Canon MultiPASS MP390 Ink Cartridges

Canon MP390 Printer Review

The Canon MultiPASS MP390 is designed to handle personal photo printing needs, but its additional copy, fax and scan capabilities enable it to handle the versatile projects of home offices. Expert tests showed the MP390 is relatively fast for its price range, printing at speeds of up to 18 pages per minute for monochrome documents and 12 pages per minute for color. This unique inkjet printer balances photo and multifunction features well considering its low price tag, but due to low-capacity MultiPASS MP390 printer ink the machine is suited only for light-duty use.

Even though it bundles 4 functions into a single device, the MP390 has a conveniently small size of 11x21x17 inches that makes it a good desktop companion for computers. Users won't need their computers to perform certain functions however, thanks to its control panel and direct photo printing support from the included media card slots. The control panel is flexible enough to provide standalone copying and faxing with its full numeric pad which can also enable users to select the number of duplicates for a job. The panel also has a 4-way pad for navigating menus and a monochrome LCD to track job progress and monitor paper and Canon MP390 printer ink levels.

The MP390's paper handling is too minimal to support anything but low volumes, providing users with a single input tray that can store a maximum of 100 pages. The device can support a variety of different media types, including 4x6-inch and 5x7-inch borderless glossy photo paper, labels and envelopes.

Provided software such as Easy-PhotoPrint Plus and PhotoStudio will enable users to edit, crop and adjust the color on images before printing. Expert tests revealed that one of the unit's best features is the quality of its photos, which print with sharp color detail and a maximum resolution of 4800x1200 dpi using MultiPASS MP390 ink. The machine can also copy original documents with precision and a resolution of 600x600 dpi, while it can scan at an interpolated resolution of up to 9600x9600 dpi.

The device bundles cyan, magenta and yellow ink into a single tricolor supply and black is located in a separate Canon MP390 ink cartridge. Due to low yields of only 160 pages for the tricolor supply and 150 pages for the black Canon MP390 ink cartridge, users will need to stick to low volumes or they may end up spending a lot on supplies.

The MP390 excels at printing photos, but users who are also looking to casually copy a job, send a fax or scan a document to their computer will find this a suitable solution for their home offices. As long as users don't exceed light-duty workloads, this inkjet printer is both an easy-to-use and affordable choice.