Canon Pixma TS9550
A3 stars
A pricey, jack-of-all-trades printer that’s only good on paper
Does most things, including A3, but fails to justify price tag
Almost every printer you can buy is designed to take paper up to A4 or US Letter size. That’s fine for everyday documents, but on the small side for a poster or photo enlargement, and no use if you want to print an A4 booklet to fold and staple. The Pixma TS9550 takes A3 (and slightly larger) paper, and at under 200 quid it’s still reasonably affordable.
A scanner with a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) is mounted on the top, but – as with many comparable models – this only accommodates A4, so you can’t make photocopies of A3 pages. The paper tray at the bottom also only takes A4, leaving the rear feed, which sticks up from the top of the printer, to handle up to 50 sheets of A3 (or 20 sheets if it’s photo paper). This arrangement means the whole thing is only slightly bigger than an A4 multi-function inkjet printer. Wi-fi is built in, with the usual online storage and mobile-device options, as well as both USB and Ethernet for wired connection to a PC or network. There’s also an SD card slot to print photos straight from a memory stick.
At 12.5 A4 pages per minute (ppm), our black text document printed pretty slowly for an inkjet in this price bracket, and colour graphics reduced this to 3.8ppm. One A3 page of plain text took 17 seconds, and a colour graphics page 46 seconds. You can print both sides of A4 (duplex), but not A3, and scanning is one side only. The scanner wasn’t the quickest either, pausing often to catch up while photocopying, which took 2 minutes 30 seconds for 10 black pages and over three minutes for colour.
Running costs for the five inks (there are two blacks) work out at about 8.6p per A4 colour page, which is a little above average. As usual, only starter inks come supplied, so you’ll need a full set of refills very soon, costing about half as much as the printer if you go for the cost-effective XXL cartridges. If you’re inclined to experiment, several brands sell unofficial compatible inks at lower prices.
We were happy with the Pixma TS9550’S print and scan quality, but it’s neither a top-quality photo printer nor a fast office printer. Epson’s Workforce WF-7710DWF (£143 from Amazon www. snipca.com/30330) is cheaper to buy and run, slightly faster, and has a full A3 scanner, which makes it a bigger but more versatile machine.
SPECIFICATIONS
4800x1200dpi maximum print resolution • 1200x2400dpi maximum scan resolution • 100-sheet paper tray • 50-sheet A3 rear feed • 100-sheet A4 tray • USB 2.0 • Ethernet • 802.11n Wi-fi • 193x468x366mm (HXWXD) • 9.7kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/32577
VERDICT
There’s nothing seriously wrong with this printer, but it’s not the best you could get for the money