Canon Pixma MX850 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2436B002)
by Canon
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Canon Pixma MX850 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2436B002)
Customer Review: This is an awesome photo printer!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this printer as a general-purpose family printer/scanner. This is my first all-in-one device. I have always been leery of multi-function devices thinking that they would be a "jack of all trades" but the "master of none." I may have also been biased because multifunction printer support when Mac OS X was released was pretty spotty. I tend to over research whatever I buy but the price, reviews, and specs for the MX850 were generally pretty good. I was not buying this as photo printer--that was going to be a future purchase. I bought the MX850 and got it set up on our network--my only complaint might be that setting up the printer on an ethernet is a little user unfriendly. I thought I would just try on a 4x6 print and was amazed at how good it was. So good, we got rid of our (very good) Epson PictureMate printer because of the higher versatility of the Canon. I then tried to push the envelope and bought some "pro" 8.5x11 photo paper. I was blown away by the results. For the first time since going digital, my pictures weren't trapped in the computer! I have made close to 100 large prints and was surprised how parsimonious with ink this printer is. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an advanced amateur photographer. I color calibrate my Mac monitors. All my prints were created from Photoshop CS3 so all my images had been manipulated with respect to image size, contrast, and sharpness. I can not judge this printer on producing an image directly from a memory card or from less-capable image manipulation programs like iPhoto (which I do use for all my photo organization needs). However, every printer I have ever owned tends to darken photographs and the MX850 is no exception. When doing "fine art" printing from this device you may not get it right on the first print.
This printer does great on plain paper as well. In general the copying and scanning functions very well. The MP Navigator software works reasonably well but the UI is a little idiosyncratic--it doesn't have the polish of a true Mac OS X application. I have sent only one fax but that went without problem.
Customer Review: Astoundingly Excellent Printer for the Mac
Summary: 5 Stars
I would recommend the MX 850 to anyone looking for a robust multifunction printer - particularly if you are a Mac user. We have run multiple brands of multifunction ink jets at my office, and this Canon is the King.
Pros:
-Excellent Paper Handling
-Print Quality Better than printers that cost 3x as much
-Two Paper Magazines
-ADF almost bulletproof with full duplex scanning (both sides of a page)
-Quieter than competition
Cons
-Size: it's big
-LEDs on control panel could be brighter.
Running a mac, I have become used to dumbed-down software from what is seen on the windows side. Canon's software integrates incredibly well with OS X, without loading up your Mac with metric tons of bloatware (I am looking at YOU Epson and HP!). I utilize the ADF for scanning docs and storing them in Evernote, and the mechanics of the unit are amazing: the ADF scans and auto-levels the documents quickly, and I have yet had it jam after 5 months of heavy use (probably 1000+ pages scanned).
Indeed, the mechanics throughout the unit are best described as "Beefy." The roller wheels, lifters, separators are twice the size of those in the more compact and twice as expensive HP C6180, which probably contributes to this unit's larger size. I have yet to have a paper jam on this device in five months of usage as well, although I do take exceedingly good care of our printers (clean scanning surfaces with alcohol wipes, blow out dust regularly, etc.)
The two magazines work well - I keep 4x6 photo paper in the rear magazine for photo printing, and normal paper in the front magazine. Borderless 4x6 prints look great - you won't be disappointed.
If you are in the market for a printer, do yourself a favor and buy this unit. If you have the space for it, you will be thrilled with this device.
Customer Review: Great quality, and outstanding Mac support!
Summary: 5 Stars
Canon is one of those companies that tends not to leave their Mac customers in the dark, but they really came through on the MX850.
Right off the bat, the output is excellent. I'm hesitant to say you can't tell that it isn't coming off of a laser printer, but compared to the Canon 860 this is replacing (a decent printer in its own right) text looks incredibly sharp. Unless you're sending off a document to someone who is actually going to stare down your fonts, the quality is great for home and small to medium business users.
The OS X installation was totally idiot-proof. Pop in the disc, hit "install", and reboot. When connected to a network, the printer automatically appears and sets itself up. There is a Canon Network Scan Utility that gets installed and resides in the toolbar, which is no more intrusive than the volume or Airport icons.
As far as the driver itself goes, duplex printing and other options work flawlessly in any OS X application.
The network scanning is a real pleasure to use. If you share this across multiple computers (Mac or Windows), you can pick a destination computer from a list on the LCD, drop your documents in to the autofeeder, and wait for everything to get kicked out to your computer as a PDF (or JPEG).
The integrated card readers are also great. If you insert a card in to one of the slots, the printer appears as a CIFS file share (so it will show up in My Network Places on Windows or Shared in the OS X Finder) that anybody can browse to.
To top it all off, the replacement ink is reasonably priced (and just about "cheap" if you buy multipacks on Amazon) and easy to find at any major retailer (if you can't wait for Amazon to ship).
I'd buy this printer again in a heartbeat.
Customer Review: Excellent all in one; much better than HP
Summary: 5 Stars
10-13-10 Update.
- As good as it gets for all-in-one, in my opinion. Fast, quiet, easy to use. Feeder is perfect.
- Ink usage is fine; at least as good as old HP.
- Contrary to what I wrote below, I'm using Canon cartridges; risk of off brand ink damaging the printing head was not worth it. Cost of cartridges is a rip but all companies do it. Canon is no better/worse.
I bought this all-in-one to replace an HP model because the HP feeder has never worked properly. Every time I had to fax or scan multi-page documents it was necessary to be right on top to be sure the feeder took one page at a time.
Success. The Canon feeder works flawlessly. In addition, the MX 850 is quietier and faster. The Canon has two paper trays that are easy to refill & allow two types of paper to be in the machine. The software loads quickly and is easy use. Not that it counts for much but it is slick looking printer.
Over-all; I'm impressed. A+
I've had the Canon for less than a month so will post an update in the future.
One potential concern is how fast the MX 850 goes through the five (5) ink cartridges needed. (Very easy to load). I assume the ink will last, proportionally, at least as long as the two cartridges in the HP. I also found a source for Canon replacement cartridges that is 1/3 the cost of Canon's.
Do price shop carefully; prices are all over the place... from under[...] to [...] . I paid [...]& its looks like I over paid by a hundred bucks (in May, 2009). Still, the machine works so well I've not all that unhappy. I'd google the machine for sellers in addition to checking Amazon pricing.
Customer Review: The Best Printer, Fax, Copier, Scanner, & Wireless! WOW!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't usually write reviews, but for this one, I thought it was worth while; especially, since I think I read every review out there in my search for the best and cheapest All-In-One I could find. After agonizing day after day for hours on the internet, I can happily say that I made the right choice. I was about two clicks away from selecting one of the HPs (which I'm sure are pretty good too), when I came across all of the positive reviews for the Canon Pixma MX850. For once, a product that is Low in Price but High in Quality. I am a big picture taker and like to make Greeting Cards and really look for great quality prints from a printer. This one does it all!! My last few printers were Epson, which is great for the quality, but none of the Epsons appeared to have all of the quality and features that this Canon has. I connected the printer to my old Dell PC through the wireless network with no problem! I haven't connected to my MacPro laptop yet, but when I read other reviews on Apple related to this printer and connecting to Mac laptops, I realized that this was the All-In-One for me. I don't anticipate any problems with it. While it took me a little bit of time to connect, it was actually very easy. This was just my first time setting up a wireless printer and fax and wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. The fax works great and I love the easy to follow LED monitor for all of the functions. The printer looks great and is really quiet, compared to past printers and from what I read in other reviews. The separate ink cartridges are a plus, and this one has about the highest resolution I could find out there. So, with Free Shipping and No Sales Tax and all under $200; You Can't Go Wrong! BUY IT! YOU WILL LOVE IT!