The majority of Canon’s PIXMA printers are oriented to print large photos, such as the impressive Canon PIXMA TS8050 of six inks, but the Canon PIXMA TR8550 exclusively targets the Home Office. Therefore, it has only five (instead of six) ink cartridges and adds a document feeder and duplex printing. The inclusion of a fax facility, places this machine in the competitive category of the small multiplants of four in one. At about £199 (about US $265, AU $355) is quite strongly priced.
And this model is really solid. Canon estimates it’s 38% smaller than the MX920 it replaces, while retaining two separate front and rear paper trays and an automatic 20-sheet feeder at the top. Canon offers that the average MFD does not have, is a large 4.3-inch touch interface, Bluetooth connection in addition to Wi-Fi and a fifth ink cartridge to improve print quality.
Canon PIXMA TR8550 Design
The printers for the Home Office have become progressively smaller and the Canon PIXMA TR8550 is a prime example. With all the flaps and folding discs folded, it’s a little larger than Canon printers for photos and yet incorporates a 100 master paper tray, a 20-sheet rear paper tray for photographic paper, and Envelopes and a 20-sheet automatic document feeder at the top.
It looks smart and refined with the very large touchscreen to take most of the façade and probably won’t you resent with this distinctive printer sharing your desk. Canon AirPrint.
Canon PIXMA TR8550 Features
The Canon PIXMA TR8550 is a 4 in one, which means that the print, scan, copy and fax boxes are all in use, this is a feature-rich machine and Canon has done well to include luxuries like a 4.3-inch touch screen and Bluetooth connectivity for money.
Bluetooth congratulates the built-in Wi-Fi and makes it even easier to secure a stable wireless connection with a smartphone, so you can use the easy-to-follow Canon print escorts app, while the touchscreen makes it easy to use and Monitoring at a glance.
Instead of four inks, there is an extra black color to improve the text and quality of the photo. You can say that this printer was made from a camera brand because it also has an SD card input and can be connected to the Canon cameras wirelessly via PictBridge.
Key features, such as duplex printing and connectivity with cloud services, such as Dropbox, also exist, which means that the only components that are missing are NFC connectivity (although Bluetooth does this) and a front USB port.
Canon PIXMA TR8550 Installation and operation
The 10.8 cm color touch screen may seem unnecessary wasted on a printer, but the price question for this model is still low and certainly makes the installation and operation easier than it would be without it. Getting started is just a case of following the instructions and printing the test sheets when prompted. You got five cartridges to fit instead of four.
The touchscreen proves its value when you need to enter your Wi-Fi network password. It’s not sensitive like the screen of your smartphone, or of course, but it’s faster than the loud buttons you usually have to deal with. The screen is also ideal for switching between paper stock and tracking the status of the current print job at a glance.
The Canon Print app is also very useful when it comes to scanning and printing. Canon uses the app to offer its own cloud printing service, although this requires a little time to be configured.
Canon PIXMA TR8550 Performance
We found the Canon PIXMA TR8550 to be rather crude when it came to printing single-sided text pages, but the pages deserved to wait. The additional cartridge offers black ink dye in addition to the four dyes, which gives printed words a rich darkness while maintaining a sensitive touch. Very small spot sizes are equally clearly defined as large letters.
The extra ink also matches the color documents, with colors that appear vivid and good contents and black, evenly filled throughout. Photos in photo paper are highly shaded, precise and colourful. Well, what did you expect from a camera manufacturer. Obviously it’s because the print resolution is only half the DPI of the Canon PIXMA TS8050 that the photos look noticeably softer. It also lacks the additional gray cartridge of the six-ink system of this model.
