Amazon has the PIXMA MP530 on sale for $166 with no mail-in rebate and free shipping. We have featured deals on this printer before, and this is about as low as the price has gone so far. It’s not a huge savings, but since it’s Amazon you save on shipping and you might be able to add in some other items.

The PIXMA MP530 is an all-in-one printer that came out over the summer. It is part of Canon’s ever-increasing line of good multifunction machines, and at around $160 it is one of their cheapest. Canon rates at 29 ppm in black and 19 ppm in color. It has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder and a 150-page fax memory. The scanning resolution is 2400 x 1200 and it can print a 4 x 6 in about 51 seconds. This is basically Canon’s answer to all those cheap all-in-ones that the other printer manufacturers offer. That is not to say that it is of poor quality or the features aren’t that great, it’s just that it’s more geared towards someone who does the occasional fax or scan and not someone who would be using those features nonstop for business purposes.

You can find Canon PIXMA MP530 ink cartridges on our site.

The holiday season is fast approaching, and by the time our next newsletter comes out, it might be too late for Christmas shopping, so we’ve come up with a couple of recommendations for people looking at buying a new printer. Yes, we do realize it is a little early for all this and this is sort of like how stores put out Christmas candy the day after St. Patrick’s Day, but hopefully you’ll forgive us.

These recommendations are based on our knowledge combined with ratings from CNET and PC Mag, along with price, overall popularity and customer feedback at places like Amazon and CompUSA. Some of these printers may be a little older or only available to order online, but you can still get them. We’ve picked our recommendation for best inkjet printer, best photo printer and best multifunction printer and here they are:

Best Inkjet Printer

Picking the best inkjet printer these days is kind of hard because very few printers are classified as just inkjets. Every inkjet printer these days is called a photo printer, so we are going to limit our choice to a true inkjet printer. Based on that, we recommend the HP Deskjet 6980.

The Deskjet 6980 is not the cheapest Deskjet model you will find (it’s usually about $150), but that’s a good thing because a lot of the sub-$100 HP offers these days aren’t very good. This model, which came out about a year ago, is rated at a blistering 36 pages per minute for black prints and 27 for color. It has all the usual connectivity options and it has the ability to produce double-sided prints. It probably won’t blow you away with its photo quality, but the Deskjet 6980 is a bit of a throwback model, similar to the Deskjets HP used to produce before they flooded the market with a bunch of crappy $30 models.

The one downside to this printer would be the ink costs, since the cartridges that work with this printer are very small. You can save on ink costs by swapping out the cartridges based on the type of printing you do, but it is still something to be aware of.

Amazon Inkjet Sales Rank - 13th
Amazon Customer Reviews - 4/5 (based on 15 reviews)
PC Mag Review - 4/5 (Editors’ Choice)

———-

Best Photo Printer

As we just mentioned, these days the term “photo printer’ is applied to basically any inkjet that can print photos. Since technically all inkjets can print photos in one way or another, printer manufacturers use the term very frequently. Also, compact photo printers have become more common these days, so there are just tons of photo printers on the market. But, in our opinion, there are only a few true photo printers, and out of those we recommend the Canon PIXMA iP4200.

We definitely had to take price into consideration on this one because there are a lot of good photo printers out there, but a lot of them are above $300. For most people, that price is just not very practical, so that’s why we went with the $130 PIXMA iP4200. This printer, which came out in the Summer of 2005, is pretty fast at 29 ppm for black, and it has a very good print resolution at 9600 x 2400 dpi. It can do double-sided printing and it comes with a second paper tray to increase your paper options. The print quality is good, and since it’s a Canon, the ink costs will be relatively low.

The only downside to this printer is that it is not the highest quality or fastest photo printer on the market. But for what you pay, it’s one of the best, and its performance will be very suitable for most home users.

Amazon Inkjet Sales Rank - 15th
Amazon Customer Reviews - 4/5 (based on 82 reviews)
PC Mag Review - 4/5 (Editors’ Choice)
CNET Review - 7.5 (very good)

———-

Best Multifunction Printer

Like with photo printers, there are a ton of multifunction choices on the market today. The number has exploded over recent years as more people have started working out of their homes, but unfortunately the increase in multifunctions has flooded the market with some truly bad machines. Most of the entry level multifunctions on the market, especially those from Lexmark, just are not very good and people need to stay away from those. One model you don’t need to stay away from is our recommendation, the Canon PIXMA MP830.

Canon made this choice pretty easy because they currently dominate the multifunction market and because you can always count on the quality of their machines. So after looking through their current offerings, we chose the PIXMA MP830 based on the reviews given to it and the interest in it from our customers. This $250 printer is relatively new, having come out about six months ago, and in that time a lot of people have come to our site specifically looking for info on this printer or cartridges for it. It is rated at 30 ppm black and 24 color, which is a good speed for an all-in-one and it has a lot of features for a printer in its price range. Those features, including an automatic document feeder, are not usually found on a printer in this price range. When they tested it, PC Mag said that overall, the MP830 was the fastest multifunction they had tested by a pretty big margin.

If there is any downside to this printer, it is the price. It is a little higher than other manufacturers may charge for their multifunctions, but it is worth the price. This machine is ideal for a single user in a home office or small business.

Amazon Inkjet Sales Rank - #2
Amazon Customer Reviews - 4/5 (based on 78 reviews)
PC Mag Review - 4.5/5 (Editors’ Choice)
CNET Review - 7.2 (very good)

**As with any products, there are going to be some differing opinions. There is sure to be someone out there who had a bad experience with one of these printers and will curse us for days upon end for recommending it. All we can say is that we took a lot of things into consideration when choosing these printers and we based our information on our own experiences, those of our customers, and those of other customers out there. So, use this information, along with all the reviews and feedback we’ve linked to and you should be able to come up with the best printer for your needs.

Heading into the holiday season, here is a look at the top 10 selling printers on Amazon:

1. HP OfficeJet 5610
2. Canon PIXMA iP6000D
3. Canon PIXMA iP4300
4. Canon PIXMA iP6700D
5. Canon PIXMA iP90
6. Canon PIXMA iP6600D
7. Epson Stylus Photo R1800
8. Canon I-9900
9. Epson PictureMate Deluxe
10. Epson Stylus R220

There are a few repeats on this list from back in July, like the OfficeJet 5610, which was the #2 bestselling printer back then. A few of the Canons were also on the list, but there weren’t as many. Six out of the top 10 selling printers on Amazon are Canon printers, which should definitely tell you something. Some of the Deskjets have fallen out of favor in the past few months, and that may be due to quality issues. All the Canon inkjets in the top 10 have a customer feedback rating of 4/5 stars or better. The PIXMA iP90 has consistently been a top seller, even though it has been on the market almost two years now. The PIXMA iP6000D has also been very popular lately.

Now granted, these rankings don’t fully reflect the popularity, since more people probably buy their printers in office stores than they do on Amazon. But it’s pretty safe to say that a lot of people do shop on Amazon, and those that do are usually pretty tech-savvy and they’ve usually done some research to see what the best printer is. If you’re in the market for a new inkjet printer for the holidays for you or for someone else, we’d recommend taking a look at some of these Canon printers on the list to see if they meet your requirements.

J.D. Power and Associates released a study that said that Canon ranked the highest in customer satisfaction. First of all, I didn’t know that J.D. Power and Associates did anything besides give awards to crappy Dodges. Second of all, it’s not too surprising that Canon had the highest satisfaction. We’ve seen that for years and once you buy a Canon you are pretty easily converted.

What is surprising is the rest of the results: Lexmark and Dell came in at third and fourth, respective. Canon scored 765 out of 1000 to win it, and right behind them was Ricoh at 764 (I guess all three Ricoh owners out there said they liked them). Then next was Lexmark with 757 points and Dell with 743. To say that out of 1000 points Canon is only 22 points better than Lexmark is pretty ridiculous. That’s like saying Canon is only 2% better. The results were based on a survey of “business and IT decision makers” and apparently they have differing opinions from home users. In addition to being pretty unpopular with home users, Lexmark and especially Dell have never really been known for business machines. Dell makes laser printers, but they do not make any jumbo-sized copiers or laser printers that you might find in an office.

HP got 741 points and Epson was wayyy down the list with 692, only one point above last place finished Konica-Minolta. We know that Epson inkjets can be pretty tempermental, but apparently those IT decision makers had very little tolerance for them. The industry average was 741, so HP was 100% average and Epson was downright terrible. Epson isn’t really known for their laser products and most of their multifunction machines are not suited for business use, so that might explain their low ranking.

J.D. Power and Associates Reports: Canon Ranks Highest in Overall Business Customer Satisfaction With Printers [Press Release]

Buy.com has the PIXMA MP460 on sale for $87. Unlike most of their other sales, there is no rebate involved and there is free shipping, so that’s your final price (for most states). The retail price on this printer is $130, although it was never really that expensive.

The PIXMA MP460 is a multifunction printer that is rated at 22 pages per minute for black and 17 for color. It has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200 and Canon says that it can print a 4 x 6 picture in 52 seconds. Since we posted a review for this printer, a lot of people have come here to read about it, so it seems like this is becoming a very popular printer.

If you already own this printer, you can leave some feedback on it for others. If you require Canon PIXMA MP460 ink cartridges, then you can head over to our site.

Amazon has the Canon PIXMA MP830 all-in-one on sale for $230. This is just a regular sale, so there is no mail-in rebate or coupon code. This is a very popular printer that we have listed deals for before, but it is a good printer and it is well-reviewed by a lot of customers, so it’s worth reposting when there’s a sale.

The MP830 is rated by Canon at 30 ppm for black and 24ppm color. It has a resolution of 9600 x 2400, which is on the high end for a multifunction. It can copy both sides of a document without the user having to turn the page over and it has the ability to receive a fax with 250 incoming pages. Based on customer feedback, the scanning features of this printer seem to be pretty good, so if you are interested in that you might want to take a look at this machine.

One downside that a few people mentioned is that the ink runs out quickly. This may be because the black cartridge, the CLI-8BK, isn’t as big as some of Canon’s other black cartridges.

You can find Canon MP830 ink on our site.

Amazon has the PIXMA MP530 on sale again for $160. It’s just a regular sale, so no mail-in rebate, and it’s one of those good sales where you have to add the item to your cart to see the low price.

The PIXMA MP530 is an all-in-one printer that Canon rates at 29 ppm in black and 19 ppm in color. It has a printing resolution of up to 9600 x 2400, which is about as high as it gets for a personal inkjet these days. The scanning resolution is 2400 x 1200 and it can print a 4 x 6 in about 51 seconds. It also has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder and a 150-page fax memory. This printer has only been about two months and it is already pretty popular. So far it has a perfect feedback rating on Amazon, so at the moment it seems like the MP530 is a winner.

You can find Canon PIXMA MP530 printer ink on our site.

This is a pretty common question because a lot of times people don’t care that much about the printer they are getting, they only care about how much it’s going to cost them in the long run. Some people use their inkjets just for documents and very rarely print pictures, and for people like that it doesn’t matter what the printer resolution is or how big the LCD or any of that jazz.

Well the answer to this is: there is no answer. There is no one printer that stands above all others in terms of its ink costs. Now before you get too angry for that big tease…there are certain things you can look for to find the models with the cheapest ink costs.

1. Look for printers with individual ink cartridges
2. Look for printers with photo specific cartridges
3. Do not buy a Lexmark/Dell
4. Only buy an HP if you plan on refilling

Canon and Epson are the main ones for individual ink cartridges, although HP has introduced a few models in the last year or so that feature individual cartridges. Printers with separate cartridges for photo colors help you save your regular colors for when you are doing color printing you don’t care about. You will never save on ink with a Lexmark or a Dell printer, so don’t even try. Finally, as we have mentioned before, HP cartridges keep getting smaller and smaller, to the point where their ink costs twice as much ($3.60/ml vs. $1.85/ml) as it did just a few years ago. At the same time, you can save a lot of money with HPs by refilling the cartridges, so operating them is either pretty expensive or really cheap.

The short answer to this is probably to just buy a Canon, because they have individual ink cartridges that are usually cheaper than all other manufacturers, and most cost per page test results (like this one, for example) favor Canon printers.

First off, that isn’t a typo - it’s supposed to be SELPHY and not Selphy. Just like with Canon’s other line, the PIXMA, even though the name is capatilized, it’s not an acronym. So SELPHY is not short for Super Elegant Lightweight Personal Home Yunit. Glad we got that cleared up.

Canon announced that they were releasing the SELPHY ES1, which has a pretty innovative design. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, this printer is very small and slim. It’s completely upright, so it takes up a fraction of the space that other printers do. The other unique thing about it is that the paper and the ink cartridge are combined into one cassette. Now there isn’t a picture of that, so what this paper/cartridge thing actually looks like is a mystery. Canon says that this makes it easier because you won’t have to worry about the paper or the ink running out separately. That sounds sort of convenient, but it also sounds like a nice way for them to sell you more consumables. Who’s to say that the paper and the ink are always going to run out at the exact same time?

Other than that, the SELPHY ES1 has a 2.5″ LCD, a built-in retractable USB cable, memory card slots and the ability to produce a 4 x 6 photo in about 60 seconds. It will retail for $250 when it hits stores next month.

Canon’s Compact Photo Printer SELPHY ES1 Features New Vertical Design, Easy Paper Handling and Fun Printing Options [Press Release]

Canon is recalling 1.87 million copiers because of a risk of overheating and fire. The models that they are recalling were built from 1987 to 1997. Now, it’s nice that they are recalling all these printers, but if they have been around since 1987 and haven’t caught on fire yet, then they are probably going to be ok. This is all because like three printers caught on fire years ago too, so it’s not like they’ve had a recent wave of exploding machines. Anyways, the recall is expect to cost Canon $1.7 million and infinity lost dollars from bad publicity.

Canon says to recall copiers that can catch fire [Reuters]