Canon PIXMA MG8120

Excellent printer with some exceptions

I shopped for about a month before making this purchase. I am a serious photographer who does some freelancing on the side. I also enter various local and state photography contests. so I want a printer that is reliable and provides excellent quality in its finished product. I am very pleased with the quality shown in the prints from the Canon Pixma MG8120. I previously had a HP 8200 series printer It served me well for over 14 years. I had to replace it when ink cartridges became scarce and I had to replace my old PC. I already know the quality of the new Canon printer is superior to the HP printer.

Hook up and the set-up was very straightforward with no problems at all. The instructions were easy to follow and i would like you to know that I am somewhat "technologically challenged", so I was relieved when the set-up occurred as easily as it did. I did go online and downloaded the user manual for this particular printer as part of my homework prior to purchasing it. The driver installation was easy and without any glitches. The whole hook-up and installation process took about 20 minutes.

The one item missing in the instructions that I thought would have helped in the initial set-up was when I first began printing the printer was applying way too much ink in the finest quality mode. I started experimenting and doing my own troubleshooting by re-installing the driver/software CD and performing a nozzle plus roller cleaning. Those two operations made the difference in the succeeding print projects.

The printer does consume a lot of ink when the preferences are set at the finest quality. You have to expect that. When printing everyday documents and projects, just use the gray scale or the standard print quality.

Finally, after about a month, I am still learning how to use this printer. I learn something new every day concerning its capabilities and features. I am very pleased with my decision to purchase the printer. BTW, all my photographic equipment is made by Canon. I have a 1D Mark III and three L Series lenses. I appreciate Canon quality !

Canon Pixma MG8120

We were attracted bo buy because of the slide copying capability. This works great. Why buy another piece of equipment for $40+? The set up was not hard as some reviews have implied. I am not a techy and I had no trouble. Networking to multiple devices maybe harder, but the basic wireless set up was very clear. A bit slow maybe, but great color pictures from cameras, slides and the Internet.

Tremendous printer

This printer replaced two older inkjet printers: an HP Officejet and a Canon photo printer. I wanted a printer that would print top quality photos and still do the job of a multi-function printer. I also needed a printer completely compatible with Windows 7. The Pixma 8120 was the perfect choice. It is an even better photo printer than the old Canon. What surprised me the most was how fast this printer is when printing documents or copying. Absolutely blazing speed compared to the old OfficeJet, and the quality of documents and copies is superb. I used the auto-duplexing feature when printing a 75 page database report and it worked flawlessly. I have scanned a few photos and documents with excellent results. Haven`t tried the special attachment for scanning slides and negatives yet, but I enjoy knowing that feature is there when I need it. Setup was easy. I connected the printer to my wireless router via Ethernet cable since they were adjacent and was quickly printing from my desktop computer as well as my laptop (via wireless). Installation creates a desktop shortcut menu for quick access to Layout Printing, Photo Printing, or the Main Menu. It gives you the option to hide the menu as well. I`ve come to appreciate this menu. I have used this printer for 3 months and gone through about one ream of paper printing mostly documents with some color, music graphics and a few photos. Three of the original ink cartridges had to be replaced in the last two weeks and the others will run out soon. This is not an ink-thrifty printer but I am happy to pay a bit more for ink in order to benefit from such high quality printing. If your needs require a lot of printing and you have a budget restriction you might want to look for something else or have a second printer for volume work. An ink level display appears for all cartridges each time you print. When any cartridge gets down to 25% you see an added note to have a new cartridge available. When the printer determines that a cartridge is empty you will see a more ominous message that you should replace it now. When the "replace now" message appears, the printer will not continue to print the job you are working on unless you press the OK on the printer itself. I like this feature because it gives you the option to finish printing even with degraded quality (in case you can`t find your ink cartridge). I noticed a slight streak through some blue text one page before the printer told me to replace CYAN. I hate to replace ink cartridges too soon, so I am very pleased with the accuracy of the ink monitoring. All in all, this is one tremendous printer.

Don't buy if you want to scan photos

First I have been in the IT field for 25 years. I have had many scanners and have scanner hundreds of images. When I purchase the MG8120 I kept my old HP scanner. I did a test scan of a photo on each. The quality of the Canon scan is good with one exception. The aspect ratio is slightly off. You can notice it quite a bit in the faces of people in the photos. The Canon scan makes everything look fatter and shorter. Granted it is a slight difference but if you put both images in an editor like Photoshop and compare them you will see that they are different. This may not matter to some but I am in the process of scanning hundreds of old family photos and I want the scanned image to be exactly the same as the original. The HP works fine. I guess that if I keep the Canon I will have to keep the HP for photo scans.

Very good printer...better than others

We moved up from one of those cheap free printers they used to give with a computer purchase. This printer is very good so far. Set up for the wireless was a bit hard, but then I am no techno-geek. The scan quality is decent...but I really purchased it for printing general stuff from the internet. Occassionally it has to think for a bit before printing, but

The Printer I`ve Been Waiting For

After 7 printers from a different manufacturer I think number 8 is without question the stand out. Everything I`ve been looking for and nothing wasted. I`ve suffered through so many lousy printers I could have bought my own printing franchise by now. They`ve generally been of two varieties; slow with poor print quality or featureless with good print quality. The Canon gives me great quality bundled with usable features like printing from my iPhone with a simple free app and wireless connectivity for the laptops. User interface is so straight forward it confused me. I was sure I had missed a few steps! Bottom line it prints legible text, great quality photos, connects without wires or issues, doesn`t double feed and isn`t telling me I`m nearly out of ink after just a few pages. If my 5 computers and 2 phones weren`t already connected to it I`d buy a second one but alas this is the only one I need.

I Really Like Canon Inkjet Printers

I used to use HP printers. My MP970 is going to college w/my son. This printer is doing a great job for me. I really like the quality of print and life of the cartridges.

Print quality is great.

I really like the print quality and speed. If using just the printer to scan and print, or to print pictures from a camera card, it is very user friendly. Trying to get pictures from a camera card saved into my computer is a different story. I have yet to figure it out.

Low speed + small paper capacity = poor home office product

I'm reviewing this as a home office user. The printer works as advertised and I found it easy to set up. However, I cannot recommend it. The problems are:

1) Printing is abysmally slow on this printer, even for low quality, gray scale, speed optimized jobs.

2) The cassette only holds a few dozen sheets of paper, which means that you can expect to be refilling it with great regularity if you print medium size documents.

The printer I would recommend instead is this one:
Samsung ML-2851ND Network-Ready Monochrome Laser Printer

It is not as versatile, but for fast b&w print jobs, it is great.