it didn’t score super well in this regard, since it’s optimized as an all around all-in-one printer and that’s a lot to expect to have it also print wonderful photos.