Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Now after-market ink refills are available. I don't want to be redundant and tell you the same things everyone else is saying in their reviews. I want to add something to this review column that has not been addressed in depth yet from a new point of view. This printer quality is a bargain at the $99 I paid for it and this review is about how to keep all your printing costs also at a bargain. Is that not related to you printer purchasing decision? In ebay I searched "MG5420 ink" There are several refill options to add new ink to your existing cartridge. In the early 1994 I bought my first canon printer specifically because it had individual ink cartridges so you could replace just the one color you were out of, instead of the multi color cartridge. I did NOT WANT to have to throw away the other color inks that I was not out of just to get a refill on the one color I was out of. In 1994 Canon was the 1st home based ink-jet with individual color cartridges for each color. Instantly I fell in love. So now I could buy just the color cartridge I was out of. SWEET. But it didn't take me long to figure out I could buy ink in bulk and refill my cartridges and save a ton more of my precious money. Canon always advised against using ink they didn't manufacture and sell themselves as they said it would harm the printer and destroy the quality of the print and void the warranty. I always found them to be full of shi... Of course they wouldn't admit to us that we could give our money safely to another instead of them. What company will admit that? Those that do tend not to stay in business long. Since 94 I have drilled tiny holes in my cartridge tops with the included finger drill bit that comes with the refill kits, used a syringe and added plenty of ink, wiped up my own mess as its easy to spill a few drops of the super messy ink.(expect a little mess and then you'll be ok. Don't expect it and you will be unready and disappointed) After adding ink to my existing cartridge, I cork the little hole with the included corks from the refill kit, or just put tape over the hole and keep on printing for several more months. After about 6 refills per cartridge, I will buy a new cartridge and start the process over for another 1-2 years. Since most print heads are built into the cartridge itself, the print head will wear out so eventually that cartridge will get replaced. On some of my canon printers, the print head was separate from the cartridge and the cartridge merely fed an ink supply to the print head. In this case the cartridge was infinitely (Well much longer at least) reusable although periodically the print heads needed replacing. They were expensive. Usually it was that time to upgrade the printer to a newer more modern level anyhow than pay 70% of the cost of a new printer just to replace the print head on an old outdated printer. Depending on which canon printer model I owned at the time, some cartridges were easier to figure out exactly where to drill the hole to be most effective. Think about that for a moment before you drill your hole. Its ash ame to figure it out via the road of regret. But I have. Most cartridges held liquid in a see through tank. I loved that. Some cartridges I could not see into and figured out it was full by when it begins to spill over. But I was ready for the mess in advance so to me it was no big deal. I was wearing junk clothes and working atop of a plastic garbage bag under my newspaper. In case your not aware, that ink is a pretty permanent mess on most surfaces and all clothes and barely washes off your hands with lots of scrubbing if your smart enough to NOT let it dry on. On one canon model printer, the ink cartridge was see through, but the cartridge was full of cotton wadding. I didn't like that cartridge as it didn't seem to hold much ink, and was very slow to refill because it had to be absorbed slowly as you slowly filled it. You just plain could not fill it quickly. Add a little and wait, add a little and wait. Times 8. Thank God that model is gone. With buying the largest volume of replacement ink available, which is the most cost effective for the long run, it brings my cost of printing an 8 x 10 full color photo down to about 5 or 10 cents per page. Now the canon printer becomes very affordable to use so I use it much more and have lots more fun printing photos. I do believe you will notice the noise level of any printer to be related to the print speed capability. The faster they print, the louder they are. Try one photo at best quality which is a slow print and listen carefully. Then try a page of text at draft settings (fast print) and listen. Notice the difference. Then realize with any printer models, some are inherently faster noisier, and some are much slower and quieter. This printer is known for its speed of print which people want and are willing to pay for, but the inherent side effect is noise increase with print speed increase. Thats what I have noticed. Your welcome to your own observations and if they are not the same as mine, I don't want to hear from you. So knowing this in advance of buying a printer, I realize my choice is slow and quiet, or fast and noisy. Which do I want? I want fast. I'm ok with hearing the printer work its little ass off for me as I know how inexpensively its working on my dirt cheap ink refills while I'm getting great quality prints. For me, thats all I want. If I want quiet, I cant have quiet until I get a divorce, and thats a cost I'm not ready for. So I'm used to noise. My woman makes this printer look very quiet. I haven't figured out how to unplug the females vocal cords yet. Since widows xp, I never install the print drivers that come included with the CD and photo software they include. Its always bloated and sometimes unstable. Go to canons website and you can download the naked driver by itself without all the bloat-ware. Then its a very small file. Win 7 will automatically download the print drivers and update your computer for you as soon as it detects the usb print connection. I'm still waiting to find out if the wireless connection will operate without the bloat-ware. I will know in a few more days. I may update this. Via control panel, printers, you can initiate a scan without installing the bloat ware. But sometimes there are functions you can not gain access to without installing the bloat ware. Oh well, thats life. In my little world, I've never been able to get everything I want, so I don't expect to begin now. Life is a bowl of trade-offs. If you want a perfect printer, then be ready to put several thousands of dollars down at the register. Then you'll complain its too big. There is no such thing as a perfect printer. There is a printer that meets your priorities better than other printers. And for that you will have to know your priorities and do lots of research as I have done. Hope I have helped you save some money on ink. See ya... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE 4-6-2012 It arrived and I set it up with the quick guide. After the automatic print head alignment, the printer asked me if I wanted it to scan for a wireless network. I pushed the ok button and didn't expect it to find my wireless laptop since I hadn't installed the printer software on the included CD. But 60 seconds later the printer gave me the message a network had been found and it was now connected. To my surprise it found my wireless router which connects my laptop to the Internet. That was not how I expected it to hook up, but I was ok with it. Anxious to test it out, I went to my laptop to print some test. But my laptop didn't show the new canon printer as an option. So I went to control panel in windows 7 and clicked add a printer. Win 7 began scanning for a new printer and found the canon and asked, IS THIS THE PRINTER YOU WANT TO ADD. I clicked yes and it began installing it automatically. Then win 7 said it would update the drivers via microsofts update website and did so automatically. 90 Seconds later it said it was installed and updated and did I want to do a test print? Win 7 also installed the scanning software automatically. I clicked yes and the canon spit out a fine test print. Now when I wanted to print anything, the canon is my new default printer in win 7. From any print menu, I can choose options and find my printer settings to adjust the photo ink quality, or clean the print heads, and many other options. I never even put the canon CD software in my laptop as I wanted to avoid that headache. I like good quality photos but don't necessarily need the best quality photos all the time . Printing with BEST quality doubles the ink consumption and I dont need that 90% of the time. Only for my best photos. But for most photos I print them at standard quality and I'm happy with them. Photo paper is nicer than standard document paper (for pictures), but it costs so much more. I'm just not willing to pay a $1- a sheet for glossy photo paper. Not when I expect to print 50-100 8x10"s of them per month. So I found an alternative. Hammermill Color Laser Gloss Paper, 94 Brightness, 32lb, Letter Size, 300 Sheets per Pack (16311-0) 300 sheets of semi gloss paper that has rave reviews. Its about $8- for 300 sheets. Its photo print quality is about 70% of that of photo paper which is a dollar a sheet. Now its not exactly real photo paper, but its close and so much cheaper it just gives you so much bang for the buck you can afford to print tons of good photos super inexpensively. I bought 300 sheets of this when I ordered my new canon printer. So I was ready for a real test. I picked out a good photo to print, added the new semi gloss paper, and set my print settings at standard print, NOT HIGH quality. Wow, very nice considering between ink and paper it was somewheres less than ten cents per 8x10". I was happy with the print canon did. Now if it was a special picture, one of those very rare ones, I might use (real) photo paper with photo print settings set at best (and it would make a GREAT PHOTO). But 95% of the time that is just over kill for a ordinary picture and not cost effective if your going to print lots of them, say 30 a month or more. Remember I bought this printer because I wanted the ability for good to great photos at super cheap ink costs via refilling my cartridges myself. Photography I do for part of my living selling on ebay. I understand the difference between ordinary and special and just wont pay special costs for ordinary pictures. Quality usually depends upon the photo itself, not its print. But special pictures do make an exception and I understand that to. I want tons of very good photos, and some great photos and I want it dependably and super inexpensively. This canon printer is perfect for my priority's. What are your priorities? One thing I liked about this printer, is its very large ink cartridges. This means I don't have to refill them as frequently as other brand printers small cartridges, assuming its color ink is not all in just one cartridge. However these ink cartridges are NOT see through so i cant see the level changing as I'm refilling it. So when it drips or pours over I will know its full and to stop adding refill ink. I can live with this. And I know I'm going to make a mess refilling them so I will be prepared. But first I have to use up some ink before I can refill these new cartridges. So I will stop writing here and go do some more printing. Oh by the way, go to ebay and search for item "321044164949" OR the title "5x4oz Refill ink for Canon PGI-250 CLI-251 PIXMA MG5420 PIXMA iP7220 1Pig.+4Dye". Search either of these in ebay. This ink is designed for this canon printer and I bought 5 bottles of ink that contains 4 oz of ink per bottle for $26- Thats about 10-12 refills for each ink cartridge. Thats a super bargain. Do you know what it would cost you to buy all 5 cartridges times 12 times? Hey, if enough of you people leave a comment asking me to, I will take a video of the cartridge refill process and post that video here on amazon. I've done it a hundred times. Ive learned all the tricks. Hope I showed you how to get the most bang for your buck and save money. See ya. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE: 4/20/2013 The speed of this printer is very slow and very fast. Hhhmmm...your thinking. For printing just one page, you add the 1-2 minutes of warm up time and it makes it a very slow print for just one page. However each page after that takes 3-8 seconds for text depending upon DRAFT, STANDARD or BEST settings you have chosen. Personally I use draft as it uses the least ink and prints the fastest, and the quality is definitely fine for normal reading standards. I print my ebay postage/shipping labels at standard and the print is still better than my last HP printer that was given to me when it printed at its best setting. I am so glad that HP is gone. But it was free... Still nearly not worth it. If most of your prints are 30 pages and up, you would call this a very fast printer. If most of your prints are one page jobs, you will call this a very slow printer. The print speed is very fast, but by the time your done adding the warm up time to the 1st page, your opinion may vary. I do lots of one page prints. But I'm rarely in a hurry so I have no problem paying a penny a page for draft text prints. Again, the cartridges in this printer are the largest capacity I have ever seen canon put in a printer. I wish my car had a larger gas tank. These cartridges are about twice the size of past canon cartridges. So if your considering the cost of replacement cartridges, remember your also purchasing double the ink quantity in a cartridge over past cartridges. Yah the price is up there, but so is the quantity of ink your purchasing. The comments are growing, I'm inclined to make a video of me refilling my cartridges. Keep adding comments and I'll keep using my ink up so I have a need to refill them. Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE 10-05-2013 I have finally run my ink dry in blue and text black. The others were quite low. So out came the refill kit I bought from ebay. I did take a video of it but it came out to be over 30 minutes worth and since amazon wont let me upload more than 10 minutes worth, I am in the process of editing the video cutting out the junk and adding voice over narration explanations. To do a video edit to my satisfaction takes about 6 hours so it may be a while before I'm done with it. In the mean time since the process turned out much easier than expected, I will give a quick text explanation for you die hard fans of the refilling process. The drill that came with my refill kit sucked. It was so dull it would not drill a single hole. This was the 1st refill kit I ever bought that had an insufficient drill. So I heated a paper clip with a lighter and melted a hole. That was too easy. Much better than expected. I should of been doing that years ago instead of messing with the drills. While refilling my 1st cartridge through this melted hole, when the cartridge became full, ink began pouring out the bottom of the cartridge. The bottom of the cartridge has a large sponge opening where the ink soaks into the print head when the cartridge is installed in the printer. Seeing how fast ink could run out of the sponge hole opening made me realize it would also soak in as fast as it could run out, which was very quick. So on all the rest of the cartridges, instead of melting a injection hole for the needle on the syringe, I just flipped the cartridge upside down and squirted the ink into the (bottom) opening with the sponge exposed. I was very pleased to see the sponge did indeed absorb it as fast as I could squirt ink out of the syringe. Actually, this thrilled me. The top of the cartridge which is now upside down at this point, has a vent hole beneath the full length sticker on the cartridge. The sticker does not seal this hole so air can go in as ink drains out of the bottom of the cartridge so you don't get a vapor lock vacuum. When the cartridge becomes full from squirting ink onto the sponge, excess ink will quickly drip out the top (which is now upside down) through the vent hole which informs me the cartridge is now full and to quit filling it. At the 1st sign of ink dripping out from the sticker area, quit refilling it. A couple more drops drip out and then it stops its draining process and the cartridge is now totally full. Now it is safe to turn the cartridge upright to its normal install position and no more ink will drain out from the sponge opening on the bottom. However it will continue to hold all the ink you have added without it dripping out. I install that cartridge back into the printer and grab the next empty one. I flip it upside down and fill it through the bottom opening that exposes the sponge. When a couple of drops of ink drips from the sticker area (vent), I'm done filling that cartridge and move on to the next. A syringe will hold more ink than what a cartridge can absorb, so any leftover ink I squirt back into the bottle it came out of. I then label that syringe with a sharpy magic marker what color it was used for so next time I have to refill my cartridges many months later, I can use the same syringe for the same color it was used on last time. This is because when I squirt the left over ink back into the bottle, there is always a couple drops left in the syringe and I would not want it to mix with a different color ink later when I reuse that syringe. That would surely degrade the print quality. I only work above a spread out plastic trash bag so no ink drips get on anything valuable and I can throw it out when I'm done. Don't trust a newspaper. Ink soaks thru it quite quickly. With a green scrubby for pans, I wash and scrub the ink off my fingers with dish soap when I'm done and it all comes off in about 1 minute. Maybe 2. I'm kind of sloppy and don't use rubber gloves. Theres more in life to worry about than do I have to wash ink off my fingers. The ink kit I bought was in large bottles. There was 5 of them. And it came with 5 separate syringes that worked super well. Better than most that come with a refill kit. Now this next piece may be the most important so pay attention. Each bottle of ink has a letter on the top/cap/lid that denotes its color. Since this model canon uses 2 separate black inks, there is 2 bottles of black ink. One for text and documents, and the other for photo printing. Heres the challenge. Both bottles of black ink look nearly identical to each other. This stumped me for a few minutes. Which is for photos and which is for text? Here is how I figured it out. The three colored bottles have exactly the same size letter on their cap. Obviously they are for photos and not text. One of the black bottles has the same size letter on its cap that the colored bottles have on their cap. And one black bottle has a slightly smaller letter on its cap than the colored do. Both blacks have the letter "K" on the cap. One -K- is the same size as the letters of the colored bottles and the other -k- has a slightly smaller size. Do look carefully!!! The smaller -k- is for the text and the larger -K- is for photos. All the photo inks have the same exact size letter on their cap and the text black has a slightly smaller letter on its cap. That is the only identifier on the blacks to differentiate which is which. Thats assuming you buy the same exact refill kit that I did, and I highly recommend it because when it was all done, it all worked perfectly and was such a bargain. Value VERSUS Cost? Now that I know to fill the cartridges through their sponge hole in the bottom by flipping it upside down, I can refill all the cartridges in about 5-7 minutes. Where to buy the best ink at the best bargain? I don't know positively because I have not tested all the different ink refill kits that are for sale out there. What I do know is that the ink refill kit I chose worked so perfectly, I will not buy any other brand out there as I don't want to gamble my known success on a maybe. Oh by the way, go to ebay and search for item "321044164949" OR the title "5x4oz Refill ink for Canon PGI-250 CLI-251 PIXMA MG5420 PIXMA iP7220 1Pig.+4Dye". Search either of these in ebay. This ink is designed for this canon printer and I bought 5 bottles of ink that contains 4 oz of ink per bottle for $26- Thats about 10-12 refills for each ink cartridge. Thats a super bargain. Do you know what it would cost you to buy all 5 cartridges times 12 times? Its easiest to just search for the item # and you will only get one search result. After my refilling was done, now was time for the test. I dug out a 8x10 photo I had printed with the original canon ink. The photo I selected was full of high level intricate detail with a good mix of all colors. I went on my computer and found the digital original and reprinted it with this new refilled ink. It was flawless. I could not tell them apart. They looked exactly alike and thats why I will not buy any other brand of refill ink. This is as good as it gets and this is what I am sticking with in the future. I don't believe you can buy more ink for less money than what I have found. And I'm sure the quality of ink available to buy canNOT get any better than what I have found as it prints exactly like canons original ink does. But you buy what you want. To me its pretty insignificant but there is one minor downside. After you have refilled the cartridges, the printer NEVER does recognize they are full and the printer will continue giving you the low ink, or out of ink message. However this never stops another perfect print from popping out. So from here on in I just ignore all ink messages and when a print finally pops out with vacant lines through it, then I will know its time to refill them all again. Most ink messages on your computer screen you can hit cancel or ignore and they go away. However when you find that one of a kind message that wont go away no matter what you do on your computer, then its time to go directly to your printer and hit the ok button to acknowledge it and then you can be allowed to print more. I only got that super stubborn message once. But nothing I did on my computer would make it go away. I fiddled with it for ten minutes before it occurred to me to go walk up to the printer itself and see if it could be acknowledged from there successfully. Ok, go refill your own and just spray it in through the bottom sponge and have fun. Forget about refill holes and plugs. Let me know if this review helps you. And I will work on editing the video for future viewers. Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE 10-06-2012 Hey, I have found the ink I buy on amazon now. It appears to be the same exact refill kit. ND TM Brand Dinsink: 5 X 4oz Refill Ink for Canon PGI-250 CLI-251 PIXMA MG5420 MG5422 MG5520 MG5522 (K/k/c/m/y) Compatible with OEM/Genuine Ink Cartridge. The item with ND Logo! HOWEVER at the time of this writing, amazon charges $5.49 for shipping as its not eligible for prime or free super saving shipping. It has the same purchase price as what I bought off of ebay, but in ebay the shipping was free priority mail 2 day speed. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE: 10-31-2013 I discovered a secret about Canon. They make so much money from us buying their ink replacement cartridges, that canon has actually implemented a strategy to prevent us from using off brand cartridges or refilling our own cartridges. The 1st thing they did was to install a computer chip on the bottom of each ink cartridge. The printer through this chip will talk with the ink cartridge. If the cartridge cannot talk to the printer properly, the printer will refuse to print even though your full of high quality ink. It is canons way of stopping us from buying off brand cartridges and depriving canon of the chance to rob us blind on the exorbitantly high ink costs that canon prices way to high. This chip also lets the printer know how much ink is in a cartridge so the printer can warn us when its getting low, or when its out. Canon has designed the chip in such a way when a ink level drops the chip remembers that level and the chip refuses to identify a level higher than the lowest level the chip has identified. So when we add more ink, the printer is not allowed this information because the chip wont tell the printer the truth so the printer continues telling us we are low on ink even if we just refilled it to the top. So far this is just a nuisance as we have to deal with the messages of low ink. Its canons version of a nag screen. If we are going to deprive them of the additional profit, then they will throw nag screens at us to annoy us. The nag screens were not significant in my opinion and they didn't even slow me down. HOWEVER canon has also taken this to a whole new level with even more safe guards. Now you have to understand being low on ink is not the same as being out of ink. Up till today I always refilled my cartridges when I thought they were low. Today is the 1st time I actually let the printer run out of ink and now I see a whole new evil side of canon. Today I had 50 8x10" color portraits to print. So I decided to let it print for as long as it could and running out of ink was ok with me because I have tons of ink refill ready and waiting. At about the 10th picture the printer gave me the message it was out of yellow ink and the cartridge must be replaced. So I took the cartridge out and refilled it. The chip remembered that cartridge had been 100% empty and when I put the refilled cartridge back in, the printer identified I was putting in a cartridge that had been 100% empty and canon knows why we will use the same cartridge over and over instead of using brand new cartridges that don't have the chip that remembered it ran out. Its because we are refilling them. Canon has figured out how to tell if we refilled a totally empty cartridge. So far canon can not tell we are refilling cartridges that are only low. When I put the empty/refilled cartridge back in, the printer told me it could not identify the level of ink that was in the cartridge currently. It asked did I want to continue printing anyway and it warned me printing on an empty cartridge could ruin the print head. Over the years I've run many print heads totally dry and after refilling the cartridges printing always resumed perfectly. So I clicked yes. Printing resumed and the pictures were perfect. Later I ran out of yellow again as I was doing lots of beach printing with yellowish sand. Again the printer told me it was out of yellow and again I refilled it. Now canon recognized this is the 2nd time I have put the same totally empty (by canons standards) cartridge back into the printer and told the printer I want to continue printing with this cartridge that has not been replaced, but refilled obviously. NOW HERE IS WHERE IT GOT INTERESTING. After I told the printer to continue again, a new message popped up. This is what it said: "Printing with cartridges that have been refilled can damage the print head and this will void any warranty. Do you still want to continue? " I clicked yes. Now canons printer has it in memory that I agreed to void the warranty. As soon as I did that, the yellow stopped printing but the other colors continued printing. Canon shut off my yellow at the flip of a switch. It was totally dead. But I didn't know this so I let it continue printing the 50 pictures. Now they lacked yellow. Later one by one I ran out of blue and red also and repeated all these steps with each color. Again one by one canon would instantly turn off that color. I wasn't looking at the pictures as they came out so I didn't figure it out until they were all done printing. But once a color was shut off every picture after that lacked that color. At picture 45 all that was still printing was only black. At picture 47 black ran out and I repeated these steps for black as I refilled that one also. Picture 48-50 printed blank as even now black was turned off by the printer. BEWARE: once you agree to void the printer warranty, canon will sabotage the printer rather than let you give ink money to someone else instead of them. Maybe canon thinks they sold us a printer at cost so they could later make a profit on the ink. Maybe canon makes no profit on the printer alone. Maybe canon is just being an ass thats willing to chase away their long term customers like me that buy canon after canon. Those answers I don't know for sure. What I do know for sure is this. If you refill a cartridge that is just low on ink, the printer will let you continue doing this repeatedly and will not shut off the print ability. HOWEVER when you refill a cartridge canon knows for sure was totally empty, canon will not let you print until you click yes at the screen where you agree to void the warranty. As soon as you agree to void the warranty, canon instantly totally shuts off that color so that color can no longer print. WHAT I DON'T YET KNOW IS THIS. If I buy a new cartridge from canon that has a new unused chip in it, will the printer then become able to print again? Or has canon totally destroyed the printer in their effort to teach me a lesson? I will let you know as soon as I figure out this next step. Now I'm off to buy a new canon cartridge with a new chip in it for my test purposes. I like this canon printer enough I will buy a new one if I have to. My refill costs for them are about $1-$3 per refill. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx UPDATE: 12-03-2013 I did an experiment. I bought a chip resetting machine to reset the chips in the cartridges I am refilling. Although these machines are labeled to work on the canon MG5420, they didn't. Canon changed their chip in the mg5420 and now this is the only cartridge than can NOT have its chip reset to full. The machine works on all other canon printers, but just not the mg5420. I have learned though that buying a new cartridge, my printer will unlock that color and it begins printing again perfectly. Absolutely no print head clogging issues as canon threatened would happen just before canon turned off my color printing ability. If you refill your cartridges, don't let them go 100% empty or canon will realize your refilling them and will turn off your print ability out of spite, until you buy a new cartridge. The new cartridges I am buying are clear/see through so I can monitor its fill level visually. Now its easy to see when the need for a refill is near without having to run out totally to find out. You can buy the new full clear cartridges at inkfarm.com. These cartridges have the correct chip in them so they communicate just fine with the canon printer and they work perfectly. inkfarm.com