A multifunction printer that comes with a £50 asking price (we were able to find it online costing less than £34) shouldn't really have much to offer, and the Canon Pixma MG2250 printer has little to sustain the feature-hungry. It's not the most elegantly styled MFP, and guzzles up a considerable dollop of space. It's designed to that it can be positioned on a shelf – albeit a rather deep one – and all of the relevant parts (including the two ink tanks) are mounted at the front. Read more inkjet printer reviews.
Quite the throwback, the Canon Pixma MG2250 is plastered with buttons, and you don't even get a graphical screen – just an LED text display that lets you adjust some of the settings. In fairness, you can set a surprising number of different options, even without a proper display. However, there's no built in memory card reader or PictBridge port, so you can't plug in external storage devices. At a pinch you could use a few of the facilities without having a PC attached, but we certainly wouldn't recommend it for this purpose. See also: Group test: what's the best multifunction printer?
Just one input feed is built in, although this can hold around 100 sheets – not a bad figure given the price. And, happily, given the price, a proper output tray is built in too – unlike some other cheap units, the Canon Pixma MG2250 doesn't simply dump finished prints into the input tray. See also: Canon Pixma MG230, MG2250, MG3250, MG4250 - pictures, details
You wouldn't expect to get any networking facilities at this price point, and the USB 2.0 is the only physical interface. However, Canon has tried to make the Canon Pixma MG2250 a more convenient model to use by bundling copious amounts of software. So you get the Print Your Day app for Facebook, while titles like My Image Garden and Creative Park Premium give you more options for organising and manipulating picture files. The level of depth here isn't great, but the titles do give you a few nice ideas.
As you might expect given the price, the Canon Pixma MG2250 is relatively slow, although not fatally so. Indeed, in Normal text mode its rate of 7.1ppm is only 1.4ppm away from the figure posted at the fastest mode, despite the latter output being faint and imprecise. It's much darker in the 7.1ppm mode, although the characters remain rather fuzzy. But even the best output lacks clarity, despite its slow 1.9ppm speed. It's more successful at graphics, although the times here are lacklustre. The fastest 3.2ppm mode is too light, and the middle mode runs at a sluggish 2.1ppm. The palette here is pleasantly balanced, if not showing great detail or accuracy of colour. Photos are adequate – it's the slowest to print 4x6 photos, but not by much. The colour lacks vibrancy.
Running costs are none too expensive for a model as cheap as the Canon Pixma MG2250, working out at 2.8p per page of black, and 4.5p for a four-colour page.
Copying wasn't fast, and the Canon Pixma MG2250's output lost some of the detail. The MG2250 is actually reasonably fast at scanning, and even at 600dpi, its 35 seconds is extremely competitive. However, the results lack detail, and the colours are paler than they should be. Imperfections also showed up. The lid is a little weak, although it is extremely adjustable, so you can scan larger books and items.
Price of Ink Tanks B = £17 C = £18
Ink Tank Page Yields B = 600 C = 400
Cost per Page B = 2.8p C = 4.5p
Monochrome print speed 8.5ppm
Colour print speed 3.2ppm
Colour 4x6 photo speed (max quality) 84 secs
Scan speed (A4 image at 300 dpi) 15 secs
