Canon Pixma TR8620 review | Tom’s Guide
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Solid office performance, but ink costs are a little high
(Image: © Canon)
Tom’s Guide Verdict
The Canon Pixma TR8620 offers plenty of office features, good performance, and high image quality, though ink costs are above what you’d expect on an office-oriented all-in-one.
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Cons
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Ink costs are above average
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Does not make two-sided copies/scans via ADF
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Some scan/copy settings not in LCD menus
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The Canon Pixma TR8620 ($179.99) is an inkjet all-in-one with home office features. It has a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF), a duplexer for two-sided printing, and two paper trays for keeping two types of paper at the ready.
Unlike many of the best all-in-one printers, the TR8620 uses five ink cartridges, with two types of black: one for documents (pigment-based) and the other for glossy photo prints (dye-based). The other three inks are the standard cyan, magenta and yellow.
The TR8620 is also outfitted with a duplexer for two-sided printing, and supports smart home integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. We liked it so much, we named it one of the best printers in our 2021 Tom’s Guide Awards.
- Canon Pixma TR8620 at Dell for $179.99
The TR8620 has a big 4.3-inch color touchscreen on its control panel, which hinges upward 90 degrees. There are no physical buttons for operation (only the power button), however, I found the touchscreen responsive and the menus intuitive to navigate. At the bottom left of the front panel is an SD card slot, so you can print directly from a camera’s memory card.
Both the primary paper cassette and rear paper tray can hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper. The rear paper tray, which should be used for photo prints, can hold up to 20 sheets of photo paper. The paper cassette sits at the bottom of the unit, beneath the output tray.
(Image credit: Canon)
To use the ADF atop the unit, you open the cover, which hinges outward to serve as a paper input support. The TR8620 is outfitted with a duplexer for two-sided printing, but automatic two-sided scanning is not supported. That is, to make copies or scans of a two-sided document, you will have to run the document through the ADF twice, scanning one side at a time. The LCD offers a graphic to ensure you place the document properly to ensure a successful scan of the second side.
The TR8620 has a Hi-Speed USB port, and you can put it on a network via its Ethernet port or via Wi-Fi (both 2.4GHz and 5GHz are supported). Wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 4.0 is also available.
The body measures 17.
3 inches (w) by 13.8 inches (d) by 7.5 inches (h). This is fairly typical of a home inkjet all-in-one. Although the official depth with paper loaded is 14.4 inches, I found that with the rear tray tilted back and loaded with paper, and the output tray extended with the catch folded forward, the total depth increased to 26 inches. In addition, opening the ADF for use increases the height by an inch. But, most importantly, you will want to have adequate vertical clearance for raising the lid to place documents on the flatbed scanner glass.
The TR8620 can send faxes via its 33.6 kbps modem, and can store up to 99 fax numbers and a maximum of 250 pages in its memory.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Print speed
Print speeds on plain paper were slightly faster than average. The TR8620 printed our five-page text document in 32.6 seconds (or, 9.2 ppm) versus the average of 8.8 ppm for comparable models. Similarly, the TR8620 printed our six-page document of mixed text and color graphics in 1 minute, 52 seconds (or, 3.
2 ppm) compared to the average of 2 minutes, 13 seconds (or, 2.7 ppm).
(Image credit: Canon)
The most impressive print speed was on glossy photos. The TR8620 printed a letter-sized photo on glossy paper in just 2 minutes and 4 seconds—roughly half the average time of 4 minutes and 3 seconds. Only a few models have been faster (all Canon printers), including our Editor’s Choice, the Canon Pixma TS9120, at 1 minute and 57 seconds.
Using its automatic duplexer, the TR8620 made two-sided text prints at a respectable pace of 3.1 ppm. After printing the first side, the TR8620 paused for 14 seconds to let the ink dry before proceeding, taking a total of 3 minutes and 12 seconds to print the 10-page document on five sheets. By comparison, the HP Envy 7855 printed two-sided text documents at a brisker 3.7 ppm, while the Brother MFC-J995DW did so even faster, at 4 ppm.
The TR8620 made two-sided prints of our color PDF at 2.3 ppm. As with two-sided text prints, there was a 14-second pause before printing began on the second side of each page.
Again, the Brother MFC-J995DW was faster, making two-sided text/color graphics prints at 3 ppm, while the HP Envy 7855 was substantially slower, at 1.2 ppm.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Copy and scan speed
Quick copying is arguably the TR8620’s best office skill. From the flatbed, the TR8620 copied a color document in 20.5 seconds—much faster than the 28.7 second average. It copied a page of text in 10.8 seconds, which was significantly faster than the average of 16 seconds. By comparison, the Editor’s Choice TS9120 was slower at making a text copy (at 14 seconds), but faster to make a color copy, at 17.3 seconds. The HP Envy 7855 was slower in both tests, at 15.7 seconds and 24.1 seconds, respectively, while the Brother MFC-J995DW, was slower to copy text (12.7 seconds), but faster to copy color documents (15.1 seconds).
Using its ADF, the TR8620 copied a five-page text document in 45 seconds, or 6.7 ppm. The Brother MFC-J995DW was slightly faster, at 7 ppm.
The TR8620 does not offer automatic duplex scanning and copying.
Rather, it offers manual duplex copying and scanning, whereby the user places the document in the ADF twice: Once for each side. It’s easy to follow the on-screen LCD instructions, which show you how to orient the document so the second scan is properly oriented.
The Pixma TR8620 copied a 10-page text document (five double-sheets) in 5 minutes, or 2 ppm, not counting the time it took to reinsert the document in the ADF. By comparison, the Brother MFC-J805DW, which does offer automatic duplex copying, was significantly faster, making two-sided text copies at 3.1 ppm.
The TR8620 was faster than the average at scanning both color photos and documents. It scanned an 8-by-10 photo and saved it as a 600 dpi JPEG in 59 seconds, faster than the average of 65.8 seconds. By comparison, the Canon TS9120 and Brother MFC-J995DW were significantly faster, at 37.8 and 38.5 seconds, respectively.
The same was true of black-and-white scanning to PDF format at 300 dpi. The TR8620 captured a scan in 8.
8 seconds, which was faster than the average of 11 seconds. The Canon TS9120 made the same scan in 7.7 seconds.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Print quality
The TR8620 offers high print quality overall, printing text that is sufficiently dark. Edges look fairly sharp, although the letterforms could be sleeker. Color graphics are attractive, with accurate colors and textures, although some mild banding was visible in dark areas.
Glossy photos print with high-quality accuracy: Natural-looking colors, sharp details and smooth transitions.
Copy quality was good overall. Copies reproduced the details and colors of the original documents fairly well: Graphics closely resembled the originals, and text looked slightly lumpier around the edges. Copies of text documents fed via the ADF, in particular, came out with letterforms that looked fatter and had edges that were not as sharp as the reproductions placed on the flatbed.
One anomaly to copy quality, however, was that when copying from the control panel, the magnification function offered no option to prioritize an edge or select the copy area.
As a result, the top portion of my document got cut off in the copies, instead of excluding the empty white space from the copy. To properly copy this particular document, I used the Canon IJ Scan utility on my PC, which offers this feature.
Similarly, to conduct our scan tests required doing so from a PC, where we could set the resolution in the scanning software. The on-screen menus of the TR8620 do not offer scan resolution settings.
Scan quality was high. Details looked sharp and colors were captured accurately from the originals. In particular, the scans of a photograph with dark shadow areas retained a lot of detail—more detail than the Editor’s Choice Canon TS9120 did.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Ink cost and yield
The TR8620 uses five ink cartridges. The three color (cyan, magenta and yellow) inks and one of the black inks are dye-based. In addition, the pigment-based black ink is used for printing documents on plain paper, while the dye black is mostly used on glossy photo prints.
Using a standard cartridge, cost per text page is 8 cents. This calculation includes only the pigment black ink. The XL black cartridge reduces text printing to 6.2 cents per page, and the XXL cartridge reduces it further, to 5.8 cents.
The total ink cost for mixed color graphics pages is 21.9 cents, using standard cartridges. For this total cost of a text/mixed color graphics page, we included the cost of the dye-based black ink. It’s barely used on plain paper prints, only adding 0.7 cents per page, at most. Using XL cartridges, cost per color page goes down to 18.9 cents, and down to 16.4 cents when using XXL cartridges.
In general, costs per page were slightly higher than the average for printers in its class (excluding models with refillable ink tanks). By comparison, the category average with standard ink cartridges was 7.7 cents per text page, and 20.7 per color graphics page. Using high-yield cartridges, the category averages were 5.9 cents and 14.9 cents, respectively.
Take a look at our Canon promo codes for the latest discounts and ways to lower the cost.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Setup and software
Setting up the TR8620 was simple: Remove a few pieces of tape, press the power button, and install ink cartridges and paper. Following the on-screen instructions guide, you print a printhead alignment page, and scan it. The printed quick start guide directs you to the Canon website to download and install the software.
Putting the TR8620 on my wireless network was quick and convenient. After going to the Wi-Fi setup in the LAN settings on the TR8620’s LCD screen, I selected WPS (push-button method) and pressed the corresponding button on my wireless router.
(Image credit: Canon)
Connecting my iPhone to the printer was similarly easy. The TR8620’s LCD menu for Wi-Fi Direct includes a QR code. I simply captured it with my iPhone, which triggered a prompt to join the Wi-Fi Direct network with the printer.
Startup is quick, at just 3.
7 seconds. Making a black-and-white copy immediately only took 10 seconds longer than normal, delivering a copy before many models even offer you a home screen to begin operation.
Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Verdict
With a document feeder and duplexer, the Canon Pixma TR8620 delivers office features for a reasonable price. It makes copies quickly and prints on plain paper at better-than-average speed. You also get fax capability.
In addition, the TR8620 does not disappoint on image quality. Prints and copies on plain paper look good, as are glossy photo prints. Scans were captured with fine detail.
However, for office duties the TR8620 may not be your best choice at high volume: Ink costs are above the average for comparable models. For example, the comparably priced Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW (our top-ranked all-in-one printer) offers much lower costs per page, and faster document printing, but the Canon Pixma TR8620 is much faster for glossy photo prints.
If you’re buying a printer primarily to print snapshots, the Canon Pixma TR8620 is the better choice.
Nonetheless, if your printing duties are light enough, and you rarely need double-sided copies, the versatile Canon Pixma TR8620 will likely keep you happy with its high image quality and fast performance.
Canon Pixma TR8620: Price Comparison
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Best Printer for 2023 – CNET
With tons of people now working from home, we’ve seen a renaissance for home printers. If you’re one of the many folks who find themselves in need of their own printer, CNET is here to help you find the right one.
We’ve roamed over the changing landscape of printers to bring you the best models available in 2023, so you can print photos, documents, college essays and more whenever you need to.
Every printer profiled below can manage basic printing needs. For example, they can handle mobile printing and wireless printing from a phone or any PC, Mac or Chromebook, which is a must when it comes to office printers. They can also print over a cabled connection and via wireless printer connectivity. (Note that some, but not all, printers support Apple’s AirPrint and Google’s Cloud Print protocols, which are usually less onerous than the printer vendors’ proprietary systems.)
Which is the best overall printer?
For a home office that has just one or two people using it, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is the best overall choice. The print speed is excellent and all the printed words were crisp and clear. This isn’t a photo printer, and it shows but it works well enough for daily imagery tasks.
If you are using it to print brochures or word documents this is an almost perfect printer for you.
James Bricknell/CNET
Factors to consider when buying a printer
What you intend to print will determine which is the best printer for you. If you’re mostly working with shopping lists, concert tickets or travel itineraries, having excellent print quality is arguably less important than print speed and price. If you’re using your printer for professional materials or photo printing, then color accuracy, printing quality and the inclusion of features like borderless printing will be primary considerations when you’re looking for the right printer.
Another factor to consider is the cost of ink and ensuring you have enough ink to print everything you need. (There’s nothing more frustrating than having a printer but no ink in the ink tank.) Inkjet printers use liquid ink to print, whereas laser printers use toner cartridges containing powder. So even if you’re getting a great printer deal, just be sure to do some research into how you’ll refill the ink, so you can choose the best printer for your overall budget.
Some new printers include an ink subscription in their original price tag, so that may be something to consider as well.
I have testing this latest crop of printers for over a year now, with dozens of printers running at the same time. It gets a little noisy but each printer I test narrows down the best overall. Those are the ones we are listing here. That list of course will change over the
Best printers of 2023
How we test
For a long time, CNET’s methodology for testing printers didn’t change. Our original testing was designed in the days when Wi-Fi printers were rare, and faxing was an important consideration when choosing a device. These days, Wi-Fi is standard, app-controlled printers are everywhere, and what and how we print have changed considerably. I designed a new set of printing parameters in 2022 that I hope will mesh with how we use printers nowadays.
Print and copy speed
The speed at which things print and copy is important in our daily lives.
Printing a quick theater ticket, or copying a document needs to be done speedily and accurately. Testing this is easy; I simply used a stopwatch and printed 10 pages of text of varying sizes and typefaces. I used Fillerama to generate random text from Star Wars and Monty Python and changed the font size randomly across the page. I also used different fonts, like Arial and Times New Roman, to see how they’d print. I even added Comic Sans to the mix, because some people still think it’s a good idea to use it. Middle managers mostly.
Brochure and webpage test
James Bricknell/CNET
When asked, people told me they use their home printer for printing online tickets from webpages as well as their resumes for job interviews. With that in mind, I used the standard brochure template from Google Docs, which I changed a little — I made the font size smaller and larger and changed the font too — to give that modern resume look. I also saved my article about becoming a Star Wars action figure into a PDF — I needed to keep the ads the same on every test, so the live article wouldn’t do.
Sometimes we’re in too much of a rush to select just the ticket, so printing the entire webpage is easier. This test simulates that.
Receipt test
Photodisc
When you work from home, you often have to submit your receipts for travel and incidentals. One of the most common ways to do that, if you aren’t lucky enough to have an app, is to tape receipts to a piece of paper and scan them into your computer. That way you can email them wherever they need to go quickly and easily. To re-create that, I taped my receipts from my food shopping to create a scan. I used a mixture of new receipts and ones that had faded in my wallet, then I checked the scan for legibility. Most scanners will enhance the image you’re scanning, and that certainly helps with receipts.
Picture quality test
As in previous CNET photo tests, I used the PhotoDisc Target file for my image tests. I printed images on the same Canon glossy paper and studied them according to the guidelines associated with this industry standard.
I took special note of the skin tones at the bottom to make sure they were replicated correctly and I also checked for chromatic abrasion. Chromatic abrasion is a purple hue that often surrounds images and can make even the best picture look cheap and tacky. I also checked for stippling; an image error that occurs on poorly calibrated inkjet printers.
Printer FAQ
Should you buy a printer with an ink subscription?
Choose a printer – how to choose the right printer?
Is your printer broken? Do you want to buy a new printing device for your apartment or office? We will tell you which printer to choose and choose depending on your goals, as well as tell you what the most common mistakes can be when choosing a new printing unit.
To begin with, when choosing a printer, decide how often you will work with it, in what conditions it will be used, and how much you expect. At the same time, if you do not know which printer to buy, you need to at least know approximately the approximate volume of printing per month.
For example, for office work, a model with a faster print speed, a larger paper tray and high productivity is suitable.
In turn, a home printer will require slightly different specifications. Here the availability of color printing comes to the fore, the ability to print photos on special paper, high quality and resolution of color printing, and so on.
Printers are divided into three large groups:
- Matrix printers;
- Ink jet printers;
- Laser printers.
If the first category of printers is already significantly outdated in terms of technology, then the second and third have almost completely divided the market of printing devices among themselves. Inkjet and laser printers have their own advantages and disadvantages. Before deciding which printer to buy, we will try to describe them.
Inkjet printers
The basic principle of an inkjet printer is to spray ink onto paper through special nozzles located on the print head.
That’s where the name comes from. A jet of dye hits the paper, settles on it, is fixed on the carrier and creates an image.
The cost of such printing is quite low and available to almost everyone. An inkjet printer will suit those who need a reliable, reliable, affordable device, with the ability to print photos and images.
The advantage of these printers is their economy, ability to work with alternative cartridge systems, and ease of maintenance. Choosing an inkjet-based printer is not difficult, as many models are already positioned as “home” or office. In the lines of the leading printer manufacturers Epson, Brother, Canon, there are many devices designed to work in certain conditions.
If you’re wondering which printer is the best to buy for inexpensive, quality printing, then an inkjet is what you need.
Laser printers
On the other hand, there are more technological, productive laser printers. Their printing technology is fundamentally different from inkjet.
Letters and images are printed using laser light that writes on a rotating drum that passes through the toner layer. In this case, the image is printed entirely on a sheet of paper. The speed of printing on such a printer is measured by the number of pages printed on the printer in one minute.
These printers are in a different price range. They are much more expensive than inkjet, and more expensive to operate. However, they can be considered the most high-performance and stable in their class. They will perfectly cope with a large amount of work in the office, help you print a lot of documents at once, or they will bring out an entire abstract or term paper in the shortest possible time.
Selecting a printer with laser technology is difficult. It is very easy to miscalculate the capabilities of a printer with the volume of work and buy a device that will perform at a quarter of its capacity. But you will significantly overpay for an expensive device by not using it to its full potential.
However, a laser printer will be an indispensable assistant in a copy center, printing studio and other similar places where high-quality printing is required in a very short period of time.
Printer for home or office?
If you don’t know how to choose a printer for your home, the recommendation is simple: pay attention to the quality of the printed images. Either way, home printing comes with advanced color, photo, and image printing options. Also pay attention to the maximum print resolution, the dimensions of the device. They should not be too large so that you can rearrange the printer at any time and free up space, or hide it as unnecessary.
In turn, choosing a printer for the office requires a different approach. Performance, speed and versatility will be the key feature. Don’t forget about economy. Printers with installed CISS or PZK are perfect for work, both at home and in the office.
Knowing how best to choose a printing device, you can always find exactly what will fully satisfy all your printing needs.
You can always find an office or home printer in our Lucky-print TM online store in Russia. Place an order right now and we will deliver it to you in Moscow and other cities of the country as soon as possible.
Print with pleasure!
Simple tips for working with laser printers.
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- Simple tips for working with laser printers.
01/27/2022
To begin with, it is worth talking about the most common problems that arise when using a laser printer, their causes and solutions.
- Paper has become jammed in the printer
Most likely the sheets are used “for the second time”, that is, users print on the so-called “drafts”. This is a completely unmotivated savings that will eventually lead to more frequent service and repair of the printer. There are already particles of toner, dust and dirt on the used side of the paper, they fall into the fusing unit of the machine. It will get dirty faster, the print units will need to be replaced sooner.
- Printer jams
At the same time, after you remove the wrinkled sheet, then the technique works normally. This may be caused by incorrectly stacking paper in the tray or using paper of different sizes.
How do I load paper into the printer? Take the remaining stack from the tray, combine it with a new one in your hands, align it and put it back into the tray, fixing it with limiters.
If the sheets are not fixed at all in the tray, one of the sheets may jam. Even if it doesn’t, the text or image you want will print crooked.
Mixed-size paper and low-quality sheets should not be used. Remember that all the money that you save on paper, you will later spend on repairing equipment.
- Laser printer emits a strange smell
Most likely the smell of ozone. You need to call a specialist immediately.
Most older generation printers (Hewlett Packard and others) are based on a mechanism that releases a lot of ozone, so there is a mandatory built-in filter in the design.
On average, its service life ends after printing 35,000 pages. If the smell of ozone is very strong, then a lot of it is released and the filter simply does not do its job. Also, an unpleasant odor can be caused by electrical problems in the design of the machine.
- Laser printer gets very hot
Don’t worry about this. During operation, most printer models heat up, but all of them are equipped with thermal fuses, which, in case of severe overheating, turn off the heating element.
Be sure to check the condition of the printer’s air vents. They should not be covered with anything and clogged with dust and dirt. Note that some printer models have these holes on the bottom.
Shake the cartridge before refilling.
Store fresh cartridges at room temperature in a dry, dark place.
Experts do not advise buying a lot of toner and cartridges “in reserve”, as long-term storage negatively affects their quality. For example, Hewlett Packard has a shelf life of HP cartridges – a little less than three years.