Price (at time of review): $79.99 (mfr. est.)
Color Inkjet
USB 2.0; Ethernet
8.5x11 inches
4,800x1,200dpi
4,800x1,200dpi
1,200x2,400 dpi, ADF: 600x600 dpi
Yes
3 inches
7.8x18.1x16.4 inches
19.3 pounds
USB 2.0; Ethernet
8.5x11 inches
4,800x1,200dpi
4,800x1,200dpi
1,200x2,400 dpi, ADF: 600x600 dpi
Yes
3 inches
7.8x18.1x16.4 inches
19.3 pounds
In the rash of sub-$100 inkjet all-in-one (AIO) printers that we’ve seen recently, there’s one thing we can say we’ve learned: You’re going to have to make trade-offs when buying a printer at this price point. So, if it’s a budget AIO you’re after, you need to know what’s important to your small or home office’s needs before you make a decision. Is a rich feature set important to you? Or would you rather have a unit that can churn out prints at lightning-fast speeds? Or is top-notch print quality your number-one goal? These are choices you’ll have to make with a budget printer that you might not have to make with a pricier model. In the case of the $79.99 Canon Pixma MX360, it may not be the fastest printer in the race, but it offers a nice feature set for SOHO environments, as well as quality document and photo output. Budget-minded small or home offices that value features and quality of output over speed will want to give this AIO a good look.
Design
The Pixma MX360 is a gray plastic box with a moderate footprint (7.8 inches tall, 18.1 inches wide, and 16.4 inches deep). Weighing just over 19 pounds, the construction is solid, although the design is a bit stodgy compared with the sleek black of other units in Canon’s new line of AIOs. The unit tapers out from the top, and the controls lay on the front part of this tapered portion.
The scanner is located on the top of the machine. Beneath the scanner, an output tray folds out from the front face. You load paper into the MX360's single, rear-mounted feeder tray. (It holds up to 100 sheets.) That tray is not too obtrusive, unlike many of its type; if you unfold the feeder tray from the back, you can still position the unit up against a wall or in a corner. On the top of the scanner lid is the ADF for copying, scanning, or faxing multiple pages. It has a 30-page input capacity. The ADF's output tray is also on the top of the unit, below the input feeder
You connect the Pixma MX360 to a PC or Mac via USB 2.0 or optional Bluet ooth. The USB connection is on the back of the printer. It does not have any memory card readers, but we didn’t expect any at this price point. It does, however, offer a PictBridge port on the front of the unit for printing directly from your digital camera or USB drive.
You get to the ink supply by lifting the scanning bed, which reveals the print head and ink compartment. The printer uses two ink cartridges: one monochrome tank, and a three-in-one color cartridge. The black ink is pigment-based, while the color inks are dye-based. (The resilient pigment black can be a plus for text documents that will be passed around the office.) The slots for each cartridge are clearly marked; installing the tanks should present no challenge. The print head comes pre installed and requires no additional setup. Note, though, that because this Pixma uses a single color cartridge, rather than discrete color cartridges, you may end up paying more for your color ink if you tend to print one color more than the others (such as when printing scenes with large areas of sky that use up lots of blue).
In terms of cost-per-page, though, the Pixma MX360 is actually quite a bargain for a sub-$100 AIO, as long as you purchase the high-capacity cartridges. If you purchase the larger-capacity cartridges, you’ll pay 5.4 cents for a monochrome page and 13.4 cents for a page of mixed text and graphics. With the standard-capacity cartridges, you’re looking at 7.2 cents for a monochrome page and 15.8 cents for a page of mixed text and graphics. These numbers are on the high side for a printer in this category.
