Canon Pixma MX452 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer

As its name implies, the Canon Pixma MX452 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer is one of a relatively few multifunction printers (MFPs) in its price range designed more for office, rather than home, needs. The focus shows up in office-centric features ranging from its fax capability to its automatic document feeder (ADF). That doesn't mean you can't get it strictly for home use, but it does mean its best fit is in the dual role of home and home-office printer or simply as a personal printer in any size office.

Like the Brother MFC-J430w, the Editors' Choice in this category and a head-to-head competitor, the MX452 prints from, scans to, and faxes from a PC, and also works as a standalone copier and fax machine. As with most MFPs aimed at office use, its ADF supplements a letter-size flatbed, with the ADF handling multipage documents and legal-size pages. The ADF also one-ups the MFC-J430w a bit, with a higher input capacity, at 30 pages. One other nice touch is the ability to scan to (but not print from) a USB memory key.

As with the MFC-J430w, the MX452 lacks an Ethernet connector, but offers Wi-Fi, so you can share the printer on a network. Except for the dual role of home and home-office printer, however, it's best limited to strictly personal use because of the same limited paper handling as the Brother printer, with a 100-sheet tray, no duplexer, and no upgrade options. Also worth mention is that the MX452 supports AirPrint. However you can't connect directly to use AirPrint. Both the printer and your phone or tablet have to connect through a Wi-Fi access point on your network.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
Setting up the MX452 was standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a Windows Vista system using a USB cable. Speed, unfortunately, turned out to be a little slow.

I timed the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at an effective 2.1 pages per minute (ppm). That's not an unusually slow speed for the price range, with the similarly priced Epson WorkForce WF-2530 scoring only 2.6 ppm, for example. However, the MFC-J430w is more than twice as fast, at 4.3 ppm. Photo speed was also sluggish in absolute terms, but typical for the price, averaging 2 minutes 9 seconds for a 4 by 6.

The good news is that the MX452 scores much better on output quality than speed. Text quality in my tests was better than the vast majority of inkjet MFPs can manage, which makes it good enough for most business purposes.

Graphics output was par for an inkjet MFP, making it good enough for any internal business need up to and including PowerPoint handouts and the like. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may consider the graphics good enough for output going to an important client or customer. Photos qualified as par quality also, but just barely. That translates to true photo quality, but roughly a match for the worst you would expect from drugstore prints.

In most ways, the Canon Pixma MX452 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer is a capable personal MFP that can go toe-to-toe with the Brother MFC-J430w. Its one shortcoming is its speed, which makes the Brother printer the better choice for most offices. On the other hand the Canon printer offers slightly better graphics output and at least one notable convenience that the MFC-J430w lacks, namely, the ability to scan to a USB memory key. If that's more important to you than speed, the MX452 may be the better fit. It's certainly a reasonable choice in any case.

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