Canon Pixma TS6250 review

Canon recently introduced its first ‘refillable’ inkjet printers, which use affordable bottles of ink, rather than expensive ink cartridges, to drastically reduce the long-term cost of buying replacement inks. The new Pixma TS6250 is a more conventional printer, relying on cartridges once more. Here’s our full review.

Canon Pixma TS6250: Price and availability

The Pixma TS6250 is available from Amazon at £149, which is relatively high for a home printer.

However, its five-colour printing system is designed for home users who are prepared to pay a little extra for very high-quality text, graphics and photo printing.

It’s a cheaper option compared to the Pixma TR8550 and Pixma TS8050, going by RRP.

Check out our chart of the 10 best printers.

Canon Pixma TS6250: Design and Features

Like most inkjet printers, the TS6250 uses four inks – cyan, magenta, yellow and black (or ‘CMYK’)– for colour graphics and photos. However, it also includes an additional pigment-based black ink that is reserved for high-quality text output.

It’s packed with useful features too, including a 1200x2400dpi scanner and copier, and automatic two-sided (duplex) printing. Connectivity options include both USB and Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as Apple’s AirPrint for iOS devices, and Mopria for Android.

There are two paper trays, with the front tray holding 100 sheets of A4 paper, while the rear tray is specifically designed for glossy photo paper and envelopes. You can even print on special stickers and magnetic papers that will allow you to attach your designs to a fridge door or other surfaces.

And all those features are squeezed into a compact, low-profile design that stands just 139mm high, 372mm wide and 315mm deep, so it will fit easily onto a shelf or desk even in smaller rooms where space is a bit tight. The printer is available in either black or white – although the white model is called the TS6251.

Canon Pixma TS6250: Print Performance

Canon quotes a speed of 15 pages per minute when printing mono text documents. Our tests with a number of Word and PDF text files actually came in at 14ppm, but that’s still fast enough for most home users, and will allow you to print longer documents, such as school reports, in no time at all.

Print quality is also excellent, thanks to the pigmented ink, which produces crisp, smooth text characters that can give more expensive laser printers a run for their money.

Colour documents containing text and graphics are a little slower – we got 7.5ppm, rather than the 10ppm quoted by Canon but, again, that’s perfectly adequate for day-to-day use at home.

Photo printing is good too, taking just 30 seconds for a 4x6in postcard print with very bold, bright colours and strong contrast.

Canon Pixma TS6250: Running Costs

It’s hard to fault the print quality provided by the TS6250. But, inevitably, the five ink cartridges that the printer uses do push the running costs up a bit. Matters are made even more complicated by the fact that each ink cartridge is available in three different sizes – standard, XL, and XXL – and that Canon estimates different numbers of pages for each individual cartridge.

The standard pigmented black ink costs £11.49, but only lasts for about 200 pages, which amounts to an expensive 5.75p per page. We’d suggest skipping the XL cartridges, and opting for the XXL option instead. This cartridge is almost twice as expensive, at £21.49, but lasts for 600 pages, which brings the cost per page down to about 3.5p.

That’s still relatively high for simple text documents, but could be acceptable if you want the extra quality provided by the special black ink.

Colour printing is more competitive, although we’d still recommend that you avoid the standard-size cartridges.

Even with a multi-pack containing all four standard CMYK inks for £39.49, we estimate that the cost per page is around 15p, which is too high for a printer that is clearly designed to produce a lot of high-quality colour documents and photos.

Oddly, the XL cartridges aren’t available in a multi-pack, and buying all four inks separately will cost around £58, although that does bring the price down to a more reasonable 9p per page. However, Canon does offer a multi-pack containing all four inks in XXL cartridges for £77, which works out a very competitive 7.5p per page.