The Canon Pixma iX6820 Wireless Inkjet Printer ($199.99) offers almost the same set of features as the Canon Pixma iX6520 Inkjet Business Printer. Among the few differences are a slightly faster speed, a little lower quality for text, and a little higher quality for photos. The most significant update, however, is the addition of both wired and wireless network support. If you're looking for an inkjet printer for tabloid- or even larger-size paper, that makes the Pixma iX6820($190.49 at Amazon) a better fit for sharing in a micro office, although its paper handling limits that role.

There aren't many single-function printers that are both affordable enough for even a home office and able to print on larger than letter- and legal-size paper. The direct competition for the Pixma iX6820 includes the Editors' Choice Epson WorkForce WF-7010 and not much else. That said, there are also some older, less directly comparable models, like the HP Officejet 7000 Wide Format printer, that are no longer being manufactured, but that you can still find for sale on a few websites.

Basics

One advantage that the iX6820 has over the Epson WF-7010 is its Wi-Fi support. It also offers some mobile-print capability, including printing through the Cloud, support for AirPrint, and support for printing from Android and iOS phones and tablets over Wi-Fi, using Canon's free apps. Note that for any of these mobile print features to work, you have to connect the printer directly to a network.

Paper handling is not a strong point. The good news is that you can print on both tabloid-size and  supertabloid-size paper, at up to 13 by 19 inches. Unfortunately, the printer offers only one paper tray, which means you can't keep both letter-size and larger-size paper loaded at the same time. Also missing is a duplexer (for two-sided printing), even as an option.

Having only one tray makes the Pixma iX6820 best suited as a second printer to supplement a letter-size printer you already have. Additionally, the tray holds only 150 sheets, which would be a little meager if it were your only printer. As a supplementary printer for large-size output, however, that shouldn't be a problem. As a point of comparison, the Epson WF-7010 offers two 250-sheet trays and a duplexer, and it can handle paper as large as 13 by 44 inches.

Setup
At 6.3 by 23 by 12.3 inches (HWD), the Pixma iX6820 is a little bigger than most inkjets. However, assuming you have room for it, setup is fairly standard. I ran into a minor issue with a Windows Vista security feature keeping the setup program from running. At this writing, Canon is still investigating the issue, but the company was able to come up with an easy way to install the driver anyway. If you run into the same problem with the installation, you should be able to get the workaround by calling Canon's tech support number.

Beyond that, I ran into one unusual, and potentially frustrating, issue. The printer doesn't offer an LCD-based menu—just buttons and status lights. If you need to change its default network connection setting (which is set to let the printer connect by Wi-Fi) to let it connect using its Ethernet port instead, you have to hold a button down and count flashes on the status light.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn't put this information in the quick-start guide, and doesn't ship a magic decoder ring with the printer. A company representative says that the information shows on screen during the normal setup, but if you miss it, or, as in my case, can't run the setup program, you'll be left without a clue about how to get the wired network connection working. Once you know the trick, however, switching between wired and Wi-Fi settings is easy. A Canon representative said the company is investigating options for addressing this issue.

Speed and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer to a wired network and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software), it came in at a tolerable, but poky, 2.7 pages per minutes (ppm). That makes it a little slower than the Canon iX6520, at 2.9 ppm, and significantly slower than the Epson WF-7010, at 4.0 ppm. It did much better on photo speed, averaging 59 seconds for a 4 by 6.

Output quality was uneven, with the printer scoring a little below par for text and graphics and a little above standard for photos. Text output was at the low end of the range for tabloid-capable inkjet printers. Most people would consider it suitable for most business needs, as long as you don't need to use small fonts.

Graphics output is easily good enough for any internal business use. Unless you have a particularly critical eye, you'll probably consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos look better than most drugstore prints, making them unusually high quality for a printer aimed at the office.

Clearly, if you want a single printer for all of your printing needs, the Editors' Choice Epson WF-7010 will give you better paper handling than the Canon Pixma iX6820 Wireless Inkjet Printer, and better speed. However, if what you need is a tabloid- or supertabloid-size printer to supplement a letter-size model, the Pixma iX6820 can certainly do the job. And if you need to connect by Wi-Fi or need the mobile printing features, it can be the better fit.

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