Canon MP480 All-in-One Photo Printer

A great product at a great price. Canons service was exceptional when the first machine was a dud; they sent another right away. The second machine works fine. Ive heard this from another MP480 customer. All is well with both purchases.

I needed a cheap photo printer to make prints for my photography portfolio--this fit the bill wonderfully. I wasnt particularly expecting quality, but the details quite nice, even just from jpegs. Mine came with a free pack of Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II 4x6 (might be in description, but I wasnt expecting it... nice surprise :-) which prints well and feels nice. Well see how long the ink lasts, but note that there is an extended (XL) version of the black ink for 25% more than the regular ink, which apparently lasts much longer. If theres no update, you can assume that Im happy with ink longevity. The LCD is a bit small, but its nice to be able to print directly from SD cards. Note that I cant find a way to print documents from the USB stick, which would be really nice. I havent tried it with pictures, because Ill never use it for that. No cable included. I had an ugly offwhite one laying around--my printer mailed BEFORE the cable. Crazy fast shipping from amazon. No full length paper tray, theres a flip open holder, but if you print a lot dont leave it sitting by itself. Im only using it to print 5 large pages at a time tops, so its not an issue for me. 4x6s wont fall or flop. Overall, really nice. I wouldve preferred a gloss black, silver/black, grey/black, or solid grey or silver. The colors more like a dull white/black. Doesnt look bad, but I cant imagine it goes well with much. Edit: I didnt actually end up using the printer extensively until this week, Ive printed about 40-50 color 4x6s from a recent trip to D.C. It looks like its been reduced to somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 ink on the photo ink cartridge (though, a good half of the scenes I printed were very dark of the monuments at night, so that may skew the typical results a bit). Im thinking I should get at least 80 and possibly up to 100 4x6s per color cartridge. Ive only printed a couple of pages of black print, and its still at full, so I cant say how long it lasts yet, unfortunately.

this printer does many different things. photo prints come out great. the copy is good. i have printed cards. i have been having so much fun with my printer. it is easy to install. does not use a lot of toner. i have had many printers in the past years, this is the best.

I was one of the lucky ones who received this printer for free as part of a student deal at the Apple store where when you buy a laptop, you get a printer and iPod Touch for free. Best freebie ever. This has become one of my favorite printers and its been very reliable for me the past 5 years as an undergrad. Super fast at printing stuff so for someone who sometimes had to rush to get to class, it never failed me. As an artist, it scans and prints my pieces in pretty decent quality especially when printing from Photoshop. Good enough for what I need anyway. Also seems to be pretty conservative with ink since it took half a year with printing tons of stuff each day until I had to replace the ink cartridges. Even when it was on low ink, still was able to print out a couple of densely word packed, 50 page essays without an issue. Love this printer and its been working well with all my operating systems and Ive upgraded them at least 3 times so I have 3 different versions in the whole house and it works well with each of them without any bugs. Even after all these years, I still have it on my desk and hope it lasts me for at least another few when i have to go to grad school. Also we have an Epson and HP printers in the house that belong to my parents and they never were as reliable for me anyway as this one.

I have been a HUGE fan of Canon printers for many years. In fact I have only bought Canon for my own computers, having listened to complaints and problems about every other brand from all of my friends. The price alone on this MP480 (I paid $49.50 for it, with a $20 mail in rebate-making the total cost less than $30!!!!) makes it an incredible value, but it is also the best one yet for printing speed, quality and functionality. I LOVE the fact that it will print, copy AND scan all in one very compact machine! Goodbye stand-alone HP scanner, I never cared much for you anyway. And the fact that you can print photos from your camera and make copies without the computer even being turned on, is just awesome. Not only does it support pictbridge (plugging your camera into the printer) but it also has slots for your memory cards and a pop-up screen with a very functional menu to take care of almost any printing need, sans computer! It was a snap to set up, installed without a single glitch and, unlike the other reviewer who had difficulty with what they perceived as an antiquated, unhelpful print-head alignment program, I also found that process to be simple, fast and easy. PLEASE NOTE: If this is your first USB printer, you will need to purchase a USB cable because it doesnt come with one. So, why not 5 stars? I do have two complaints: 1. The best thing to come along with printers in the last 15 years was Canons innovative use of separate cartridges for each color. They last 10 times longer and save money by ONLY having to replace the single color that is out. There is only one possible reason why Canon has decided to stray from that smart technology - MONEY. Less ink in a more expensive cartridge means more money in Canons pockets. Still, these cartridges are cheaper than comparable ones for Epson or Lexmark printers and I have NOT found that the ink disappears any faster than other brands with a similar quantity of ink (buy the XL replacement cartridges for a better value) 2. I loved the auto-shut off feature of my ip2000. I never had to turn it off or power it back up. When I needed to print, I simply hit the print key and it did its thing. The MP480 either needs to stay on all the time (the menu screen does turn itself off after 5 minutes of non-use) or you have to turn it on and let it go through its lengthy routine every time you want to use it. That said, the quiet mode is quiet, the print quality is superb and the footprint on my desk isnt much more than my ip2000 and the multifunction MP480 allowed me to get rid of my bulky scanner, so even with its two drawbacks, this one is a definite keeper!

I dont use my printer very often, maybe twice a week at most. I expect a printer to last at least 2 years with such limited use, this one made it 15 months. The LCD display screen started fading out and became difficult to read after a year, now there is nothing on the display. At the 15 month mark it starting saying there was a paper jam even though there isnt one. I like the easy set up and never had a problem with the scanner or the print quality. The photo printing was so-so, definitely not a high quality photo printer. I just wish it wouldnt have broken so quickly.

I recently replaced my ink cartridge but Im having a problem. Every time I print many lines on the page appear with a black line running through them. Has anyone experienced this before or does anyone have a suggestion of how to fix this problem? Thanks, Shira

I bought this printer/copier/scanner a little over a year ago. Right away we had big problems with color. Our old printer had no problem turning what you saw on the screen into what was printed. This one cannot do that. No matter how we adjusted our print settings it would not give us correct coloration. Some colors looked nothing like their original. The next problem was the scanner. After about 6 months, it stopped working. Again we tried fixing the problem to no avail. It does an okay job of coping black and white. Thats it. This is the first Canon printer we have owned and it will be the last. Oh yeah, the front panel also fell off, too.

I have had this printer for several years. I am amazed how long it lasts without giving problems. Just recently, the only difficulty is that is not compatible with Windows 10. So, in other words, my all-in-one Canon worked fine until... the arrival of Windows 10. Anyway, it seems that there is a solution and I am going to find out tomorrow from Canons technical support. If I get a solution I will edit my post to share the solution. I just wanted to finally write a well deserved good review for this good product.

Its easy to use. Gives great color for documents and photos. More than adequate for home use. Ink use is OK but Ive had other models that use less ink with just as good color.,