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The least-expensive all-in-one printer (AIO) in Canon’s new Pixma TS series, the Pixma TS5020 Wireless All-in-One Printer ($99.99), is a low-cost, low-volume model designed for home use. A primary difference between it and the pricier and more feature-rich TS9020 and TS8020 (the latter an Editors’ Choice) is that the TS5020 uses five inks rather than six.
Unlike another Editors’ Choice, the Brother MFC-J985DW ($592.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) (an entry-level office-centric AIO), none of these Pixmas come with automatic document feeders (ADFs), making them less suitable for home-based office use. Like the TS8020, though, the TS5020’s text and photo output is very strong, but it did struggle some in testing when printing dark fills and backgrounds in Excel charts and PowerPoint handouts. Otherwise, it’s an inexpensive alternative to the TS8020 for low-volume printing of photos and documents for home users.
Design and Features
Like the other TS-series Pixmas, the TS5020 performs three functions—print, scan, and copy—and comes in three colors: black (the one reviewed here), white, and brown. Unlike the other TS models, though, the TS5020 has only one paper input source, a tray that extends out from the rear of the chassis and holds 100 sheets (or 20 sheets of premium photo paper). The TS9020 ($429.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and the TS8020 ($899.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) come with not only a rear tray but also a 100-sheet cassette up front. In addition, at 5 by 14.7 by 12.5 inches (HWD) and weighing a slight 12.1 pounds, it’s also the smallest of the bunch and thereby petite enough to fit comfortably on most desktops. The control panel consists of a 3-inch color non-touch LCD that you navigate with four directional buttons and an OK button for executing commands. There are four other buttons on the panel: Power, Back, Stop and, Start. As on the other TS-series models, the control panel tilts up for easier use, but on the TS9020 and TS8020 the output trays deploy on demand, tilting the panel upwards automatically.
Basic connectivity consists of USB and Wi-Fi, as well as several mobile and cloud connection features, including AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria, as well as Canon’s own Pixma Cloud Link, Canon Print, and Wireless PictBridge for printing directly from specific Canon digital cameras. You can also print from several flavors of SD card and scan to a network drive or email. The SD card slot is located in the front bottom-left corner of the chassis, next to the output tray.
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Unlike the TS9020 and TS8020 Pixmas, the TS5020 cannot print on CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, nor does it (as the other two do) support near field communication (NFC) for peer-to-peer connections from your mobile device. Even so, Canon’s apps provide adequate mobile connectivity. It’s also important to note that all these TS Pixmas support Instagram’s 5-by-5-inch square photograph format. As it has done with the other TS-series Pixmas, as well as the relatively new G-Series Pixmas, such as the Pixma G1200 MegaTank Printer ($149.00 at Adorama)(Opens in a new window) and Pixma G3200 Wireless MegaTank All-in-One Printer, Canon publishes neither maximum monthly duty cycle nor recommended monthly print volume specifications for the TS5020.
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Setup and Software
In my testing, setting up the Pixma TS5020 was a snap. Packing material consisted of only four pieces of tape, a plastic bag, and two small Styrofoam-like braces for stabilizing the machine in its box. Unpacking, installing the ink tanks and software, loading paper, and aligning the print heads took less than 20 minutes.
The software bundle consists of Canon’s standard photo-centric Pixma drivers and programs, which include My Image Garden and Quick Menu. My Image Garden contains utilities for working with photos, such as special effects, correction, and enhancement filters; Creative Park Premium, a collection of templates; a scanning interface; and Full HD Movie Prints for printing frames from video shot with Canon digital cameras. Quick menu is a collection of always-on icons for accessing My Image Garden features.
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Printing Speed
Canon rates the TS5020 at 12.6 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome pages and 9ppm for color. I tested it over USB using our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 ($139.00 at Microsoft Store)(Opens in a new window) . When printing our lightly formatted Microsoft Word text document, the TS5020 managed 12.1ppm, very close to its rating, and slightly slower than the TS9020’s 12.9ppm and a little faster than the TS8020’s 11.4ppm. In addition, it printed the same text document 3ppm faster than the Epson Expression Premium XP-640 Small-in-One Printer ($329.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , a competing five-ink AIO without an ADF. Like several printers we’ve tested, the TS5020’s speed score tanked considerably when I included the results from printing our Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing color, graphics, and photos—in this case (and as with the other TS Pixmas discussed here) by almost 75 percent. Its score of 4.5ppm was a mite higher than the TS9020’s 4.2ppm and the TS8020’s 4.4ppm, but not much. It did beat the Epson XP-640’s 3.2ppm by a bit more, though.
The TS5020 excelled at printing photos, averaging a speed of 19 seconds when printing 4-by-6-inch snapshots. It was a second faster than both the TS9020 and TS8020, and 6 seconds faster than the XP-640. Considering the TS5020’s photo print quality (see the next section), 19 seconds is fast.
Output Quality
In addition to the standard three color inks (cyan, magenta, and yellow), the TS5020 comes with two black inks, one pigment based and the other dye based. As mentioned, both the TS9020 and TS8020 come with a sixth, gray, ink for printing primarily grayscale photos, although Canon says it enhances color images, too. As on the TS8020, print quality was above average overall. Text came out dark and well shaped, even at small sizes (5 and 6 points). And when I printed photographs on premium paper, the results were terrific, rivaling what we saw from not only the six-ink TS models, but also previous MG-Series Pixmas (which the TS series replaces), such as the Pixma MG5720 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One ($586.45 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) .
Graphics looked good, too, for the most part, though I did see some banding (a regular pattern of faint striations) in dark fills and backgrounds, especially black ones. On the other hand, lighter-colored fills and gradients looked fine. The TS5020 wouldn’t be the best choice for printing PowerPoint handouts, but there’s no arguing with its photo and text quality.
Running Costs
Due to the fifth black ink, calculating a precise cost per page for the TS5020 isn’t really feasible, since there’s no way to gauge when that cartridge kicks in. That said, when you use the highest-yield ink tanks, the per-page cost of using the four standard cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks is 4.1 cents for monochrome pages and 12.7 cents for color. Assume, then, that with the other black ink, the per page cost is somewhat higher.
Running costs this high are not unusual for photo-centric AIOs like this one. The Epson XP-640’s per-page costs are, for example, 4.7 cents for monochrome and 13.7 cents for color, and it, too, has a fifth ink (“Photo Black”) that increases the cost per page in some scenarios, again making actual running costs impossible to calculate precisely. You don’t have to put up with these high ink costs to get good-looking photos, though. The aforementioned Pixma G3200 (with similar features to the TS5020) prints photographs about as well as all of the TS-Series models discussed here, and it, like several Epson EcoTank models, such as the Expression ET-3600 EcoTank All-in-One Supertank Printer, delivers running costs of less than 1 cent per page for both monochrome and color pages. But then both the Canon MegaTank and Epson EcoTank machines cost $200 to $300 more than the TS5020.
Conclusion
The Canon Pixma TS5020 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One Printer is indeed an all-in-one printer in that it prints documents, scans, and makes copies, but for the most part these are merely conveniences—it is essentially a photo printer. Like its higher-priced siblings, the TS9020 and TS8020, the lack of an ADF and high running costs make it impractical for anything but low-volume home use. If you need more, consider a machine with lower running costs, such as the Brother MFC-J985DW, but you won’t get anywhere near the TS5020’s photo quality—which is exceptional for the price.
4.0
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Despite its high running costs and the lack of an automatic document feeder, the small and light Canon Pixma TS5020 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One Printer prints text and photos exceptionally well for the price.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/canon-pixma-ts5020-wireless-inkjet-all-in-one-printer