Gordon Reynolds
- التعليق
Warning: Ive only owned this printer for a few days so Im not able to provide information about its long term reliability. Frequently you only begin to find issues with a product after having owned it for some time. That said, ... I was in the market for a multi-function wireless printer to replace two existing wired printers (a multi-function color inkjet and a laser), both dependable but showing their age. I briefly considered getting a color printer but finally decided against it owing to both the cost of the printer itself and the total cost of ownership (colored inks for both inkjet and laser are expensive). I knew I wanted laser because theyre generally faster but mainly because, again, long term costs seem better. After considering a bewildering number of reviews on both the internet and on Amazon specifically I finally chose this printer; it edged out other printers in Amazon reviews, but not by much. Surprisingly, just about every printer I looked at had only mediocre reviews, often with high disappointment scores. Maybe thats just part and parcel of the territory. I was able to unbox the printer and have it operating in less than an hour, perhaps closer to half an hour. I ignored the instructions (Im a guy, thats what we do), never installed the CD (another guy foible), but was able to get it connected to my router painlessly - if you ignore the tedium of typing mixed case letters, numbers, and special characters on the control pad. Since then, Ive tried single-sided printing, double-siding (aka, duplex) printing, single and double-sided scanning, single and double-sided copying, but not faxing (I have VOIP, which faxing machines treat like an unknown foreign language). I have also successfully printed from my iPad (single and double sided). All these functions worked without a hitch. Honestly, Im so accustomed to things failing to work as advertised I find myself still holding my breath for the moment when something finally goes wrong. Fingers crossed, it wont. The printer is a bit bulky, but I have a decent place for it. Its a lot easier to find a place when youre not tethered to the device by a USB cord. Its in the same room where my computer and router live, so the connection is pretty strong; not sure if there would be any issue with a weaker connection. It comes with a half capacity toner cartridge, good for about 1700 pages as I recall. Before running tests I first upgraded the firmware from the control panel, which is fairly painless. Nice feature, that. There are a few things Im not crazy about. It feels a bit plastic-y. The control panel, especially the touch screen, is not the best around. Getting the printer to print single-sided requires diligence - its not HARD to do, but the printer seems like it prefers double-sided printing by default so you have to be certain when printing that you select single-sided in whatever print dialog confronts you. Im not crazy about the way you load paper, by stuffing it into an open mouth. Im used to pulling out a tray, loading paper, then reinserting the tray. Stuffing paper just feels prone to causing problems with dog ears, skews, and possible jams. Also, I wish the mouth held more sheets of paper than it does. In general, the printed pages look good to me. This is for home use, so Im not looking for fancy graphic capability or high resolution printing, though I do recall stumbling across a configuration page that provides a setting for higher resolution. Overall, Im pretty happy with my choice so far. I rarely, if ever, give a product 5 stars. It really has to hit a home run with bases loaded for me to grant 5 stars. But I doubt that Id find a better printer at the price. Note that there are a couple of Canon imageCLASS printers in the MF24x line. I think theyre all fairly similar, only a feature or two is missing from the 244 and 247, like duplex printing, and/or faxing capability, so Id expect those printers to work about as well as this one with their respective feature set.