Canon Pixma TS6220 Wireless Review

The Canon Pixma TS6220 Wireless ($149.99) is an all-in-one inkjet printer designed for family and/or home-based-office use.

It prints exceptionally well, which isn't a surprise being that it's backed by five inks.

It's also fast for its class.

Like many lower-end family-oriented consumer-grade photo AIOs, its running costs are high, and it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) for copying and scanning multipage documents, relegating it to low-volume print and copy environments.

Even so, if all you need is a hundred or so prints and copies each month, and output quality is important to you, the TS6220 is a solid and affordable option.

Built for Quality, Not Volume

Measuring 5.5 by 14.7 by 12.5 inches (HWD) with its trays closed, and weighing 13.5 pounds, the TS6220 is identical in size and girth (and appearance) to its predecessor, the TS6120, but smaller and lighter than several competing models, especially the Epson XP-7100 and Brother's small-office-oriented MFC-J895DW.

HP's closely priced Envy Photo 7155 is, on the other hand, just slightly bigger and heftier than the Pixma TS6220.

A primary reason for the Epson and Brother models' increased size and girth is that both come with ADFs, while, as mentioned, the TS6220 and the Envy 7155 do not.

If you think you'll need to copy or scan multipage documents or relatively large stacks of originals, the lack of an ADF is, in terms of productivity and convenience, critical.

To get an ADF from a TS-series Pixma, you'll have to step up to the wide-format TS9520, or you can go with one of Canon's more business-centric TR-series Pixmas, such as the Editors' Choice Pixma TR8520.

As for paper handling, the TS6220 holds up to 200 sheets split between a 100-sheet tray in the front and a 100-sheet tray that pulls up from the back, as shown below.

The rear tray can also hold up to 20 sheets of premium photo paper.

Like most other Pixmas nowadays, the TS6220 also supports Instagram's square image paper sizes, in this case 3.5 by 3.5, 4 by 4, and 5 by 5 inches.

None of the non-Pixmas here, nor any other non-Pixma model I know of, supports the Instagram square format.

Smart Home voice-activation has become common on most Canon, Epson, and HP inkjet printers, and the TS6220 supports Amazon Alexa, Google Home Assistant, and standard IFTTT (If This Then That) functionality for the commands shown below.

You can go to ifttt.com to learn how to implement IFTTT and how to add more commands.

A couple other notable Pixma-only features are Borderless Copy, which gives you the ability to copy borderless photos and documents up to 8.5 by 11 inches.

The second notable feature is Document Removal Reminder, where a message displays on the control panel and an audio alert reminds you to remove your document from the scanner.

Speaking of the control panel, the TS6220 comes with a 3-inch color LCD touch screen that comprises most of the configuration and walk-up controls.

In addition to the display, there are six buttons: Power, Home, Back, Black (copy)/Color (copy), and Cancel, as shown below.

It does not offer the option to print from a USB thumb drive or SD card.

Connectivity and Software

While most Pixmas don't support the common Wi-Fi Direct and NFC peer-to-peer networking options, the TS6220 and its siblings won't leave you wanting for connectivity options, especially for mobile devices.

The standard interfaces are Wi-Fi and connecting to a single PC via USB, and you get PictBridge (Wireless LAN) for printing directly from several Canon cameras, as well as Bluetooth LE for printing directly from multiple mobile devices simultaneously.

Other mobile options abound, including Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria, as well as several Canon mobile connectivity features, such as Pixma Cloud Print, Canon Print App, and Creative Park Premium, which is an online collection of templates (calendars, greeting cards, and so on).

You also get Canon's Message in Print feature for including hidden messages and links in printed photos, that others can then reveal by scanning the image with their smartphone or tablet camera.

In addition to a slew of Windows and Mac software, the TS6220 comes with iOS and Android versions of Easy-PhotoPrint Editor and the Message in Print app.

The latter is the software that allows your friends and family to find your hidden messages with their mobile device cameras, and the former is an app for making basic edits and printing your photos.

You also get Windows and Mac versions of Scan Utility, Easy-PhotoPrint Editor, Master Setup, Network Tool, and Quick Menu.

There's also Scan Utility Lite for Mac and My Printer for Windows.

Master Setup, My Printer, and Network Tool allow you to make configuration changes to the printer itself and how it accesses your network, and Quick Menu, shown below, is a moveable set of icons that typically resides in the lower-right corner of your monitor and provides easy access to various features, such as scanning, printing, copying, and so on.

Fast Enough

Canon rates the TS6220 at 15 monochrome pages per minute (ppm) and 10ppm for color, which is standard for most TS-series Pixmas.

I tested it via USB from PC Lab's standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.

Like its TS6120 predecessor, the TS6220 printed our 12-page Microsoft Word test document at 12.9ppm, which is 2.1ppm slower than the Epson XP-7100, 1.2ppm faster than the HP 7155, and 1.1ppm faster than the Brother MFC-J895DW.

See How We Test Printers

Next, I timed the TS6220 as it printed our complex color PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing charts, graphs, and other business graphics.

Then, I combined those scores with the results from printing the 12-page text document in the previous test, to come up with a score for printing our entire suite of test documents.

Once again, the TS6220 tied its 2017 predecessor at 4.7ppm.

That's 1.6ppm behind the XP-7100, 0.9ppm faster than the Envy 7155, and 0.3ppm faster than the MFC-J895DW.

In addition, it printed our 4-by-6-inch test snapshots at the borderless and Best quality settings in 22 seconds, or 3 seconds faster than the XP-7100 and 22 seconds ahead of the Envy 7155.

The bottom line here is that for home offices that churn out 100 to 200 pages each month, the TS6220 should be plenty fast enough.

Terrific Output, Especially Photos

I've reviewed many Pixmas over the years, and seldom have I had any complaints about their print quality, especially from the five- and six-ink photo-centric models like the TS6220.

Text is dark and well-shaped and highly legible down to about 6 points, making it suitable for most home and small business applications.

Business graphics, except for some hardly noticeable banding in dark fills and gradients, look good, too.

Photos are, of course, the TS-series' forte.

The several images I printed came out highly detailed with accurate, brilliant colors.

In fact, these Pixmas are so consistent in their image quality that the photos I printed for this review don't look any different from those I printed with the TS6120 and several other five-ink Pixmas from a year-and-a-half ago.

If printing keeper photos is your impetus for buying a new printer, the TS6220 is a good choice.

Expensive to Use

The real drawback to this and other consumer-grade photo printers is, as mentioned, the cost per page.

With the TS6220, your running costs will be between 4 and 6 cents for monochrome pages and 13 to 16 cents for color pages, while photos, which typically cover 100 percent of a page, will cost considerably more.

Competing models, including the Epson XP-7100, cost about the same to use.

If you plan to print hundreds of pages and photos, you might be better off with a bulk-ink model, such as Epson's Expression Premium ET-7700 EcoTank AIO Supertank Printer.

It prints black pages for well less than 1 cent per page and color pages for just more than 1 cent, but will cost you considerably more at the point of purchase.

For Low-Volume Needs

The Canon Pixma TS6220 Wireless is a great printer for homes or small offices with low print volumes.

While it's expensive to use, its purchase price is budget-friendly, and it produces excellent output, especially photos.

As mentioned, if you're often scanning or copying multiple pages at a time, the lack of an ADF could become annoying.

If that's the case, it's worth spending an extra $50 on the Editors' Choice Epson XP-7100.

If your print volume is heavier and you're looking to save money long-term, you'll want to step even further up in price and go with a bulk-ink printer like the Epson Expression Premium ET-7700, but keep in mind you will sacrifice some of that photo quality.

But if you're just printing a few hundred pages a month, the TS6220 is a respectable option that produces impressive output.