Review on Canon PIXMA TR4520: Black Wireless All-in-One Photo Printer with Mobile Printing & Alexa Compatibility by Mark Crawford

I've been a big fan of Canon printers for almost 20 years and most of them are great. This. well, to a lesser extent. A long time ago one of Canon's hallmarks was that they used separate color tanks. In fact, the only Canon printers that come to mind in recent history that don't work this way are their ultraportable printers, and now this one. So you get a black cartridge and a tri-color cartridge. For example, if you use up all your cyan when your document prints links, you need to replace the color cartridge, not just the blue one. And unlike most Canon printers with cheap single-color tanks, the tri-color tank accounts for about 25% of this printer's MSRP. (Also: as of this writing, Canon is selling this printer for 40% off MSRP.) Speaking of cartridges, while most Canon multifunction printers have a clamshell (where the scanner slides out) for replacing cartridges, replacement in these models is via the front panel. It's hard to see, and inserting and removing cartridges isn't very intuitive. The old LCD panel won't help either. If you don't have the right cartridge(s), you'll just get a cryptic error number so you can find it. Once you've set up a printer, it can still be disappointing. The print output is "good" at best. To be honest I'm surprised they called it PIXMA instead of giving it another name. It's fine for small projects, but the quality isn't anywhere near what I'd use for a presentation, and you'll burn through the tri-color ink so quickly no one who values time or money will ever use this anymore than to print one. or two photos a year. Another big disappointment is the connectivity. Why, why, why is Canon refusing to acknowledge the existence of 5GHz wireless networks in 2018? If you don't use a dual-band printer, you can forget about using this printer on a wireless network. Scan quality is good, but can someone buying at this price honestly say they've seen a bad scanner in the last ten years? "The build quality is also terrible. Currently being sold at 40% off in many places I can say this is a decent printer for the price. The type of printer you buy for your fourth graders to print school reports, or the type of printer you buy for grandma to print her email. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.