Canon PIXMA TR8620a
Five inks in a small four-function body: pigment black for text, dye black for photos, and cyan, magenta and yellow. That extra dye black is why a TR8620a photo looks better than a four-ink office printer's, and the reason Canon's mid-range PIXMAs keep showing up on lists for people who print both homework and holiday snaps. It is well equipped for the size — two paper sources, automatic duplex, a 20-sheet feeder, fax, Ethernet and a 2.7-inch touchscreen. The economics are the question mark. This is a cartridge printer using the PGI-280/CLI-281 family, and Canon's own yield table is blunt about what that means: 600 pages from the XXL black, about 760 from each XXL colour, which is over twenty cents a four-ink page. On a five-cartridge printer that number is what decides whether the low purchase price was real.
- Approx. price
- ~$199
- Print speed, mono
- 15 ISO ppm
A household printing a real mix of documents and photographs that wants one compact machine to do both.
marks an estimate. Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Purchase price plus ink or toner over the pages shown, assuming four mono pages for every colour page. Price is an approximate snapshot from our last catalogue update.
What it costs to own
- Black consumable
- Canon PGI-280XXL pigment black tank · 600 ISO pages · ~$42.99
- Colour consumable
- Canon CLI-281XXL colour tanks · 760 ISO pages · ~$33.99 each
- Cost per mono page
- 7.2¢
- Cost per colour page
- 21¢
- Cost to own, 5,000 pages
- ~$691
- Cost to own, 200 pages/month for 3 years
- ~$908 (7,200 pages)
Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. How this is worked out
- Canon PIXMA TR8620a~$691~$199 printer + ~$492 supplies
- Canon PIXMA TS9520a~$791~$299 printer + ~$492 supplies
- Canon PIXMA TR4720~$892~$99 printer + ~$793 supplies
purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.
Specifications
Manufacturer-published figures. Cost lines are computed from the consumable figures above and are estimates.
- Approx. price
- ~$199
- Cost to own, 3 years
- ~$908
- Technology
- Thermal inkjet
- Ink system
- Individual cartridges
- Inks
- 5
- Black consumable
- Canon PGI-280XXL pigment black tank · 600 pages
- Colour consumable
- Canon CLI-281XXL colour tanks · 760 pages
- Ink subscription
- None offered
- Print speed, mono
- 15 ISO ppm
- Print speed, colour
- 10 ISO ppm
- Functions
- Print · Copy · Scan · Fax
- Document feeder
- 20 sheets
- Paper capacity
- 200 sheets
- Max paper size
- Legal
- Resolution
- 4800 × 1200 dpi
- Connectivity
- Wi-Fi · Ethernet
- Mobile printing
- AirPrint · Mopria
- Display
- 2.7" colour touchscreen
- Dimensions
- 14.3 × 12.6 × 7.5 in
- Weight
- 17.7 lb
- Released
- 2021
Features
- Five-ink system with separate pigment and dye blacks
- Two paper sources with 200 sheets total
- Automatic two-sided printing
- 20-sheet document feeder with fax
- Wired Ethernet and a 2.7-inch touchscreen
- Borderless photo printing to 8.5 × 11
In its favour
- The separate dye photo black makes photo output clearly better than a four-ink office printer's
- Compact for a machine with two trays, duplex, ADF, fax and Ethernet
- Colour touchscreen at a price where monochrome strips are normal
- Two paper sources means photo paper stays loaded
Against it
- Over twenty cents a four-ink colour page — a G-series tank model does the same page for about a twentieth of that
- Five cartridges to buy, and they are small
- A 20-sheet feeder is the smallest ADF here
- Heads can clog if it sits idle, and a clog on a five-ink printer wastes more ink to clear
What owners say
No owner discussion has been collected for the Canon PIXMA TR8620a yet. The specifications above are the manufacturer’s published figures and the cost per page is computed from them — but nothing on this page claims to know what living with it is like, because nobody here has read owners on it.
Compare the TR8620a
Related printers
Canon PIXMA TS9520a
- Mono page
- 7.2¢
- Colour page
- 21¢
Canon PIXMA TR4720
- Mono page
- 13¢
- Colour page
- 27¢