Canon TS8050 (TS8020) all-in-one printer review – a great all-rounder?

The Canon TS8050 (TS8020 in the US) is one of a relatively new line of Canon all-in-one (print, scan and copy) printers, with a more compact design. The range consists of the TS5050, TS6050, TS8050 and TS9050. The TS9050 has almost the same specifications as the TS8050, but with a wired internet connection (Ethernet) and a slightly larger screen. Both have a 6-ink system and a touch screen.

The entry level TS5050 has a 5-ink system (no grey cartridge), no touch screen, no duplex printing and slower printing speeds than the other 3 in the line-up.

Setup

The large 10.8cm touch screen makes setup straightforward. After removing the transit tape and powering on, the printer guides you through the process of inserting cartridges and aligning the print head, by printing a sheet a plain paper and then scanning it back in.

The printer is then ready to use stand-alone, but most people are going to want to connect it to a smartphone or computer.

One of the simplest ways of connecting it to your wireless network, is to download the Canon Print app to your smartphone. Here, you can register the printer by following the on-screen prompts and entering the password for your router. You can then use the app for basic printing of photos or documents.

Now the printer is connected to your wireless network, it’s simple to run through the setup on your computer using the supplied CD. I only installed the basic driver and user manual, but there’s other software you can also choose to install.

Printer anatomy

The printer has two paper feeders: a cassette at the bottom for plain paper, and a rear feeder intended for photo paper. The bottom tray can only hold plain paper, whereas the rear tray can hold plain paper, photo paper and envelopes. Both trays can hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper, and the rear tray can hold up to 20 sheets of 6”x4” photo paper.

Although the printer is very compact, once you expand the cassette to hold A4 paper, that then juts out 4cm. If using the rear tray, unfolded it requires a further 11cm behind the printer and the printer gains 15cm in height. Although if you only store 6”x4” photo paper in the rear tray, you can shrink this down slightly.

Additionally, when printing, the front cover angles up and the output tray automatically ejects itself almost 17cm from the front of the printer. This can be manually pushed in when done, or can automatically retract when the printer is switched off.

Still, it is a compact unit, and if you only needed to use it occasionally, it could all be shrunk to its minimum size whilst not in use.

Print quality and performance

This model doubles the printing resolution of its cheaper siblings to 9600 x 2400 dpi and as expected, photo print quality is excellent. The addition of the grey cartridge benefits black and white prints, but it also adds to the costs of replacement cartridges. In general use, I doubt you’ll notice much difference against a 5-ink model.

Canon quote 21 seconds for a 6×4” photo print, I measured around 19 seconds with the output tray already ejected, and 31 seconds without. Prints do take longer than this overall, when you include processing time from hitting print, to printing commencing. But this will depend on many factors, including the speed of your computer, your wireless connection, and whether the printer needs to do some head cleaning.

Print quality on plain paper varied depending on the paper I tried. Results were very good with HP Multipurpose 80g/m², but quite fuzzy with Tesco Basics 75g/m² paper. Considering the HP paper online is currently the same price as the cheap paper in-store, I’d recommend getting the HP paper or a branded paper at least for the best results:

I couldn’t quite achieve the 10 pages per minute for a colour document (10 pages from the printer’s PDF user manual at normal print quality), but it wasn’t far off.

Printing directly from the memory card slot

I’ve had this feature on printers before, but rarely used it. However, with the large touch screen and the second paper tray with photo paper at the ready, making quick prints off your camera becomes a doddle. Just insert your camera’s memory card into the printer’s slot and images off the card will be displayed on the screen.

I measured the screen resolution of the touch screen at around 130ppi, which is not going to compete with the latest smartphones, but it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s possible to zoom in to check the sharpness of an image, and you can swipe through the images to select images to print, although there is a 1-2 second delay in reading and displaying the images.

I compared printing through Adobe Lightroom and straight from the printer, and the results were similar with Canon’s Photo Fix (under settings) turned off.

Scanning

The scanning resolution is also double that of lower models in the range at 2400 x 4800 dpi. Although resolutions above 1200dpi weren’t possible to select from the Scangear application, even in advanced mode. I was able to manually type in a 2400dpi scan resolution, but I couldn’t see any increased resolution (only interpolation) from 1200dpi, but this is enough for any reflective scanning I can think of.

Scanning speeds are good with preview scans taking 12s (7s of that was the scanner warming up), and a full page 300dpi scan taking 18s (with a 6s warm up). The quality of the scans look good, with accurate colours and decent contrast, and the Scangear software is very capable with some advanced features if your need them.

Running costs

It’s never particularly easy to accurately establish running costs, but using the ISO ink yields quoted from Canon, and the current costs of genuine XL ink from Amazon, the print costs work out at 8p (10c) per A4 colour page, and 15p (19c) per 6”x4” photo print which is better than average. Even when you include the cost of Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II at 15p (19c) per 6”x4” sheet, 30p (38c) per print is still less than half the price of one from the instant printers like the Fujifilm Instax, whose prints are also half the size!

Conclusions

Pros:

• Photo print quality very good
• 2 paper trays provides flexibility
• Memory card slot with the large touch screen making printing photos easy
• Good sized touch display
• Compact design
• XL inks available provide decent printing costs

Cons:

• Not as compact as it seems
• Only rear tray accepts photo paper
• Print quality on plain paper average
• Supplied with only standard sized inks (although this is the norm)
• Print costs with standard inks are expensive – I’d only recommend using XL cartridges

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