The Perfect Home Printer: Canon Pixma TS3355 Review




The Canon TS3355 is one of the most reasonably priced multi-function printers we have ever come across. It was released as part of Canon’s new ‘back to school’ range of products.

canon pixma ts3355 all-in-one wireless inkjet printer

It may not be the fastest printer we’ve tried, but it manages to provide a good range of printing and connectivity features that make it a versatile option for home users and students who need to print photos, reports, and other documents. This makes it a good choice for those who need to print photos, reports, and other documents.

Price

The printer model that we will be discussing in this article is called the “TS3355 Black,” and at first, we believed that it was nothing more than a simple black-and-white printer. That, however, is only a reference to the color of the printer itself; in addition to black (TS3351), it can also be purchased in red (TS3352).

And as it turns out, the TS3355 does in fact provide a full-color multi-function printer that also includes a scanner and a copier for the ridiculously low price of just £39.99. You can purchase it from both Canon and Amazon.

However, for some reason, the version sold in the United States is known as the TS3320, and it has a slightly higher price of $79; however, Amazon sells the red color for $49, and purchasing it directly from Canon costs just $39 dollars.

Structure and Functions

In spite of its low price, the TS3355 is a flexible, multi-function color inkjet printer that provides an impressive print resolution of 1200×4800 dpi. The resolution of the flatbed scanner is lower, coming in at just 600×1200 dpi; however, this ought to be sufficient for scanning the infrequent documents or photographs required for school reports.

It can print on a wide variety of papers and other media, including Canon’s peculiar square photo papers and stickers measuring 5×5 inches, and it has a rear paper tray that can hold up to 60 sheets of paper. Connectivity is also good for such a low-cost printer, with both USB and Wi-Fi, as well as AirPrint for Apple mobile devices and Google Cloud Print for Android. Both of these features are available.

Canon also provides its own PRINT app, which provides more detailed controls for printing and scanning, and there is a selection of additional software, including a straightforward photo editor, that can be downloaded for free when the main printer driver is installed. Both of these features are accessible when installing the main printer driver.

However, there are some indications that costs are being cut. When switching between different types of paper, we discovered that we needed to specify the new paper size in both the printer driver software on our laptop, as well as on the printer itself. This required us to squint at the tiny control screen that was only 1.5 inches in size while we repeatedly tapped a button to cycle through the various paper options.

There is no automatic duplex printing (printing on both sides of the page), and there is also no SD card slot for printing from a memory card. Even so, these are relatively minor complaints, considering the extremely affordable price of the printer and the fact that it should be able to handle the vast majority of the various types of documents and creative projects that you throw at it.

Performance

Text, graphics, and photographs all benefit from the TS3355 high resolution, which ensures that they will have a high level of quality. Text output is especially crisp and sharp, and it can actually give a laser printer a run for its money in terms of clarity and precision.

The mono output is supposed to be 7.7 pages per minute (ppm) according to Canon, but our tests showed that it was actually closer to just 6 ppm. This is not an especially fast printer. In spite of this, it is acceptable for occasional use at home, such as when you are just printing letters or other text documents from time to time.

Color printing is also very good for such a low-cost printer, with colors that are vivid and powerful and excellent attention to detail. The contrast could possibly be a little bit crisper, but that’s asking a lot for a printer that costs less than forty pounds, and the TS3355 will be great for printing up selfies or a few graphs and charts for a school report.

Our tests produced a speed of just 3 pages per minute for color printing, which is considerably slower than the speed that Canon quotes, which is 4 pages per minute, which is already a relatively slow speed. The printing of a single 4×6-inch postcard took an entire two minutes, indicating that the TS3355 is intended for only occasional use at home rather than producing page after page on a daily basis.

Costs of Operation

When it comes time to purchase replacement ink cartridges, low-cost printers like the TS3355 are notorious for springing an unpleasant surprise on their owners in the form of a nasty sting in the tail. This is very much the case with the TS3355, in particular, if you purchase cartridges that are the smallest and most standard size.

Related: Canon PIXMA TS5040 Printer Driver

The TS3355 requires only two ink cartridges: one for black ink, and a “tri-color” cartridge that holds all three colors of ink. The black ink cartridge is located on the left side of the printer (cyan, magenta, and yellow). The black ink cartridge for the standard-sized printer costs £15.49, and the cartridge that contains all three colors costs £19.49. The monochrome cartridge prints an astounding 8.6 pence per page, while the color cartridge prints an almost-acceptable 10.8 pence per page. Neither of the cartridges is designed to print more than 180 pages.

The larger XL cartridges have a price tag of £22.99 for black ink and have a page yield of 300. This results in a reduction of the price to 5.5p; however, considering that it is for simple mono printing, this is still considered to be quite expensive. However, printing in color is more cost-effective, as an XL color cartridge can print up to 300 pages for the same price as a standard one, bringing the total cost down to a more reasonable 7.3 pence per colored page.

In addition, Canon offers multi-packs for purchase, which include cartridges for both black and tri-color printing. The standard-size multipack sold by Canon is not a particularly good value, but the XL multipack offered by the company is more appealing. The XL multi-pack, which costs £42.49, provides you with 400 monochrome pages at a cost of 2.7 pence per page and 300 color pages at a cost of 10.5 pence per page. In addition, it includes 50 sheets of postcard paper measuring 4 inches by 6 inches, making it a convenient choice for those who intend to print a large number of selfies in preparation for the holiday party season.

Verdict

Because of its slow speed and high operating costs, the TS3355 is not going to be a good choice for people who work from home or for other people who require a workhorse printer that they can use on a daily basis.

If, on the other hand, you only need to print the occasional selfie, letter, or boarding pass, the Epson WorkForce TS3355 MkII will work just fine for you, and it won’t break the bank as long as you remember to choose the more cost-effective XL cartridges. If you just need to print the occasional selfie, letter, or boarding pass, the TS3355 will work just fine for you.