Canon Pixma MG6320 Printer
Review Summary: If you haven't tried an all-in-one, inkjet photo printer lately, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the sleek and efficient Canon Pixma MG6320, which produces superior photo prints for a device in its class. The MG6320 also offers a robust set of wireless tools, helping you cut down on cord clutter. While it's not the fastest printer we've tried -- or even the fastest all-in-one inkjet photo printer -- the six-ink MG6320 is a very good home or small office solution, which prints high-quality color and black-and-white photos on par to those produced by some older professional photo printers.
Pros: Sleek, streamlined design won't take up much space in your office; High-quality color and black-and-white photos from six individual ink tanks; Ethernet and wireless connectivity offers a variety of connectivity options; Very easy and fun to use.
Cons: Plastic build feels a bit flimsy; Limited volume options not good for big jobs; Relatively slow overall print times.
Pricing and Availability: The Canon Pixma MG6320 has been available since December 2012 for $199.
Canon Pixma MG6320 Review
by Dan Havlik
Review Date: June 2013
With the Canon MG6320, Canon has created a Pixma all-in-one inkjet printer designed to be sleeker and more versatile than previous models, while adding a robust set of tools for connecting wirelessly to computers and mobile devices. If you're familiar with Canon's previous all-in-ones, you actually might do a double take when you see the MG6320, which comes in either glossy black or white, and boasts a streamlined profile with beveled edges and rounded corners. Don't be fooled by the MG6320's slimmed down style. Though it looks more like a dedicated, flatbed scanner from yesteryear than a multitasking all-in-one printer, this device is designed to do much of the work of a small office while printing lab-quality photos, thanks to its six-ink print system.
Along with printing photos, the Pixma MG6320 can output documents with text or graphics (or both), make copies, and scan documents and photos -- either in color or black-and-white. Sound multi-talented? It is, and thanks to the MG6320's wireless capabilities, many of this inkjet all-in-one's skills can be accessed on your computer or mobile device without having to attach a clumsy cord. And best of all, for the budget conscious, the Canon Pixma MG6320 retails for a reasonable $199.
Printing. For printing, the Canon Pixma MG6320 uses a 6-color, individual ink tank system, which includes Canon's standard-capacity 251 BK (Black), 251 GY (Gray), 251 Y (Yellow), 251C (Cyan) and 251 M (Magenta) dye inks along with a 251 PGBK (Pigment Black) ink for printing text. The MG6320's dedicated gray ink is for both black-and-white and color photo printing. Since the MG6320 uses an individual ink system, you only need to replace the specific ink tank that runs out rather than the whole set.
The Canon Pixma MG6320 offers 9600 x 2400 color dpi resolution with one picoliter drops, designed to produce finer gradations and photo prints with less visible grain. You can print borderless or bordered images. Canon's ChromaLife100+ ink system, which combines the MG6320 printer's Fine print head technology with the Canon inks and Canon's photo papers, has a claimed archivability of over 300 years, when the prints are stored in an archival photo album.
For printing documents and web pages, Canon says the MG6320 can print 15.0 images per minute (IPM) for black and 10.0 images per minute (IPM) for color. IPM speeds are a relatively new standard for printers created by the International Organization for Standardization to measure print speeds for documents. To measure IPM, the ISO provides three sets of standardized test documents in Microsoft Word, Excel and PDF formats. The standardized test documents contain a single photograph and corporate logos but are primarily text-based rather than graphical. The IPM standard is designed to be more accurate than the pages per minute (PPM) measure for printing documents.
A borderless, 4-x-6-inch photo takes about 20 seconds with the MG6320, according to Canon specs (read our hands-on test results below), and you can print photos up to 8.5 x 11 inches. To save on paper costs (and time), the Pixma MG6320 has built-in auto duplex printing, which allows you to automatically print on both sides of the sheet of paper. You can also print labels onto printable CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray discs with the MG6320.
Scanning. The Canon MG632 has a built-in flatbed scanner using a Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scanning element. The scanner has a maximum optical scanning resolution of 2400 x 4800 dpi and an maximum interpolated resolution of 19,200 x 19,200 dpi. Scanning features include Auto Scan Mode, Attach to E-mail Scan, Network Scan, Push Scan, Scan to Memory Card and Wireless Scanning.
The MG6320's scanner has 48-bit input color depth and 24-bit output. The maximum document size you can scan with the MG6320 is 8.5 x 11.7 inches.
Copying. As a copier, Canon claims an FCOT (First Copy Output Time) of approximately 14 seconds from the MG6320 for color copies. You can copy at a reduced size of down to 25% of the original document or photo with the MG6320, or enlarged to up to 400%. Other copying features include 4-on-1 / 2-on-1 Copy, Auto Exposure Copy, Auto Photo Fix II, Borderless Copy, Disc Label Copy, Fade Restoration, Fit-to-Page, Frame Erase Copy, Multiple Copy: 1-99 Pages, Photo Reprint, Preset Copy Ratios, Two-sided Copy and Zoom.
Build. The Canon Pixma MG6320 has dimensions of 18.4 (W) by 14.6 (D) by 5.9 (H) inches and weighs in at 18.4 pounds with the six individual ink tanks loaded. It comes in a glossy black or white finish and boasts a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen on the all-in-one's top front section. Unlike some other Pixma all-in-one printers, the MG6320's LCD screen does not flip up -- but it is slanted, making it viewable from an angle.
Software. The Canon MG6320 comes with a suite of software designed to make printing, scanning and copying easier. Canon's My Image Garden software, which is included on the setup CD-ROM, helps organize and print photos while offering several editing and organizing tools including facial recognition, calendar organization, and automatic layout suggestions. There's also a bevy of "fun filter effects," similar to what you'd find offered from most of Canon's digital cameras. These include Fish Eye, Miniature, Toy Camera, Soft Focus and Blur Background, all of which you can add to your images before you print.
Also offered with the Canon MG6320 is Full HD Movie Print, which lets you turn footage from HD movie clips shot with compatible Canon EOS DSLRs or PowerShot compacts into still photo prints. Other built-in software includes Easy-WebPrint EX, which lets you gather and combine several web pages to create and print in your own layout, and Auto Photo Fix II, which will automatically categorize your images into five types: Portrait, Scenery, Night Scenery, Snapshot with Scenery, and Snapshot with Night scenery. The software will then apply the best image and multiple-zone exposure correction for the type of scene that was captured, with underexposed areas automatically brightened, as well as faces that are backlit or underexposed.
Connectivity. There are multiple ways to connect the Canon Pixma MG6320 to computers and mobile devices, either with cords or wirelessly. For a traditional, wired connection, the MG6320 has a Hi-Speed USB, letting you plug a USB cord into the all-in-one device and connect it with a computer for high-speed transfers. The MG6320 also has built-in ethernet, letting you connect the device to a home or office network via a wired LAN interface so several workstations can use and monitor the printer at once.
The Canon Pixma MG6320 has a built-in card reader, letting you insert compatible memory cards, including popular SD, Compact Flash and Memory Stick formats, and see the images on the LCD screen before printing them directly from the card.
While all that's well and good, it's the wireless features in the MG6320 that will likely get the most use. For starters, this Canon Pixma's built-in wireless capability lets you print and scan wirelessly from any Wi-Fi enabled computer in a home or office. Mobile printing features, meanwhile, let you print wirelessly from compatible Apple iOS and Android-based devices. For Apple users, the MG6320 has AirPrint built-in, letting you seamlessly print photos, emails, web pages, and documents from your iOS-based device without having to install extra drivers.
Google Cloud Print, meanwhile, lets you print wirelessly to the Canon MG6320 from Gmail and Google Docs on a mobile device, or from a Google Chrome browser on Mac, Windows, Linux and Chrome devices. Google Cloud Print also lets you wirelessly share the MG6320 with anyone you choose. With the Pixma Cloud Link, you can print photos from photo albums you create in Canon Image Gateway and Picasa. You can also create templates including seasonal stationary and calendars from wherever you are to a compatible Canon Pixma wireless all-in-one, such as the MG6320, without a computer.
Printing Photos and Working with the Canon Pixma MG6320
by Dan Havlik
I've used Canon's all-in-one Pixma printers in my home office for a number of years now and they've been very handy for helping me complete a number of tasks in my daily workflow. Along with adding wireless capabilities, which has vastly decreased the number of cords I have cluttering up my office, Canon's been able to streamline the design of these multitasking devices with recent models. One of the most streamlined models yet is the Canon Pixma MG6320, which -- when placed side-by-side with its predecessor, the Pixma MG6220 -- looks almost like a different product all together.
I know this because the MG6220 has been a staple in my office for the last year, and while I never found it to be bulky, per se, the new MG6320 that I've been testing has a thinner profile overall, while adding a few new features.
Let's take a look at this wireless inkjet photo all-in-one from Canon, which is designed not only to help you take care of mundane office duties such as copying and scanning, but also to produce good quality photo prints thanks to the MG6320's six-color ink tank system.
Set up. Weighing in at just 18 pounds and with relatively compact dimensions, the Canon Pixma 6320 is not the type of all-in-one printer that requires two people to set up. As is the case with most photo printers, however, getting it out of the box, fully unwrapped, and operational does take a bit of time -- but that's mostly because of the careful packaging involved.
The first thing I noticed about the Canon Pixma MG320 as I tugged it out of the fitted, Styrofoam encasements that swaddle the printer in the box, is that it felt relatively light but not chintzy. It weighs about two pounds lighter than the previous model and is much more angled and contoured overall. (More about the design later.)
Canon's done a fairly decent job over the years of presenting clear, illustrated directions for setting up its printers via the "Getting Started" guides that come in the Pixma box. These red-and-white, fold-out pamphlets are usually the first thing I look for when unboxing a Canon printer. Make sure you have enough room for the set-up; the Getting Started guide folds out to a 20 x 30 rectangle itself and the printer and all its attachable parts can fill a large carpet.
After removing the various clear protective sheets and orange tapes that seem to fill every nook and cranny of the MG6320 -- make sure you get them all, there are a lot! -- you're ready to attach the power cord to the rear of the printer and fire it up. The next step is to select a language for the printer, and while that might not seem worth mentioning (English, for me, duh!), it's the first time you get to utilize the MG6320's 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen and you'll discover it's a good one. While touchscreens on printers and cameras haven't reached the responsiveness of a iPhone yet -- which, for me, is still the pinnacle -- they've improved quite a bit and the MG6320's screen is a good case in point. I was able to easily scroll through the language options on the screen, select English, and move on.
Six inks. Next up is installing the ink tanks. The first thing that might strike you, if you're moving up in class in all-in-ones to the MG6320, is that it uses individual ink tanks for six different colors including five dye-based inks for photos and a black pigment ink for text. The reason that's important is two-fold: 1) All those inks give you richer color; and 2) If one color runs out you don't need to replace the whole set.
The MG6320 ships with Canon's standard-capacity (9 mL) 251 BK (Black), 251 GY (Gray), 251 Y (Yellow), 251C (Cyan) and 251 M (Magenta) dye inks and the 251 PGBK (Pigment Black) ink, but I'd recommend getting the larger capacity (13 mL) XL versions of those inks when they run out. The XL inks, which are available in all colors, cost a hefty $16 to $18 per tank, but it's worth it if you print a lot. In comparison, the regular inks sell for about $12 a piece.
There's more protective wrapping and plastic protectors around the ink tanks that need to be removed before installing -- again, make sure you get rid of all of this junk before using the printer or it could potentially damage it -- but once you're done with that, you can start installing the inks. Fitting the individual inks into the correct slots in the print head is relatively easy thanks to Canon's well marked, color-coded system. Small orange lights on the ink tanks also light up when they're correctly seated in the print head. (These illuminated ink tanks have become something of a Canon Pixma trademark.)
Once all the lights come on and the inks are properly installed, close the Pixma MG6320's inner cover and operation panel, and the printer will whir and churn for up to four minutes as it charges the inks. After that's completed, the all-in-one will walk you through an automated print head alignment, in which a blue-black pattern is printed out to make sure the head wasn't damaged during shipping. There are a few more minor steps before the printer asks you if you want to connect to a wireless LAN. I held off on that initially because I wanted to find out how the Pixma MG6320 functioned with a traditional, wired USB connection to my iMac. The final step is to load the included CD-ROM in your computer to install the Mac or Windows version of the software. As mentioned in an earlier section, there's a lot of software to install -- not all of which you're going to use -- but I went ahead and installed the whole package for testing purposes.
In use. The Canon Pixma MG6320 was one of the easiest to use all-in-ones I've tried. That's important to note because some multi-function printers can be frustratingly (and seemingly unnecessarily) complicated to operate. Considering that many of these all-in-ones are aimed at novices and consumers, that's troubling for users and the printer industry.
The MG6320's slenderized design is not just aesthetically pleasing, it's convenient. I use a number of printers in my office, including a large Epson Stylus Pro 3880 for making 17-inch prints, and a Lexmark black-and-white laser printer for large volume text jobs. Consequently, room for extra printers is scarce. But with a height of just under 6 inches, the Pixma NG6320 slid into a shelf just below my Canon Pro-1 13-inch professional printer with room to spare.
My test unit was the glossy black model, but I must point out that this version of the Canon MG6320 isn't entirely black. The top panel that covers the flatbed scanner has a partial bronze, reflective tone to it, giving this all-in-one a classy look. While it's well designed and feels well built, there's no getting around the fact that the MG6320 is lightweight because it's made primarily of plastic. The MG6320 certainly doesn't feel cheap, but some of its trays, covers and attachments seem a little on the flimsy side.
Another keen space-saving move with the Canon MG6320 is to use two front paper cassettes rather than using an often hard-to-reach rear loading paper path. With the MG6320, the bottom tray can be used for 8.5 x 11 paper for text or photo printing, while the top can be dedicated for photo printing with photo paper measuring up to 5 x 7 inches. (It wasn't clear to me why the MG6320 doesn't allow you to print photos at up to 8.5 x 11 inches on top, as well.) There's also a slot in the top cassette to feed printable DVDs or CDs.
Below the two front paper cassettes is the output tray, which like the other trays on the MG6320, folds away discretely when not in use. When you are printing something out, you can quickly open the output tray by pressing in a plastic button on the side of the printer. Perhaps because I'm lazy, I like that the output tray self-opens with the plastic paper catch flipping out automatically when the MG6320 starts to print out a document or photo.
If you have huge text or photo jobs to print, the Pixma MG6320 is probably not for you. The main paper cassette -- the lower of the two trays -- can fit a maximum of 125 sheets while the upper, photo cassette (for 4 x 6s and 5 x 7s) fits just 25 sheets. The MG6320's built-in auto duplexer will help somewhat with your print volume needs, but not everyone likes documents printed on both sides. (Plus it takes extra time.)
When you do need to replace one of the inks -- after just one day of making test prints the standard-sized ink tanks were half full -- the MG6320's "snap edge" design lets you easily open the print head section of the printer to swap tanks. Again, I was able to perform this task in a limited amount of space with no problem. The only issue I encountered was that it's easy to accidently open the ink tank section of the printer when you're trying to lift the cover to the flatbed scanner. This will cause the printer to whir and churn as it performs an ink cycle charge, which drove my cats crazy.
Touch control. You access most of the Canon MG6320's features via the 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen panel -- which has swipe control -- on the front of the device, and I really liked how easy and responsive the display was. While this LCD doesn't flip up as with some previous Canon all-in-ones, it's placed front and center at a slight angle on the MG6320, so I was able to easily see and use it, even when the all-in-one was tucked into its shelf.
Canon tries not to complicate things too much with the icons and choices in the MG6320's touch-based menu system. The opening screen shows three options: Copy, Photo, Scan. Touch one and you're off and running in that particular mode. Functions and settings in the various modes are crisp, easy to read and intuitive, and I never found myself getting too lost in unnecessary detail. If you find yourself headed down the wrong navigation path, an illuminated panel of touch options surrounds the LCD screen, including a "go back" arrow and a home button, which will bring you back to the main menu.
Canon calls this set-up its "Intelligent Touch System," and while that's marketing speak, it is very well thought out, indeed. I liked that buttons and modes would fade out in the background when not needed, so you aren't overwhelmed with a set of unnecessary choices. Both touch and swipe control on the LCD were responsive, and there was little noticeable lag as I moved from screen-to-screen and function-to-function in the menus.
Print and copy speeds. Because of its easy-to-set-up, snazzy space-saving design and its intuitive menu system with touch and swipe control on the 3.5-inch LCD screen, the Canon Pixma MG6320 is a fast all-in-one to figure out and operate. However, it's not the fastest all-in-one I've tried for printing out text or photos. I averaged about 2.5 to 3 pages per minute when printing color documents with graphics and 10 to 12 pages per minute when printing black-and-white text. That isn't terribly slow, but if you have a major print job to do, you're going to want to get yourself a cup of coffee while it processes. The MG6320 can also spend considerable time at the start of a print job and between print jobs as it cycles the inks. I timed this "warm-up" period to anywhere between 1 and 5 minutes, which can be aggravating if you're in a hurry.
Print speeds for color photos were actually pretty decent, relatively speaking, when compared to other all-in-one photo printers. My color, 4 x 6-inch prints at the MG6320's highest quality setting came out in less than a minute, while color 8.5 x 11-inch photos at highest quality averaged 1.5 to 2 minutes. Black-and-white photos, however, took significantly longer, averaging 2 minutes per print for 4 x 6s and more than 5 minutes per print for 8.5 x 11s.
As a copier, the Canon MG6320 isn't going to break any records either, but it gets the job done. I averaged about 10 seconds for 1 letter-sized, black-and-white copy and 25 seconds for 1 letter-sized, color copy. So, overall, the MG6320 is certainly not fast or efficient enough to help you run a large office or photo studio, but it definitely helps out in a pinch for small office/home office usage if you're not in a huge hurry.
Print quality. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the photo prints I produced with the Canon Pixma MG6320. Not that long ago, high-quality professional photo printers were using six inks with 1-picoliter droplets, and it's nice to see this level of print quality drift down to consumer-targeted all-in-one devices. My color photos from the MG6320 looked particularly rich, with strong but not oversaturated reds (a typical Canon strong suit) that really made my images pop. The 1pL droplets the MG6320 was able to produce created the desired finer gradations in the ink in my photos, making them look more like smooth, traditional silver halide prints then the grainy, splotchy photos you get from lower quality inkjets.
Light, Caucasian skin tones look a bit on the pink side, but nothing compared to the atrocities that some lower end printers and all-in-one devices with fewer inks can commit. Skin tones produced by those machines can look plasticky and almost doll-like. Darker skin tones printed with a dusky, slightly yellow cast to them which, while it didn't look bad, did not accurately reproduce how they appeared on my computer screen.
Image sharpness in my prints was also surprisingly good. A photo I shot of a basketball player making a jump shot was tack sharp in all the right areas -- the ball and the player's eyes and face -- just as it had looked on the computer screen. The MG6320 also did a very good job with my black-and-white photos, although as noted earlier, it took a long time to print them out. My black-and-white prints showed very good contrast, with plenty of detail in dark areas, nice neutral grays, and white areas that didn't look blown out. If I had one criticism it would be the slightly blue cast in some of the gray areas. For an all-in-one, though, the MG6320 produced some of the best monochrome prints I've seen.
The Canon MG6320 also produced decent quality black-and-white and color documents. Even under a magnifying loop, the individual letters in black-and-white text showed good edge sharpness and no sign of smudging, which can be evident in lower-quality inkjet printers. That edge sharpness wasn't quite as crisp in the color documents I printed. I saw some bleeding of color along the edge when I looked at the print under a loupe. For an in-house printed report or studio project, however, it should be perfectly adequate.
Wireless features. Anything that can reduce the tangle of wires I have in my home office is appreciated, and getting the Canon MG63220 connected to my computer via its built-in wireless connectivity was one of the first things I did when I set up the all-in-one printer. Finding my WiFi router via the MG6320's easy-to-use touchscreen interface and linking it wirelessly to my iMac computer took all of five minutes, and I was impressed with how much Canon has streamlined this process. (Older wireless printer models, as well as many current digital cameras with WiFi capability, are notoriously difficult to set up.)
While the MG6320's wireless printing and scanning capabilities were easy-to-use and quite handy, Canon's done an even better job of wirelessly connecting to smart phones and tablets thanks to its well-designed Canon Easy-PhotoPrint (Canon iEPP) app. It was great to be able to wirelessly zap Instagram shots -- that I'll admit have been sitting on my iPhone and iPad for quite awhile -- to be printed on the MG6320 without any hassles (or having to install extra drivers.) The same is true for emails, Web pages and documents, which can also be printed to the MG6320 from iOS-based devices, thanks to Apple's built-in AirPrint tool.
You can also print wirelessly to the MG6320 from photo albums on Canon's Pixma Cloud Link. And speaking of cloud-based printing, Google Cloud Print also lets you print wirelessly to the MG6320, rounding out this all-in-one's diverse set of WiFi tools.
Canon Pixma MG6320 Conclusion
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If you haven't used an all-in-one, inkjet photo printer lately, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the sleek and efficient Canon Pixma MG6320, which produces superior photo prints for a device in its class. The MG6320's stylish, slimmed down design won't take up much space in your office and studio but, at the same time, it's packed with features for handling many of your basic office and printing needs.
Getting the Pixma MG6320 up and running is a snap, thanks to its lightweight build and compact design that makes it easy to move to the desired spot in your office. Canon's simple and clear illustrated directions all but eliminate the typical installation frustrations. Printing novices will like that the MG6320 is very easy to use overall, with a straightforward menu system that lets you quickly choose between copying, scanning and printing. Meanwhile, the Canon MG6320's 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen with swipe control was surprisingly responsive to the touch and easy to use. Not only is the built-in duplexer handy, but also it will help you save on paper costs.
The MG6320's excellent 6-ink color system employs individual ink tanks, so if one color runs out you won't need to replace the whole set. The 6-ink system also drives the quality of the printer's color and black-and-white photo prints; our test prints were on par to some older professional printers we've tried and much better than most typical all-in-ones. We also liked that the MG6320 offers built-in ethernet if you want to network this all-in-one in your office and a robust set of wireless features, which will let you do a number of tasks wirelessly, including printing and scanning, while helping to cut down on cord clutter.
On the downside, the MG6320's plastic build feels a bit flimsy and we worried about the durability of some of the accessories, particularly the paper trays. It's also not the ideal device for large prints jobs, fitting only 125 sheets of of paper for documents, and only 25 sheets of photo paper for 4 x 6 and 5 x 7-inch prints. Prints speeds overall were slow, and the MG6320 slogged through our letter-sized black-and-white photo prints, taking more than 5 minutes to produce each one.
However, these are relatively minor quibbles since the Canon MG6320 really isn't designed for heavy duty office or photo studio work, but is more of an agile and easy-to-use multitasker for copying, scanning or printing documents -- either while connected by a cord or completely wirelessly. It also just happens to be a very capable photo printer on top of its all-in-one duties. For a variety of small but important business or creative tasks, the Canon Pixma MG6320 is an ideal Dave's Printer Pick.
