- Annoying Printer Drivers and Software
- Reliability (or complete lack of)
- Toner Cartridge Life
- Replacement costs of toners/ink
- Rubbish print quality
Hmm that's a longer list than I thought but pretty fair, I have had so many printers and something is always wrong with them. The last printer I had before I bought the Canon Pixma MX850 All in one was a fairly pricey Lexmark Color laser printer. I'd basically assumed that my problems were with buying cheap inkjet printers so I reckoned buying a decent laser would solve all these.
I was very, very wrong - it wasn't so much a laser printer but an ATM machine for the Lexmark printer Corporation. I have never in my life seen a machine eat laser toner with such speed. The replacement toners were more expensive than the printer and it requested them every other day.
In all honestly I'd have found supporting a heavy cocaine habit and keeping a selection of aging 1970s sportscars on the road to be a much cheaper proposition than running that stupid lexmark laser printer. In the end I gave it away, hiding my smirk as the poor sap walked off with the big shiny expensive looking laser printer.
Canon MX850 All in one printer review
As per usual it comes in a box that is far too big, but one little tip watch out for leaving any bits in there - the printer tray was hidden away in mine. The Canon MX 850 is a fair size but does look rather modern and sleek. It doesn't take that long to set up and everything clicks into place fairly easily.
Then you get the first nice surprise - the software actually works. Now this was a little bit of a shock for me - I've had several multifunction printers and the one thing they all had in common was awful software, HP usually managed the best with software that rarely worked and had the ability to crash or freeze your computer as well - most of the Canon stuff seemed to what it's supposed to.
Connecting it up to the network was a doddle, the software found it and set it up and it well just worked. The canon mx850 drivers seem to be very well written in my opinion.
Print quality is good - I've printed photos, documents and presentations all were very good quality. I should add that I'm no expert in photography stuff but the printouts looked good enough for me. The printer is fairly quick although when doing duplex copies it does take quite a while to print on the second side.
Scanning on the Canon MX 850 all in one works very well, I usually use the software to scan from my PC but you can do it manually from the console as well. It's fairly fast scanning and the results seem fine.
Fax on the Canon MX850 seems to work well enough although I have't actually recieved anything yet just sent them.
The other excellent point of this printer are the ink cartridges, they seem to be very economical. I bought a complete set with the printer and have been using them for about 4 months now - I don't print out thousands of pages but the family use it a lot and the first set of ink cartridges are still going strong. They are also quite cheap as they don't have a printer head built into each catridge which cuts the cost significantly a new cartridge head for the Canon MX850 All in One only costs about £15 anyway.
Well that's about it I think - it's the first printer I've had for quite a while which has not made me angry. It just does what it is supposed to do , all the functions seem to work and it seems reliable and economical.
I'd thoroughly recommend this printer if your're after a decent multifunction printer that is economical to run - Check out the Canon Pixma MX850 All in One Printer Reviews at Amazon here most of them seem also very positive apart from some rumours about networking problems - mine worked fine.
Canon PIXMA MX850 Multi Function Printer
No comments:
Post a Comment