Canon Pixma MG3150 ink cartridges

The Canon Pixma MG3150 inkjet printer uses a black and a tri-colour ink cartridge. Both the black PG540 cartridge and the colour CL541 are also available in XL format and these larger capacity cartridges offer better value and reduce the number of cartridge changes required.

Canon Pixma MG3150 Review

Canon's MG3150 is very affordable since it is listed at just £55. Regardless of the low selling price, this all-in-one printer manages to incorporate support for Wi-Fi along with two-sided printing.

Standing only 152mm tall, the MG3150 offers quite a low profile layout. This, coupled with a shiny black paint job, renders it a relatively pleasing looking product. Even so, the central body of the printer is quite large at 449 by 304mm, and that's before you decide to extend the input and output paper trays.

Sadly, the MG3150 has not got a proper screen. Rather it depends on a single-digit numerical display that shows you the presently selected quantity of copies when you're making use of the photocopying element. There are also dedicated buttons designed for copying and scanning, as well as an option to make the item being copied fit the page.

The Tools button, on the other hand, lets you perform straightforward configuration steps. However, these functions are listed by single letters on the printer's simple display, so they are not straightforward to fully grasp unless of course you have got the manual to hand.

There's plenty of functions that you may select however, you have to cycle through them one-by-one by repeatedly pressing the Tools button. Because of this, it is usually wearisome to get at the particular one you need; it really is less of a challenge to carry out all these activities using the My Printer software on your computer.

When it comes to paper management, this model is a lot like the majority of budget designs we see. There's a slot in the bottom into which you slide your A4 sheets or photo paper and the final results get delivered to an output tray which sits just above it. There's no separate photo paper tray, so you have to take away your A4 sheet if you want to print snaps.

Despite the deficiency of a reasonable screen, setup is still fairly easy since the MG3150 is supplied with a big, step-by-step paper chart which takes you through the complete course of action.

The top of the unit hosts a scanner, which includes an optical resolution of 2,400dpi. Scanning speed is definitely on the slow side, though the quality of the scans is not too terrible, although at bigger resolutions you actually do begin to see a fair variety of unwelcome artefacts, such as banding and image noise. The scanner's slow tempo means that this isn't the speediest printer for photocopying.

The quality of the MG3150's output is without a doubt universally striking when using the Canon MG3150 printer ink cartridges. Our text document was really crisp, in part simply because there was little recognizable ink splatter or feathering of ink into the page. There was some very minor banding on colour fills within our business presentation document while using the Canon MG3150 printer cartridges, however, you had to look extremely carefully to see the evidence of this; in addition, it coped admirably with our tricky graphics test sheet.

Just like a lot of budget inkjet printers, this one relies on only two Canon MG3150 ink cartridges - a black cartridge plus a combined colour one. Combined colour cartridges aren't a good idea; when a single colour runs out you will need to replace the complete cartridge, which is uneconomical. Nonetheless, print costs are quite cheap.

The deficiency of a proper screen does guarantee that the MG3150 is slightly more tough to use and it's no sprinter with regards to print speed either. However, the addition of additional features like duplex printing, along with the impressive quality of its printed output for both text and graphics work, means the MG3150 is a still an outstanding budget offering.