The Canon Pixma MX492 Wireless Inkjet Printers may not be the best choice for color printing or photographs, but it’s still a fantastic printer able to produce bold and readable text pagesat an average, if not slightly slower, printing speed. Check out our best printer for chromebook list for more great finds. We also recommend our list of the best printers in the market so you can have varied options.
Related: If you don’t like this device, you may check the Canon Imageclass Mf644cdw review
Why We Like It – Canon MX492
The Canon MX492 is a nice little printer with just enough advanced features to keep it in the top tier of all-in-one printers. Though it’s still considered a budget printer it includes wireless printing and low running costs which will keep you satisfied. If you need something quick and easy for a home office, this is the one for you.
- Print Speed is Still Pretty Good
- Bold and Easily Readable Text Pages
- Very Compact
- Color Photos Will Take a While
- Photographs are Less Bright and Vivid
Related: Also read the Canon Mx922 review
Speed
The Canon MX492 All-in-One Printer produces about 8.8ppm when it comes to monochrome pages and drops to 4.4ppm when printing color pages. On photo paper, it can print a simple photo in about 70 seconds. You’re probably inclined to believe that this is slow for a printer, which it undoubtedly is, but given a printer on the higher-end of the spectrum, the HP OfficeJet 3830, churns out 8.5ppm, we’d say the MX492’s print speed isn’t all that bad.
Print Quality
While most Inkjet Printers like to use a lot of ink to provide bright and vivid photos, the MX492 seems to produce some blotchiness and subdued skin tones when it comes to printing a photo. If you need high-quality photo printouts, consider the Silhouette Crafting Printer. However, the text on this print job was bold. And although some text seemed splotchy at the serifs, there was still no problem in being able to read it.
Efficiency
One of the benefits of the Canon MX492 are the low running costs. With only two basic cartridges that will need replacing, and black ink cartridges costing about $22.50, it will cost you only $45.00 to replace the two cartridges when the need arises. These could be made much cheaper if the splotches on the ends of serifs mentioned previously were fixed, so let’s hope Canon will do that sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, consider the HP OfficeJet 3830 for another high-efficiency printer.
Advanced Features
The Canon MX492 offers copying, faxing, and scanning capabilities on top of mobile printing applications such as Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and the PIXMA Printing Solutions app with no driver needed. And while wireless printing may not seem like a big deal you’d be surprised just how many ‘budget’ printers don’t offer it so it’s nice to know that Canon has included it here.
Value
Along with connecting to your wi fi, the printer also comes with a high-speed wireless USB port for those times your network goes down. The device is also quite small, measuring only 17.2″x11.7″x 7.5″ and weighing only 17.2 pounds it’s one of the smallest and lightest printers we’ve encountered. In fact, the main selling point of this printer seems to be its size which will save you a lot of space at your home office.
Canon MX492 Wrap Up
With it’s extremely compact size, the Canon MX492 will be able to fit anywhere you’d like to place it. Be it next to your computer or somewhere out of the way, the MX492 has you covered. It’s printing of anything color leaves a lot to be desired, which is an oddity when it comes to inkjet printers, but you can’t argue with the below average running costs!
