As MFDs go the Canon PIXMA MP130 is quite basic, although it's not quite as basic as the PIXMA MP110, which is a printer / scanner / copier. The PIXMA MP130 adds a card reader and a control button to switch to photo printing mode with a price rise of £15 to cover those extras.

Where we were quite sceptical about Brother's inclusion of a card reader it makes perfect sense on the Canon as it rattles out photos at a furious pace and is the fastest photo printer in this group. Whether you want to print photos in the first place is a completely different question, but the key point with the PIXMA MP130 is the absence of a fax or network port, so you'll be connecting this MFD to your PC or Mac as a local device, and that means it is likely to be of more use in the home than in the office or home office.

Unpacking and installing the PIXMA MP130 isn't complicated but it is a bit fiddly as you have to remove a fair amount of packaging and insert the print head followed by the two cartridges. Canon uses relatively small ink cartridges that are also quite cheap, but intriguingly the quoted life for these cartridges in the PIXMA MP130 are far higher than in the SmartBase MP390 which uses the same cartridges.

Although the list of features is relatively basic, the list of software that Canon includes is quite comprehensive. The basic drivers require 130MB of space but the complete suite will take up 435MB and that's a much better option as you get OmniPage SE 2.0, ArcSoft Photo Studio 5.5, MP Navigator 1.1, Easy-Photo Print and Easy-Web Print.

Once the software is installed you can choose to control the PIXMA MP130 from the buttons on the MFD or from your PC, and the user interface is very effective, however print quality is a mixed bag. Text is sharp and clear but is not completely black, and using the photocopy function degrades the quality noticeably. Photos print out very fast but the quality doesn't compare with the HP models and skin tones in particular are unrealistic.