Not all the best ideas fit on the back of an envelope – or a sheet of A4 paper – hence the rise in A3-capable MFPs.

The Canon Pixma TS9550 markets itself as a professional, home office printer that does it all for £180. It’s smart and utilises a number of Wi-Fi and cloud applications such as the Canon PRINT app, AirPrint, PIXMA cloud link and more – but can it stand up to the demands of a busy home office?

READ NEXT: The best printers for work and home

Canon Pixma TS9550 review: specifications

It combines an A4 scanner and 20-sheet ADF with an A3 inkjet printer. There’s a rear feed capable of storing up to 50 pages of plain A3 or 20 sheets of photo paper, and a tray in the base for up to 100 sheets of plain A4. By limiting A3 paper support to one input and the output tray, Canon has made this MFP more compact than you might expect.

While it’s still biggish, it’s barely larger than HP’s A4-only OfficeJet Pro 6970, making it easier to fit into a home office. It uses a similar touchscreen and an identical five-ink setup to the Pixma TS6250, but the resulting 8.6p per page running costs are on the high side.

Canon Pixma TS9550 review: Performance

The TS9550 has more of a home office bias than most Pixmas, and in this context it’s not especially quick, delivering 25 pages of black text at 12.5ppm and rich colour graphics at 3.8ppm. It duplexed ten sides of graphics onto five sheets at 2.1 pages per minute. A single A3 page of black text printed in 17 seconds, a colour graphics page taking 46 seconds.

This MFP’s touchscreen makes it easy to use, but the menu isn’t perfect. Rather than a single 2:2 sided copy option, for example, you set the scanner and printer’s duplex settings separately.

In fact, the ADF only supports manual duplexing, while the printer can only duplex A4. We noticed multiple pauses during copying, with a single sheet taking just over 20 seconds, and ten pages needing two and a half minutes in black or over three minutes in colour.

While the quality of its scans, prints and copies was high, the TS9550 isn’t focused on photos, and it lacks the duplex ADF, fax modem and low running costs that would make it ideal for a home office.

Canon Pixma TS9550 review: Verdict

It’s fine if you want a general-purpose, A3-capable home MFP, but Epson’s WorkForce WF-7710DWF is cheaper and more flexible, while Brother’s MFC-J5945DW is a more serious choice for a busy home office.