Canon Pixma MG3620 Review

The Canon Pixma MG3620 is an attractive package. On the one hand, its initial purchase price is extremely affordable, which will attract a lot of attention from potential buyers who just want a printer and don't care much about its performance. On the other hand, its low initial costs are a bit of a red herring, pulling consumers' attention away from the fact that cartridges are very expensive for the number of pages you're able to print per refill and its lifetime ownership costs are quite high, even compared to the most expensive printers on the market. It performs decently enough at its basic functions, but it's hard to say who might get the most value from this machine.

Performance Comparison

Text Quality

The MG3620 performed pretty averagely in this metric. We saw consistently good quality text, with occasional faintness and fuzziness when printing thinner fonts. Overall, not a bad performance for such an inexpensive printer. But you can get better text quality and all-around performance from several other top-ranking home printers in our lineup ultimately for much less money if you plan on keeping them around for a few years.

Operating Cost

This is the biggest drawback of the MG3620. Every 180 pages of black and white text prints cost about $19. That's $52.75 for a ream of slightly above-average quality text prints. For reference, the most cost-friendly printer in our lineup can print the same amount of pages for only $1.33 a ream, and it scores identically for text quality. That's nearly 40 times the cost for the same performance. The MG3620's color cost per ream isn't great either, at around $69.42.

While the initial purchase price is extremely low, the MG3620's estimated lifetime costs are some of the highest of the printers we tested, coming in at around $905 per three years of ownership. Even the most initially expensive printers in our lineup provide a better cost-to-value ratio if you plan on owning the machine for a few years.

Ease of Use

This is another area where the MG3620 struggled a bit. The initial setup is very simple; we had no complaints, but downloading the appropriate software is a time sink. The Canon website is easy to navigate, albeit slow. The real issue comes from the printer's lack of onboard display or lights to indicate what sort of error may be occurring. That means that anytime something goes wrong, you have to pull the manual out and consult the mobile app to try and decipher what's awry and how to fix it. So, while overall ease of setup and use is not terrible, there are some potentially serious time sinks to consider when owning this machine.

Graphics/Photos

The MG3620 performed fairly well in this metric. Its images have subtle striping, but otherwise, the color display is good, and there's a discernible array of textures. Business graphics look pretty good, with vibrant colors, sharp text, and only some faint striping here and there. Overall image resolution lacked a bit with decent clarity. There is some fuzz where the color display was inaccurate, and color quality suffered from faint pink tinting in lighter colors and obvious striping in darker ones. Overall, for a sub-$100 printer, the MG3620 does better than expected in this metric.

Printing Speed

The MG3620's performance wasn't very good, resulting in it receiving the lowest speed score in our lineup. While the print quality is okay, the MG3620 took its time to produce prints. A 9-page mixed photo and text document took about 3 minutes and 40 seconds to print. High-resolution photos took 88 seconds per, and it took nearly 5 minutes to print a 10-page duplex document and 2 minutes to print a 10-page simplex document.

Should You Buy the Canon Pixma MG3620?

The Canon Pixma MG3620 has one of the lowest initial purchase prices of any printer that we tested and performs decently. But its operating costs are extremely high, making it hard to recommend to anyone outside of individuals who rarely print anything.

What Other Printers Should You Consider?