Donald G Whittaker
I set up the new MB5120 printer yesterday and so far I like it pretty well. There were a couple things I had to unravel a bit, but all is pretty good now. I also spent a couple hours experimenting to find the sweet spots for all the settings, especially for ADF scanning. That was my primary reason for buying a new all-in-one. I don’t have a CD/DVD drive on my laptop, so I had to download the driver stuff. The IP address noted in the instructions didn’t work. Grrrr. So I went to canon.com and just looked around for the downloads. Eventually I was able to do it that way. Then it was a matter getting everything configured the way I wanted. That took a little time to sort out. It connected no problem to my Wi-Fi and laptop. I expected that to be a bit of a hassle, but it wasn’t even a tiny bit. The print quality is pretty good. I’m really happy with it. I printed generic black docs, some color docs, duplex docs, and even a photo on matte photo paper. The speed is more than acceptable for a low volume home office printer. Zero complaints on the printing function. Once I run out of ink, I will be able to test the cheap refill cartridges I bought. But I don’t really print or copy much, so I suspect that might be a while. I also spent too much time trying figure out the Canon Quick Utility Toolbox on my computer. It’s a lot different than my previous Canon. There was a bit of a learning curve there. But the sorting out the Toolbox is necessary for the initial setup stuff, especially for scanning. So in the long run, it was worth the effort. Once it’s all setup, the printer’s on-screen scan and copy functions work really well for documents. Much easier and quicker to use than the Toolbox on the computer. I doubt I will even use the Toolbox much anymore. On the printer’s screen, I suggest setting up custom profiles. It took me some playing around to figure out that the custom profiles are the way to go. I suspect that will be my go-to method for nearly everything. I have four custom profiles set up so far: two for scans (simplex and duplex) and two for copies (simplex and duplex). Once those profiles are setup, it is really easy to scan or copy. Basically, I only press three buttons from the Home screen: (1) Custom Profiles, (2) chose one of my four profiles, then (3) press Black or Color. And the scan speed is pretty fast, even in duplex. Much faster than the other two printers I have. I have not tried to scan a photo on the platen yet. I suspect I will set profiles for photo scans too. And I have zero use for the fax function since I have no land line in the house. I can’t tell you how that is. And I don’t care. Bottom line, I’m quite pleased with it. Overall I’d give it four stars. Mainly due to the effort I spent trying to understand and use the Toolbox. There was some trial and error involved. Not well explained anywhere that I found. But, to be honest, going forward now it is going to work really well for my needs, which will be predominantly simplex and duplex ADF scanning. For that, I’ll give it five stars. Really easy and fast to do now. Ding ding ding we have a winner.
