Canon CNTS6420A All In One: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

Canon is a well-known and respected brand in the printer market, with a long history of making high-quality home and office printers. The Canon PIXMA TS6420a is an all-in-one inkjet printer aimed at the home office and small business market.

The TS6420a model sits towards the higher end of Canon's PIXMA lineup. It combines versatile printing, scanning, and copying functions into one compact device. Key features of this Canon all-in-one include:

• Print, scan, copy and fax capabilities
• Automatic 2-sided printing
• WiFi and wireless printing from mobile devices
• 5 individual ink cartridge system
• LCD touchscreen display
• Built-in document feeder
• Borderless photo printing
• High print speeds - 15 pages per minute in black and 10 pages per minute in color

With its strong print quality, robust feature set, and Canon reputation, the PIXMA TS6420a is a well-rounded home office printer for those looking for an all-in-one that can handle a variety of day-to-day tasks.

Design

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a has a sleek and compact design that looks great in any home or office. It measures 14.7 x 12.5 x 5.6 inches and weighs 14.3 pounds, so it has a relatively small footprint but is still substantial enough to stay planted on your desk.

The TS6420a comes in two classic Canon colors: black or white. Both color options feature a clean look with minimal clutter. The buttons are all located on the front right side for easy access, including buttons for power, home, back, and scroll wheel. The ports like USB and power input are tucked away on the back to maintain the printer's tidy appearance.

It has a 5 inch LCD touchscreen display with intuitive menus and supports pinch & zoom functionality. The high resolution allows you to preview photos before printing. Overall, the TS6420a combines a stylish, unobtrusive design with thoughtful button and port placement as well as a robust touchscreen display.

Print Quality

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a delivers excellent print quality for both documents and photos. It has a maximum print resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi, producing sharp and detailed prints.

The printer can print borderless photos up to 8.5 x 11 inches. It utilizes a 5-color ink system with dye-based inks for vivid colors and pigment black ink for sharp text. The ChromaLife 100+ ink system is rated to produce photos that last up to 100 years when stored properly.

Print speeds are relatively fast at 15 pages per minute for black text and 10 pages per minute for color. For 4 x 6 inch photos, you can print a photo in approximately 44 seconds.

The printer has several useful tools for previewing and editing photos before printing. You can use the built-in 2.7 inch LCD screen to preview photos. The Print Stitch assistance feature allows you to preview and print collages or panoramic shots. There are also creative filters you can apply to photos before printing such as vivid, neutral, sepia and black & white.

Overall, the PIXMA TS6420a delivers lab-quality photos and sharp text in a fairly fast and efficient manner. The preview and editing tools provide a lot of creative flexibility when printing from your smartphone, tablet or laptop.

Scan and Copy Features

The Canon TS6420 has impressive scan and copy capabilities thanks to its advanced scanner and copy resolution.

• The scanner has a resolution of up to 2400 x 1200 optimized dpi. It can scan documents and photos in a variety of file formats including PDF, JPEG, TIFF, and PNG. This allows you to digitize paperwork, receipts, photos, and more for easy archiving and sharing.

• Scan speeds are fast at approximately 8.5 ipm (images per minute) for color documents and 13 ipm for black and white. So you can digitize multipage documents quickly.

• Copy resolution is also high at 2400 x 1200 optimized dpi. This produces sharp and detailed copies of documents, photos, and other originals with excellent image quality. The end result will look crisp whether you're copying text-heavy documents or photographic prints.

Overall, the robust scan and copy resolution paired with efficient scan speeds make the Canon TS6420 a great choice if you frequently need to convert physical originals into digital files.

Connectivity

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a offers robust connectivity options, making it easy to print from multiple devices. It has built-in wireless 802.11b/g/n WiFi which allows you to print wirelessly from your laptop, phone or tablet. Connecting to the printer's WiFi is quick and hassle-free.

In addition to WiFi, the TS6420a also offers Bluetooth connectivity. You can print directly from Bluetooth-enabled devices like your phone or tablet. Setting up a Bluetooth connection only takes a few seconds and then you are ready to print.

For wired connectivity, the printer has a USB 2.0 port. You can connect it directly to your computer using a USB cable. This gives you a fast and reliable connection.

The TS6420a is compatible with various mobile printing apps like Canon Print App, AirPrint, Mopria etc. This allows you to print from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone. You can print photos, documents, emails, web pages and more directly from your phone.

Finally, the printer supports popular cloud printing services too. You can connect it to Google Cloud Print or Canon PRINT Inkjet/SELPHY to enable printing from anywhere using the cloud.

Overall, the wide range of connectivity options makes the Canon TS6420a very flexible. You can print from almost any device easily whether at home or on the go.

Paper Handling

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a has a 250-sheet plain paper cassette. It also has a rear tray that can hold up to 100 sheets of 4" x 6" photo paper.

The printer supports a variety of paper types and sizes:

• Plain paper - Letter, Legal, Executive, A4, A5, B5, envelopes
• Photo paper - 4"x6", 5"x7", 8"x10", Letter, A4
• Glossy photo paper
• Matte photo paper
• Iron-on transfers
• Index cards
• Stickers

The maximum paper weight supported is 105 g/m2 for plain paper and 300 g/m2 for photo paper. The printer can handle custom sizes within the following ranges:

• Width: 3.5” – 8.5”
• Length: 5” – 14”

So the PIXMA TS6420a has decent paper handling capabilities for an inkjet aimed at home and home office use. The dual paper sources allow you to keep both plain and photo paper loaded at the same time.

Ink System

The Canon PIXMA TS6420A uses a five individual ink cartridge system. This includes separate black, cyan, magenta, yellow, and photo black cartridges. Having a separate photo black ink leads to better photo printing quality.

The page yield for the included standard cartridges is around 200 pages for black and 300 pages for color. High yield ink cartridges are also available, providing around 500 pages from the black and 700 pages from each color.

The printer has ink level monitoring to let you know when a cartridge is nearly empty. LED lamp indicators next to each cartridge slot light up, so you can easily see which color needs to be replaced. The Canon Print app can also display the precise ink levels remaining for each cartridge. This helps avoid the inconvenience of running out unexpectedly mid-print job.

Additional Features

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a comes with several handy additional features that improve the user experience.

Auto Duplex Printing

One of the most useful features is automatic duplex (two-sided) printing. This allows you to print on both sides of the paper without having to manually flip pages over and feed them through again. It helps save on paper use while also creating professional looking double-sided documents.

50-Page Document Feeder

The built-in document feeder has a 50 page capacity, allowing you to easily scan, copy or fax multi-page documents in one go. You don't have to stand and feed pages one by one.

2.7-inch Touchscreen

Operation and settings adjustments are made easy with the 2.7-inch color touchscreen interface. It's intuitive to navigate the menus, select functions, change settings and more. The buttons and interface are well-designed for a smooth user experience.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Excellent print quality: The Canon PIXMA TS6420a produces vivid, detailed prints at up to 4800 x 1200 dpi resolution. It uses a 5-color individual ink system for rich colors and sharp text. Photos have excellent detail and documents look very professional.

• Versatile connectivity: This all-in-one has Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth, and wireless PictBridge built-in. You can print from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop from anywhere in your home. It also offers USB and Ethernet connections.

• Sleek, compact design: Measuring just 14.7 x 12.5 x 5.8 inches, the TS6420a has a small footprint. The space-saving vertical design looks great in any home office or desktop setup. Buttons and controls are conveniently located on the front panel.

Cons

• High running costs: The starter inks only deliver an estimated 100 pages for black and 300 for color. After that, replacement Canon PG-245/CL-246 ink cartridges are quite expensive per page printed. Ongoing costs add up quickly.

• Slow print speeds: Print speeds top out at about 8.8 ipm for black and 5 ipm for color. The TS6420a lags behind competitors when printing multi-page documents or large photos. You'll need to wait a while for print jobs to finish.

• Small paper capacity: With just a 100-sheet plain paper tray, you'll be refilling frequently when printing longer documents or numerous photos. There is no rear tray to boost capacity either. Lack of paper handling is a notable downside.

Conclusion

The Canon PIXMA TS6420a is an impressive home photo printer with a compact and stylish design. It offers excellent print quality for photos and graphics, plus versatile scan and copy functions. Connectivity is a highlight, with dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth, and wireless printing from mobile devices.

Overall, the TS6420a delivers very good performance for an inkjet printer in its class. Image quality is vibrant and detailed, while print speeds are reasonably fast. The two-way paper feed offers flexibility for different media types. Setup and use are straightforward with the intuitive LCD screen and Canon Print app.

At around $170, the TS6420a provides very good value as an all-in-one printer for home use. The running costs are affordable thanks to the low-capacity ink tanks. For anyone seeking a compact photo printer with excellent image quality and wireless connectivity, the Canon PIXMA TS6420a is easy to recommend.