Verdict
The Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is a competent inkjet printer for a busy home office or a modest business . It ’s well - suit for printing business computer graphic and interior document .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is an inkjet printer aimed for use in the home federal agency .
As a single - function gadget without a scanner , you ca n’t use it for copy , scans or faxes . Rather than excelling at glistening photos , it ’s optimised for plain - paper printing .
But its most interesting feature of speech , without a doubtfulness , is Canon ’s MegaTank refillable ink system , which promises to keep printing costs to a minimum .
Design and Features
The Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is a comparatively advanced inkjet printer , aimed chiefly at low and home agency . It might not take care like much , but it ’s fit out with both pumped up and wireless connection interfaces , making it loose to share among a pocket-size mathematical group of users .
In the printer ’s base , you ’ll find a 250 - bed sheet paper cassette , while there ’s a second , 100 - sheet provender at the rear – perfect if you want to occasionally impress on special media , such as head paper .
This inkjet supports automatic semidetached house ( two-fold - sided ) printing process , where the Sir Frederick Handley Page is automatically reverse so it can publish on both side . That ’s a great agency to save paper , but it ’s also handy if you ’re likely to print account , slides or other handouts and want them to attend professional .
The GX5050 is boxlike , and not the small inkjet printer around . I like its tiltable control panel , but this is only plate to a introductory mono display and a few simple buttons – no fancy touchscreen here . However , the printer ’s front jury is enliven up by four clear shaping windows , showing ink horizontal surface in the refillable tank . The cyan , Battle of Magenta and yellow tank add a welcome elan of colour .
Setting up a Canon MegaTank printer is more or less more tangled than its rivalEpson ’s EcoTanksystem . With the GX5050 , you first have to check the printheads , which look for all the world like two empty ink cartridge .
After that , you could reverse the ply ink bottles over each tank and hold back for them to empty their contents . Each bottle is shaped differently , so you ca n’t satisfy in the wrong gloss , and in my experience , you ’re unconvincing to spill even a drop curtain .
With the tanks full , you just want to look 10mins while the pressman performs a one - off routine to occupy its various pipes with ink . Like most other printer , you ca n’t join the GX5050 to a wireless meshing while this is move on . That ’s a recur frustration of mine , as it means you also ca n’t get very far with establish the software until the printing machine is done .
The only hiccup I feel with the GX5050 was when I first attempt to update its microcode , after being prompted by the control panel . The printer shut down promptly without successfully applying the update . It would n’t initially restart from the power button , which was a little worrying , but unplugging it for 10secs did the thaumaturgy . The update worked all right on my second attempt .
I previously test theCanon PIXMA G650 , which is unapologetically focused on photo impression . The GX5050 , by contrast , is all about plain newspaper . It ’s filled with pigment inks , which usually develop much stronger color on everyday prints . The flip side is that they do n’t wreak nicely with exposure paper , tending to sit on top of the shiny finishing , which results in a dull , semi - matte finishing .
For the billet drug user this printer is mostly aim at , pigmented ink have other benefits . They ’re usually more insubordinate to water and other answer , make believe them less likely to bleed or ladder . Consequently , they ’re less potential to besmirch when used with highlighter pens .
Print Speed and Quality
If you stick to unmingled theme , the Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is unlikely to disappoint . It perform fairly quick in my stock tests , hit a decent 17.4 pages per second ( ppm ) when print calamitous textual matter , and a likewise strong 7.8ppm on a 20 - page colour papers . It also popped out a four - pageboy printout of eight presentation slides in just 50secs – not tough at all .
This printer was n’t uniformly fast , however , as it was once in a while prostrate to housework pause during farsighted job . It also was n’t as fast when printing multiple copies of a individual pageboy . It dropped to just 13.5ppm when print 25 copies of a letter , for example . To be fair , that ’s still more than tight enough for most home and micro - offices , but some of its competitors are quicker .
At a coup d’oeil , the resulting print were exceptional . You wo n’t find blacker , bolder text than this from an inkjet , and its color graphics were punchy , with pictorial but close colouring . Most user would be delighted with the prints I made , but purists might notice a tenuous “ tearing ” effect now and again graze up in black text . I endeavor to fix this by realigning the printheads , but unluckily , it remained . I also spotted a little amount of insidious stripe on some areas of semblance shading , but I doubt many user would be too troubled by it .
The GX5050 is n’t a gravid photo printer . It ’s quite fast , delivering each 6x4 in ( 15x10 cm ) pic print in less than a mo , but as I mentioned before , its pigmented inks do n’t produce a shiny last . It also wo n’t impress borderless photos on any paper size . That ’s a bit of a shame , as it would otherwise be well - suited for print high-pitched - quality photos or graphics on matte - coated inkjet newspaper .
This printing machine is a decent performing artist , but so far it does n’t really justify its asking monetary value , which is about three time the cost you might expect from an inkjet of this caliber . That all changes when you take a look at its running play toll , though . The GX5050 arrives with enough ink to print about 6000 pitch-black or 14,000 colour page – minus a small amount that gets used up in the one - off ground routine . That could be enough to publish up to five or sixboxesof paper . Print 50 pages a week , and the supply ink alone could last you more than two year .
When you finally break away out , you ’ll pay about £ 18 per colour bottle : there are three , and each should last another 14,000 pages . It ’s £ 26 for the inglorious bottle , which should last for about 6,000 pages . This means that a single full - colour Sir Frederick Handley Page from the GX5050 costs about 0.8p – around a ten percent of what you might pay with a competing cartridge - based printer .
Despite its high leverage terms , the GX5050 ’s bundled ink puddle it even cheaper to own than an inkjet with conventionally low run costs . HP ’s excellent OfficeJet Pro 9010 multi - useable peripheral , for example , costs about 6.4p per page , but buy it and printing 5,000 pages would set you back more than £ 450 .
There is a haul , however . Unless you ’re a very dense substance abuser , it ’ll probably take you a good two or three years to print enough that the GX5050 becomes dependable value than its cartridge - based equivalent . And at the present moment , Canon is only providing it with a one - twelvemonth warranty .
I ’ve no reason to expect that the ink tank printer wo n’t last – I ’ve been running one for the past three eld – but they should always be back up with a minimum three - yr warrantee . That way , proprietor have the peace of mind that their printer will last long enough to retrieve the higher upfront cost through cheap ink .
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Should you buy it?
The Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is ideal for small spot duties : trashy to run with decent plain - composition print .
The GX5050 is n’t agreat photograph printer . And remember that it ca n’t scan or imitate , either .
Final Thoughts
The Canon MAXIFY GX5050 is a competent inkjet printer for a fussy home agency or a small business . While it ’s not the fastest , and its print timber is n’t quite perfect , it ’s well - suit for printing line of work graphic and internal documents . It ’s quite expensive , but it ’ll make unnecessary you the extra outlay through scurvy run monetary value , provided you impress at least 5,000 pages or so during its lifetime . It ’s a ripe choice for a habitation federal agency – but only if you typically print several Thomas Nelson Page a day .
Trusted Score
How We Test
Every printer we go over goes through a serial of undifferentiated checks designed to guess central things including mark quality , speed and cost .
We ’ll also liken the features with other printers at the same Mary Leontyne Price degree to see if you ’re getting good economic value for your money .
FAQs
No , it ’s a single - function printer . It ca n’t scan , transcript or fax – it can only print .
In everyday filling and use , you ’re unlikely to spill a dip . But once you ’ve meet the printer with ink , you do need to be careful when run it . There ’s a lever to insulate the storage tank , and you should always keep the printing machine upright and flat in transit .
pressman manufacturers do n’t usually make much money when they sell you a printer . Their material profit comes when you buy ink , with some pressman costing more than 20p per Thomas Nelson Page to run . You ’ll pay much more to buy an ink armoured combat vehicle printing machine , but much less to fill up it with ink – typically less than 1p a pageboy . Over time , this works out much cheaper overall .
