Canon Pixma TS3150: an accessible 3-in-1 printer but limited in photos

Ergonomics

The first price printer in Canon's Pixma range, the TS3150 is a classic all-in-one model. Despite a competitive selling price, it takes care of its presentation, attesting to the know-how of the manufacturer through its flawless assembly and its construction which is based on honest quality plastics. All shutters closed, this printer measures 43.5 x 31.6 x 14.5 mm, for 3.9 kg - a format therefore quite picked up.

Despite a summary control panel, whose buttons nevertheless condense all the functions useful in everyday life, the Pixma TS3150 adds to the USB connection an efficient Wi-Fi module, thanks to which this model can manage various functions such as printing from a mobile terminal or a cloud-type service. The Canon Print application and the supplied drivers (macOS and Windows) are a good way to compensate for the lack of a real screen on the printer, which incorporates a small basic LCD display.

The Pixma TS3150 has only one paper source on the back, which accepts up to 60 plain sheets (80 g / m²). The receptacle consists of a simple plastic flap to unfold. The installation of the two ink cartridges poses no particular difficulty. Nothing is provided to facilitate access to the paper feed mechanisms in the event of a paper jam, but the power supply of this Pixma has the advantage of being immediately accessible from the rear, which will facilitate its replacement in case of malfunction.

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Consumption

The Canon Pixma TS3150 is an excellent student in terms of power consumption. In photo printing, it does not draw more than 8 W from the socket and when it goes to sleep, it consumes only 0.7 W.

With regard to its noise emissions, our sound level meter positioned at 1 m notes approximately 56 dB in peak when printing a document of several pages, and 46 dB in photo printing. Its rather silent operation in general is however disturbed by a rather strident noise when loading each new page.

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Cost per page

Operating with PG-545 (black) and CL-546 (color) reference cartridges, the Pixma TS3150 is more economical over time if we opt for the XL version of these same cartridges. Sold for around twenty euros each, they offer a range of autonomy for 400 pages in black and white and 300 pages in color. Under these conditions, inevitably, the cost per page is not the strong point of this model, even if it limits the case: in color, the printer displays an average cost per page of around 11.7 euro cents (€ 0.117). In black and white, it also remains quite expensive in ink, with a cost per page of 5 euro cents (€ 0.05).

This is slightly above the average generally observed for this type of product (around 10 euro cents), but a little more interesting than what is offered by a DeskJet 3639, a very suitable competitor at HP for this Pixma TS3150. On the other hand, unlike HP, Canon does not offer a subscription to a cheap ink supply program, as Instant Ink can be when you print fairly regularly.

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Scanner and copies

The A4 flatbed scanner integrated by the TS3150 can scan photos and documents up to 600 x 1200 dpi. Scanning is rather fast: 8 seconds for an A4 document at 100 dpi; 9 s for a 10 x 15 cm photo in 300 dpi. In copying, you have to be more patient. Photocopying an A4 document in black and white takes 14 s, while the same operation in color requires 25 s. The rendering of the copies is perfectly legible, although slightly faded compared to the original.

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Photo

Photo is an area in which we expected the Pixma TS3150 at the turn. In view of the excellence of its big sisters in this area (see tests of TS6050 or TS8050), we were anxious to see what the TS3150 was capable of with only two ink cartridges (a black cartridge and a color cartridge 3 shades). First point, the printer is rather fast. It only takes 59 s to print a 10 x 15 cm print and 1 min 45 s to print an A4 photo. This is much better than what an HP DeskJet 3639 is capable of, for example.

However, it should be noted here that the Pixma TS3150 suffers from disabling limitations in photo: it only supports borderless photo printing up to 13 x 18 cm format. Beyond - so in A4 - you have to accept the white contours and use a cutter if you want to cut these strips. But this is not the most annoying: in practice, even by accepting a border print, the software blocks all printing on photo paper in A4 format and displays an error message pretexting of a detected conflict. The only way to properly print an A4 photo (with borders): select "Plain paper" in the list of papers and insist on obtaining a "higher" print quality. In this case, the rendering is acceptable, but not as good as what you get in the real photo mode in 13 x 18 cm or less.

Note also that the color rendering of the TS3150 is far from being as good as that of the most advanced models in the range, which is normal since it only uses two ink cartridges. We thus measure an average delta E of 8.8, penalized by blues very far from the target color (delta E of 14.3) and less good than that of the DeskJet 3639 (6.2). For all these reasons, this printer loses precious stars in photos, despite an overall rendering to the eye that remains good and will satisfy those who seek to print a few small photos from time to time.

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Office

Canon announces speeds of up to 7.7 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and 4 ppm in color. In our tests, the Pixma TS3150 fared better, reaching 12 ppm in black and white and 6.7 ppm in color. For a low-cost printer intended for family use, this is sufficient.

As for rendering in office automation, it also corresponds to the expectations that we are entitled to have vis-à-vis such a product. Without achieving the precision of the best inkjet printers (and even less that of laser models), the TS3150 can print more or less complex texts and graphics while correctly limiting the blotting effect. The solid colors are well rendered and the texts on colored backgrounds remain perfectly legible, just like the smallest characters. Not surprisingly, the duplex is only managed in manual mode.

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Conclusion

Although it meets the main expectations that can be placed in an entry-level multifunction inkjet printer, the general performance of the Canon Pixma TS3150 and its limits, especially in photo, lead us to prefer it HP DeskJet 3639, less discreet but more complete.

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