The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is an all-in-one inkjet printer that uses a five-cartridge system with a dedicated photo black cartridge. It has a large touchscreen as well as an ADF-equipped scanner. This printer has a wide range of connectivity options, too, including Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and support for external storage devices in the form of SD, miniSD, and microSD cards when using adapters. It also supports mobile printing with Apple AirPrint, Mopria Print Service, and Canon's PRINT app.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is good for family use. It prints excellent-looking photos with lots of detail and vibrant colors. While some colors are a bit off, they don't look bad enough to ruin your pictures. Otherwise, it has everything else you'd need for home use: a flatbed scanner, an automatic document feeder, and double-sided printing. While it doesn't offer an especially high page yield, the cost-per-print remains low.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is decent for small or home offices. This printer has a low page yield, so you'll frequently need to buy and install new ink cartridges if your office needs include high printing volumes. However, high-yield cartridges are available and will last longer. Printing speeds are mediocre, but black and color documents look great and detailed. This printer also has a wide range of connectivity options, making it convenient to use.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is a good printer for students. It has a wide variety of connectivity options, and you can print, scan, and copy via the Canon PRINT app. While its page yield isn't especially high, you can buy high-yield cartridges that'll last longer. Unfortunately, it prints slowly, whether you're printing a one-page assignment or a long essay. If you don't mind waiting a bit for your work, printed documents look great.
The Canon TR8620a is okay for black-and-white prints. There is sufficient contrast between light and dark elements to produce clear and legible documents. It prints slowly, whether you're printing a single sheet or a multi-page document, and the ink cartridges have quite a low print yield. That said, high-yield cartridges are available and will last longer.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is good for printing casual photos. Most colors look accurate, and photos have excellent detail. It prints a 4x6 photo in under a minute and prints on various paper types, including heat-transfer sheets, glossy photo paper, and magnetic photo paper. The sheet rollers within the printer cause some markings on the photos, though.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a doesn't have any variants. You can see our unit's label here.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is a good all-in-one inkjet printer. While it's designed for home office use, it has a dedicated photo black cartridge along with its regular black cartridge, making it a great choice for printing fun photos at home. It prints pictures with an excellent amount of detail. Its page yield isn't very high, but it's similar to other all-in-ones that use ink cartridges in its price range.
Looking for something else? Check out our recommendations for the best home printers, the best photo printers, or the best college student printers.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is the newer version of the Canon PIXMA TR8620, and they are nearly identical in performance and appearance; you'll be happy if you buy either one. The only differences are their cost-per-print and print speed. The TR8620a prints black-and-white documents faster, but its running cost is a little higher because the cartridges are more expensive.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a and the Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 are both all-in-one family printers. The Canon is a better choice if you want to print photos since details look much clearer, colors look more accurate, and you can print more photos with it, thanks to the higher color page yield. On the other hand, the Epson is a better choice for office use since it prints faster, and you can get more black ink pages out of it. Its ADF can scan double-sided sheets, which the Canon can't do.
The Brother MFC-J4335DW and the Canon PIXMA TR8620a are both all-in-one family printers. The Brother produces higher-quality documents, prints faster, and yields significantly more prints, so it's a better choice if you need to print a lot of documents for work, school, or your hobbies. For photo printing, the Brother produces more fine details, but the Canon produces a wider range of colors with better accuracy.
The Canon PIXMA TR7820/TS7720 and the Canon PIXMA TR8620a are very similar overall. The 8620a has an Ethernet port and can print directly from an SD card. It also has a slightly lower cost-per-print due to its higher page yields. However, the TR7820 prints faster and supports manual duplex scanning.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is better than the Epson WorkForce WF-2850. You'll get a good 100-200 more pages out of the Canon, which helps you save money on ink costs, even though the Canon's color cartridges cost more. Photos look much nicer, too, which may be important to you.
The Canon PIXMA TR8520 and the Canon PIXMA TR8620a look nearly identical since they have the same chassis. They also perform very similarly. The only major difference is that the TR8520 is discontinued, so it's a lot harder to find available.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a feels well-built, though some areas, like the output tray and rear input tray, feel flimsy. It has a good lid dampener that keeps the entire scanner up and slowly closes down by itself. This is nice to have, so you don't need to worry about the top of the printer slamming down if you're replacing the ink cartridges, for example. The scanner background also has foam, which helps scan uneven documents.
This printer has a few design quirks, however. For example, you need to lift the display panel if you want to print; otherwise, you will receive an error message. You also need to lift the display panel if you want to open the output tray extender.
Like all inkjet printers, this printer needs maintenance to run smoothly. There are some built-in tasks to prevent and resolve printhead clogging issues and banding due to misalignment. There are also some tasks to help you when cleaning certain printer parts, like the rollers and the bottom plate. You can easily access paper jams and sheet rollers by removing the front paper tray, the back input tray, then the rear cover, or you can remove the transport unit if there's paper stuck farther back.
The cartridges are also easy to access, but you need to ensure the printer is on so the cartridge carriage moves to the printer's center. When the printer is off, the carriage gets hidden into the sides of the printer, so you can't access them. The yield for these cartridges is around 200–300 pages, so if you print frequently, you'll likely be replacing the black cartridge regularly. Likewise, the paper trays only hold 100 regular pages, so you'll replace this every few days if you print often.
There's a great touchscreen display on this printer. It's quite large and has really good viewing angles from all sides, and you can tilt the panel for better visibility if you are standing. The menu is responsive and easy to navigate and includes instructional videos to show you how to do certain maintenance tasks, like changing ink cartridges or loading paper. Luckily, it doesn't have the same issues as the Canon PIXMA TR8620, which has double click and unresponsiveness issues.
This printer's page yields are acceptable. It uses a five-cartridge system: four dye-based color cartridges for photo and color printing and one pigment-based black cartridge dedicated to monochrome document printing. It gives low ink warnings when it estimates ink is running out, but you can still get a few full pages out afterward.
The flatbed scanner has extendable lid hinges to accommodate slightly thicker items; thanks to this, you won't have to worry about seeing black bars on the sides of the page where the lid doesn't cover your scanned item.
The scan quality is acceptable. Black and color text is clear and legible for the most part. However, colors are over-saturated, and blocks of color appear overly grainy. Also, the image processing is overly aggressive and removes some finer details, like the lines in a graph.
Black-and-white documents look good. Both black and white text is easy to read, and there's decent contrast between light and dark elements. However, fine elements like lines are hit and miss, as they sometimes appear grainy and lack detail. Larger blocks also have some graininess, but they're generally better than the finer elements.
The Canon TR8620a's cost-per-print is good. While the cartridges are relatively affordable, running costs can quickly add up if you print often, especially for color printing. If you don't want to worry about buying new ink, you can sign up for Canon's Auto Replenishment Service, which automatically orders and sends you ink or toner when the printer detects you're running low.
There are two adjustable paper trays: the front input tray holds 100 plain sheets, and the rear input tray holds either 100 plain sheets, 20 sheets of 4x6 photo paper, or 10 sheets of 5x7 photo paper.
While you can't select A6 as a preset printing size, you can still print by setting a custom size. You can print custom sizes between 2.17" x 3.5" and 8.5" x 26.61" (55.2 mm x 88.9 mm and 215.9 mm x 675.89 mm).
The color gamut is satisfactory on this printer. It's good at printing dark colors but struggles with light colors (especially blues and oranges). Transitions from one color to another look mostly smooth, but some areas have obvious graining, like the transition from green to yellow and red through to purple. However, these issues are not too noticeable with printed photos, as the contrast between shades and tints produces great-looking photos with fine details and elements, like the parrot's feathers in the bird picture.
This printer accepts SD cards, as well as various miniSD and microSD cards through the use of an adapter.
The Canon PIXMA TR8620a is compatible with the Canon PRINT app on Android and iOS. You can print a range of files from the app and use the Easy-PhotoPrint Editor to create collages, calendars, and more. You can also scan and copy from your phone and manage your ink subscription.
You need to manually install drivers on Windows to print and scan with the Canon PIXMA TR8620a, but not on macOS or Chrome OS. You can download the drivers here.