The Canon Maxify MB5020 Wireless Inkjet Small Office All-in-One Printer ($299.99) is a higher-end model in the company’s new line of small office/home office (SOHO) multifunction printers (MFPs). The MB5020 ($479.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) offers very low running costs, sharp text, and a good set of office-friendly features, though it comes up short on paper handling.

Design and Features
The Maxify inkjet line includes both MFPs and a single-function printer, and is tightly focused on full-time home offices, sole proprietorships, and small and micro businesses, eschewing consumer-friendly features. This sets it apart from Canon’s Pixma line, most of which combine consumer and home-office features and are often a good choice as dual-use MFPs for both household and home-office use.

The MB5020 prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It has a port for a USB thumb drive, from which you can print and scan, both from and to the drive. You can also scan to email, to a network folder, or to the cloud. The printer measures 12.6 by 18.3 by 18.1 inches (HWD), which larger than you’d want to share a desk with, and weighs 26.3 pounds. Paper handling is sparse, with a single 250-sheet tray and no options for additional trays. It does have an auto-duplexer for two-sided printing. For scanning, the MB5020 has a letter-size flatbed, plus a 50-sheet automatic document feeder.

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A 3-inch, color touch-screen LCD for controlling the MFP functions is built into the front bezel. Buttons include an On/Off button, a Home button, a Back button, buttons with a diamond icon for black-and-white and color scanning, and a Stop button.

Mobile Printing Features
The MB5020 is AirPrint-compatible, and also includes the Maxify Cloud Link interface, which provides access to various cloud-based services directly from the printer screen. Through it, you can upload scanned documents directly to Evernote, DropBox, Google Drive, and OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive), as well as print pictures from online photo albums, office templates, and more, even without a computer. Maxify Cloud Link supports Google Cloud Print, which lets you send documents to your printer from any Web-connected computer, smart phone, or smart device. You can also print and scan photos or documents from any iOS, Android, or Windows RT mobile device with the Maxify Printing Solutions app installed on it.

The MB5020 can connect to a network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and directly to a computer via USB. I tested it over an Ethernet connection with drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

Print Speed
The MB5020 printed out our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic(Opens in a new window)‘s hardware and software) at 4.7 pages per minute (ppm), matching the speed of the Canon Maxify MB2320 Wireless Inkjet Small Office All-in-One Printer ($479.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , which has the same print engine. It was trounced, however, by the Editors’ Choice Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5620 ($299.99 at Epson)(Opens in a new window) , which zipped through the suite at a blistering 10.3ppm.

Output Quality
Overall output quality for the MB5020 is a touch above par for an inkjet, with above-par text, slightly sub-par graphics, and average photo quality. Text quality is impressive, good enough for any business uses short of ones requiring tiny fonts.

Traces of banding (a regular pattern of striations) were seen in most graphics. Thin, colored lines were nearly invisible in two illustrations. Graphics quality is suitable for internal business use, but I’d hesitate to use them for handouts going to people I was trying to impress or for formal reports. Most of the photo prints are of a quality you’d expect from drugstore prints. A monochrome image in our test was slightly tinted.

Running costs for the MB5020 are just 1.5 cents per monochrome page and 7.1 cents per color page, which are both very low for an inkjet at its price.

Although it has only half the paper capacity of the Canon MB2320’s 500 sheets, the MB5020 is capable of heavier-duty printing, with a 30,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle to the Canon MB2320’s 15,000-page monthly max. By virtue of the MB5020’s higher-yield ink tanks, it also has lower running costs, especially for monochrome printing. If you don’t need to frequently switch between paper types, the MB5020’s single paper tray might not be too much of an impediment. (The high-end model in the Maxify line, the Canon Maxify MB5320, which we will soon be reviewing, combines the MB2320’s generous paper capacity with the MB5020’s high-duty cycle and low running costs.)

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The MB5020’s running costs are lower than most similarly priced inkjets, and effectively match those of the Editors’ Choice Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5620 (1.6 cents per monochrome page and 7.1 cents per color page). The MB5020’s paper capacity is lower than that of the Epson WF-5620 (330 sheets total, with an option for a second 250-sheet tray). The Epson WF-5620 is geared to compete with lasers, and in our speed testing, it left the MB5020 behind in a cloud of ink, running through our business applications suite in less than half the time it took the MB5020.

Although the Canon Maxify MB5020 Wireless Inkjet Small Office All-in-One Printer can’t keep up with the Epson WF-5620, it’s a capable SOHO MFP, with low running costs, a duty cycle that makes it suitable for heavy-duty printing, and good text quality. Its single 250-sheet tray works against it as a heavy-duty printer, but if you don’t change paper types often, it could still be a good fit for that role.