CANON IMAGECLASS MF8080CW COLOR TONER CARTRIDGES SET

Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW Review

Overview:

For adding color laser print abilities to a small office, it’s tough to beat the Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW on price. Unfortunately, its very slow print speeds make it undesirable for any company that requires speed as well as full color multifunctionality, which would be better found in a full sized copy machine.

Pros:

A huge bonus found in the workings of the Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW is its wi-fi connect-ability right out of the box. With a wi-fi ready machine, connecting to the printer is as fast as possible for multiple computers in an office. Built in wi-fi is also great for situations, such as a home setup, where running cords through walls is undesirable.

The unit’s 5 line LCD display is a nice feature and makes menu navigation easy. You will end up using it with this device too, as it has many hidden features such as a manual duplex mode (though no automatic duplexor is included).

If wi-fi is not needed, the USB 2.0 high speed port will do the trick, as well as allow for a reliable connection to a single host PC. First copy times are just barely acceptable at 22 seconds for black and white and 28 seconds for color, but speed is not the Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW’s strong point and single copies will not keep users waiting too long.

Color printing is always more expensive than black and white when dealing with laser printers. In this case, you’re looking at about 17.5 cents per page (roughly) for a four color print. Anything under 20 cents is within an acceptable range, and black and white prints will only cost about a 1/4th as much.

Print resolution is a key aspect when printing in color as, presumably, it will be used for imagery. The Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW takes care of business with its high quality 2400 x 600 dot per inch mode that supplements its standard 600 x 600 dots per inch mode that can be used for printing text, etc.

Cons:

The main input paper tray on the Canon ImageCLASS MF8080CW is a little small at only 150 sheets. Other paper handling abilities consist of a nicely sized 50 page automatic document feeder as well as a large 125 sheet output tray. Still, it is curious that Canon would equip this fairly hefty device with such a small paper tray.

Initial on board memory: also a disappointment at 128 MBs. While this amount of RAM is plenty for a monochrome device, color printers usually use up significantly more memory and are usually better equipped from the start.

A lot of users are really going to have a problem with the printer’s overall print speeds. With the device capable of a sluggish 12 pages per minute in black and white and only 8 pages per minute in color, its performance speeds are easily doubled by other units in the category. Copy speeds are not any faster, though faxes should move along quickly thanks to the relatively standard Super G3 33.6 Kbps built in modem.