As you might expect from the name, the Canon Pixma TS6420a ($129.99) serves as a kind of stealth replacement in Canon's line for the Canon Pixma TS6420, an all-in-one printer that is no longer being manufactured (though at this writing you can still snag one online if you look hard enough). The two models share most of the same features, including the same rated speed, but they turned out to have notably different performance on our tests. Unfortunately, it's the new model that's slower—on almost every individual document in our test suite—and it's slower enough to notice. The slower speed doesn't even come close to making the TS6420a a bad choice, but it's enough of a problem that it might affect your buying decision when comparing it with competitors like the excellent Epson Expression Home XP-5200.

Easy to Fit Where You Need It

The TS6420a is available in black or white colors, easy to set in place, and small enough to comfortably share a desk with. It weighs 13.8 pounds and measures 5.9 by 15.9 by 12.5 inches (HWD) with trays closed, and only a few inches more in depth and height with the front and back paper trays fully opened. Setup consists of removing the packing materials and connecting to your PC with a USB cable, as I did for our performance tests, or to your network via Wi-Fi. The printer also supports printing from a mobile device, which worked as promised in my tests using a Wi-Fi Direct connection.

One particularly nice touch for such an inexpensive printer is that printhead alignment is fully automatic. After installing the two ink cartridges—one black and one for cyan, yellow, and magenta—the printer automatically launches into a routine that prints the alignment patterns, analyzes the results, and changes the printhead settings as needed. The only thing you have to do is put paper in the input tray.

Installing the driver and scan app is also easy. Go to Canon's website, as instructed by the quick start sheet that comes with the printer, and step through the screens that show you the physical setup, should you need those details. Then, download the installation program, which is both straightforward and mostly automated, ending with both the driver and scan utilities fully installed.

Paper handling for printing is better than typical for the price. The TS6420a can print on up to legal-size paper and offers a 200-sheet maximum capacity, with a 100-sheet front tray and a rear tray that can hold either 100 sheets of plain paper or 20 sheets of photo paper. The printer also offers auto duplexing (two-sided printing), but you won't want to use it very often. It stops after printing the first side of each page, to give the ink a chance to dry, then pulls the paper back into the printer to print the second side, all of which slowed print time for a text file in my tests to two pages (one sheet) per minute.

Canon doesn't offer a recommended maximum number of pages per month, but if you load both trays with plain paper, the 200 sheets is enough to let you print roughly 800 pages per month without having to reload paper more than about once a week. If you use only the front tray for plain paper, cut that maximum in half. For scanning, the printer offers an 8.5-by-11.7-inch flatbed only, which means you can scan only one page at a time, and none larger than letter size.

As is typical for cartridge-based inkjets, running cost is relatively high, at 8 cents per mono page and 18 cents per standard color page, based on the cost and yield for the high-capacity black and color cartridges. Canon says its Pixma Print Plan can save up to 70% of the ink cost, but the actual savings depends on both which plan you choose, and whether you take full advantage of it.

In general, as we discuss in our look at ink subscription plans, because the prices for these plans are based on how many pages you print, rather than how much ink you use, they're most likely to save you money if you print a high percentage of full-color pages, including photos. Also keep in that when comparing printers, you should focus on the total cost of ownership, rather than running cost or initial cost alone, to see which one will cost less in the long run, as discussed in our guide to how to save money on your next printer.

Testing the TS6420a: So-So Speed, Standout Photo Quality

The TS6420a's performance, timed using a USB connection to our standard PC testbed, is best described as unimpressive but suitable for its intended use. I compared it with two close competitors—the Epson Expression Home XP-5200 and the HP Envy 6055e—plus the Canon Pixma TR8620, which is a step up in price, primarily because it adds an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning.

For our full 12-page Word file, the XP-5200 was the fastest in the group, for both first-page-out (FPO) time and printing the remaining pages. The TR8620 came in second for the full file, and the TS6420a and Envy 6055e tied for third place. Between the last two, the TS6420a had the faster FPO time, which makes it enough faster to notice for one- and two-page documents, and gives it an advantage if you rarely print anything longer. The 6055e had the faster speed for pages after the first, giving it an advantage for longer documents. These different strengths happened to cancel each other out at the 12-page mark.

On the full business applications suite—which adds Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents that include color and graphics—the XP-5200 was the fastest in the group by far, both overall and for many of the individual tests. The 6055e was just as convincingly in last place. In between, the TR8620 scored second overall, while the TS6420a came in third. For our 4-by-6-inch photos, the TS6420a averaged 56 seconds each. We did not include the TS6420 in our comparison charts, but as a point of reference, its times for both the full Word test file and the total for the rest of the business applications suite were roughly 20% faster than TS6420a's times.

The output quality easily earns enough points to make up for the merely acceptable speed. Every font in our tests that you'd likely use in a business document or school work was easily readable and well-formed at 4 points. The two heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes in our tests tended to close up the white space between characters and in bowls (the enclosed spaces in characters like "o" and "d"), but one was easily readable, though not well-formed, at 8 points. The one that's harder to render well was easily readable at 12 points.

In our graphics tests, using default settings on the same paper, the TS6420a delivered vibrant, saturated color and notably good contrast for every image. Even the one-pixel-wide line on a black background showed clearly, and the background itself stood out for its notably dark, rich black. I saw banding, apparently from sweeps of the printhead, but it was subtle enough that most people won't consider it an issue for most purposes. And, of course, you always have the option of using a higher-quality, slower-speed setting if you want still better quality. Photos on the recommended paper—Canon Photo Paper Pro Luster—were a solid step above typical drug-store-level quality.

On our ink smudge tests using plain paper, black text showed significant smudging from both water and highlighter (as you'd expect, you won't want to try highlighting on a hot, humid day with sweaty hands), but it was still readable. Color inks in graphics resisted smudging from water, but the pages were left with water stains.

A Solid Choice for Home and Light-Duty Home Office Use

The TS6420a is a solid choice for home use, particularly if you want to print your own photos, or as a home and light-duty home office printer. If you're considering it, however, be sure to compare it with the other models mentioned here, starting with the TS6420 if you can still find one, since it's so similar in features and was faster on our tests.

As for the Epson XP-5200, HP 6055e, and Canon TR8620, the first two both largely match the TS6420a for print, scan, and copy features, and at a lower price—at this writing, at least. Between them, the 6055e offers one of the easiest approaches we've seen for remotely printing from literally anywhere you can get an internet connection, while the XP-5200 was noticeably faster than any other printer in this group, and scored better than the 6055e for photo quality, though not as well as the TS6420a.

Also consider whether the flatbed on any of these models will really take care of all your scanning needs. If you have any doubts, take a look at the TR8620, which costs a little more, is comparable to the rest of these AIOs in most key features, and adds an automatic document feeder for scanning multipage documents.