This is an inkjet printer that uses tanks rather than cartridges and the method of filling the cartridges from bottles has shown an improvement from early offerings so there is absolutely no chance of spilling ink as even when the cap of the bottle is unscrewed there is no danger of ink exiting even if the bottle is knocked over or turned upside down.
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The Canon Maxify GX5050 is described as a Wi-Fi Printer and indeed that is how I used it but it still has an Ethernet connection and even an upstream USB.
The device measures 40x40x20cm with another 4cm added to the last figure at the rear where the second upright paper tray is.
Unlike a lot of units that are called printers that are three in one or even four in one devices this is solely a printer.
Years ago printing speeds were shall we say unlikely to be achieved as each manufacturer used their own pages to suit what their unit did best now everyone has to sing from the same hymn sheet so they should be obtainable. The stated figures here are 24 ipm in black and 15.5 ipm in colour.
This unit is also capable of automatic two sided printing.
As now seems standard no CD/DVD is provided and you download software from a link. Here it worked flawlessly with the dummy Internet connection used these days firing up automatically to allow the GX5050 to be found and then switching back to your own Internet connection without problem. On my machine the software only took 24MB and the complete setup took only twenty minutes including the five minutes for first priming of the ink. The actual tanks filled in around 30 seconds each from unscrewing the bottle top to empty bottle.
Printing on high quality inkjet paper for colour images uses the back flip up pass through so that the page only has to bend a total of 90 degrees can even support thin card. Just two minutes to print a side in best mode is very acceptable both in time to print and the output quality.
I mentioned automatic double sided printing which of course is slower as the page emerges and then is taken back in to print side two and I printed 31 sides of colour lists in 4 minutes and 20 seconds and a shorter list that ran to three sides in 40 seconds from pressing the print button on the PC to the last side out on the printer also very acceptable.
If your printing is that little bit higher ‘maybe small business’ then this has the quality and the speed and of course the ink bottles are far cheaper than cartridges.
At the time of publication the Canon Maxify GX5050 is available from Amazon for £399.99.
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