Smart ways to use your wireless printer

Every home needs a printer. Whether you’re working remotely, running a small business or studying at home, having a reliable wireless printer just makes life run more smoothly.

The best home office printers are flexible too. Powering through printing, scanning and copying is all part of the day job of a hybrid workplace workhorse, and it’s sure to need to take on a whole range of lifestyle duties too. It's likely to be called on to do everything from printing family photos and postage labels from a smartphone to scanning family tree certificates and creating greeting cards.

That doesn’t mean printers need to be big, utilitarian boxes, though. Take the Canon PIXMA TS7550i for example. This wireless printer has a sleek and compact design that’s easy to accommodate on narrow shelves or small desks. All the paper trays are accessible from the front, so you can squeeze it into a tight slot without having to leave extra space for paper handling. But it’s not just about looks – it also delivers fast colour and black-and-white printing speeds and razor-sharp text quality, thanks to the addition of pigment black ink.

Canon wireless printers are easy to set up and easy to use. With Wi-Fi connectivity and apps such as the Canon PRINT app, you can control your printer functions from your smartphone or tablet – more on that later. Setting up is straightforward, using the smartphone app or Canon's online support guide – just find your printer's model number and follow the step-by-step guide.

In today’s smart home setup, your devices are all connected – smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs and more – and your printer should be part of the mix. Connect a Wi-Fi-enabled Canon printer to your home network, and you can print what you need from any room. Printing from a smartphone is no longer a novelty, it’s the new standard, and using Canon printer apps, you can print or scan directly from your phone or tablet – and more. With Canon's Cloud Link you can send scans to or print from popular cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.¹ You can also print your favourite photos directly from social media accounts such as Facebook and Instagram.

If working from home is part of the mix, a Wi-Fi-enabled printer will satisfy your home office printing needs just as easily. As well as being useful for producing letters and labels for day-to-day business, a printer can help you be more productive and effective. Reading a printout means you're much less likely to be distracted by on-screen notifications or incoming emails. It's also worth remembering that your eyes need regular breaks from the screen. With faster print speeds and superior print quality, Canon PIXMA TS7550i, TS6550i and TS4150i printers will help you power through vital work documents and family projects alike.

The Wi-Fi-enabled PIXMA G3570 Series (see video above) is ideal for the busy smart home, combining printing, scanning and photocopying with high-capacity ink tanks that deliver up to 6,000 mono and 7,700 colour documents.² Canon's MegaTank system makes refilling easy too, with simple, mess-free and highly cost-effective ink bottles. The PIXMA G4570 adds an auto document feeder for fuss-free multi-page scanning and photocopying.

It's not just professionals who benefit from having a wireless printer at home. Canon's Cloud Link service also supports Google Classroom,¹ which means it's useful for school and college students. Google Classroom is designed to assist communication between teachers and students. Using Cloud Link with Google Classroom means students can print lists of the classes they're taking, and print assignments directly from the printer screen or from their smart device via the Canon PRINT app. An additional benefit for teachers is that they can easily print class rosters to show the members of a selected class.

If you’re a student who's used to using smart speakers such as Alexa³ or Google Home¹ to control lighting, TVs and room temperature by voice command, then you’ll love the range of Canon wireless printers that are compatible with voice control. You can tell them to print content such as lined paper, musical staff paper, colouring pages and more. You simply have to say: “Alexa, ask Canon printer to print a checklist”,⁴ and the job is done. You don’t even need to be in the same room as your printer – you could be in the kitchen making breakfast, brushing your teeth in the bathroom, or lounging in bed...

Find further details on how to print through voice-commands using Alexa and using Google Home.

For the ultimate in simplicity, versatility, efficiency and creativity, Canon offers a wide range of free-of-charge apps and software to enhance the wireless printing experience. With the Canon PRINT app, you can print, copy and scan wirelessly from smart devices, as well as alter print settings, run maintenance routines, check ink levels and effortlessly order new ink. You can also sign up for the PIXMA Print Plan (available for selected printer models in selected regions) – you pay a fixed monthly subscription based on the number of pages you print per month, and the printer monitors its ink levels and automatically orders the correct inks when they're getting low, delivered to your door.

As we've seen, Canon's mobile printing apps make it easy to print directly from your phone to a wireless printer. When you're working from home or off-site, using the Canon PRINT app with Canon's Cloud Link service enables you to wirelessly link to an office printer, so you can share documents with other members of staff. You can also scan documents remotely using your smartphone's camera and print them back at the office, or scan documents using the printer and send them to a smartphone. It works both ways.

Adding a creative flourish, the Easy-PhotoPrint Editor app gives you the option of turning your digital photos into stylish prints and unique gifts, with templates for calendars, cards, posters and more.

There's also the PosterArtist online service for creating your own posters, banners and flyers. The MAXIFY GX3050 and MAXIFY GX4050 MegaTank printers are particularly good for this, with a rear flat input tray that facilitates the creation of banners up to 1.2m in length and on paperboard media up to 0.7mm thick.

For Windows computers, Easy-Layout Editor is a useful expansion module for printer drivers that gives you an on-screen preview for laying out and printing multiple images. Or even without downloading an app, Canon printers that are compatible with Chromebooks, Apple AirPrint and Mopria^® for Android enable you to simply connect and print wirelessly via the built-in printing protocol of your smartphone or tablet.

Ultimately, Canon's Wi-Fi-enabled printers and range of apps are engineered to work together seamlessly. From the physical control panels of the printers to the features and interfaces of the apps, everything is designed to be easy and intuitive to use, while giving you the freedom to complete all sorts of scanning and printing tasks as quickly and effortlessly as possible. With Canon in your corner, wireless printing is as easy as it gets.