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"Perhaps a good choice, but not if you have had a Canon in the past..." on by bsandnes
Pros: Clean design, solid physical build, logical interface, amazing network scanning integration
Cons: Where is the duplex??? Bottom tray has B5 minimum (no 4x6 or envelope), abrassive noise while printing,
Summary: Perhaps a good choice, but not if you have had a Canon in the past. By this, I am referring to the standard features and quality that you might be accustomed to. For instance, I "upgraded" from a Canon ip4000 to this unit. This is the first AIO or printer in a while from Canon that has had an individual ink cartridge system, but no duplexing. It seems that this would have been an easy and logical thing to add, especially as its predicessor, the MP530 had this feature.
Although this is not a "deal-breaker" for everyone, it certainly is a disappointment. It should also be noted that STAPLES advertised "Automatic 2-sided printing" in its most recent Columbus Day 2007 national circular. Whoops.
Also noticed immediately was the rather abrasive sound that this unit makes while printing. As the unit is quite new, none of the local retailers have one on display yet to verify if my specamine is defunct or if it is just the nature of the unit's design. The source of the harsh, scraping sound seems to be the data ribbon attatched to the connects the cartridge assembly rubbing on the chassis. Not only is this annoying, but potentially problematic.
This aside, the print and scan quality seem to be up to par with Canon's signiture itty-bitty 1-2 picoliter ink droplet technology.
Another notable feature is the network scanning. As you press the scan button on the front of the unit, immediately it prompts you with the list of PCs that are connected to the unit and have the software installed. In my case it shows the Local USB machine and the laptop "Nichole" on the network. After selecting the recipient of the scan job, you are prompted with the option of document or photo scanning from the ADF or platen scanner. From this point, the final screen gives the option to save directly to the PC, save as PDF, attatch to Email, or open with Canon's application. This seems to work smooth as silk.
Multiple trays are something that, like duplexing, has been rather standard on medium- and high-end Canon machines. Although they didn't deprive this model of the dual trays, they did restrict the bottom tray to a limited range of paper sizes. Only B5 through Legal may be loaded. This discounts most envelopes, some photo paper, and various other small stocks that can only be loaded in the top tray.
What seems to be the moral of the story is that the MX700 is not a suitable replacement to the MP530 model, of similar price, size, and recommended use. It is, instead, laterally placed and perhaps slightly below the MP530.
I don't plan to keep my MX700 around too much longer. There's a 14-day return policy and the Office Depot where I purchased it, so it gets a few more days to prove itself. Hopefully they still have the MP530 or MP830 then.Updated
The MX700 has already had more paper jams in four days then my former IP4000 did in nearly four years.
MX700: 5
IP4000: 0
The saga continues... -
"Great Printer for the price. Leaves HP 6310 in the dust" on by genesis51
Pros: Fast scanning, reasonable software, quick set-up
Cons: None so far
Summary: I had a 6310 HP that I took back to Sam's Club. I wasted a day's worth of time trying to justify my years of loyalty to HP. It's a sad thing but HP has fallen a great distance in quality and customer support.
I bought the Canon MX700 at Best Buy and it was a breeze right out of the box. The unit itself is solid (unlike the HP 6310) and both paper feeders (frint and back) are solid. The software loaded easily.
The only "glitches" I had were minor in that you need:
1. To have your own USB cord
2. Connect the USB directly to the computer and not a hub.
After that it was effortless.
It integrates seamlessly with the "My Pictures" scanner function and the packaged software the MX 700 comes with is intuitive to work with.
Better yet, the OEM CLI cartriges are inexpensive. The refills/remanufatured cartridges are even less.
I'm now a Canon customer.
Sorry HP. -
"Very poor quality printer." on by gun-smoke
Pros: It looks pretty cool as a large paperweight. Tech support is in the USA.
Cons: Text quality is poor, color is blown out in printed images, and the ADF cannot scan anything with details properly because they disable it with their software on purpose.
Summary: I purchased the Canon PIXMA for three main reasons; to print text documents, pictures, and to scan stacks of images through the ADF. Here’s what I noticed:
Printing text: It was sloppy. You could see bleeding and blotchy ink everywhere. Yes it was legible and you'd have to inspect it to see it, but it was pretty bad. Compared to the HP OfficeJet Pro L7000 series, the Canon makes the HP look like a laser printer. (I'm not a fan of HP, either, but at least they print quality text.) I called tech support and they told me I needed to run their head cleaning utility, etc., so I did. No improvement at all. (The plus side is that their support is here in the USA, and they speak English. The negative side is that they think their printers are perfect and so they blame everything else in the world for any problems their printers have.) If I had to give the text quality a rating between 1 and 10, with a good laser printer being a 10, I would give this Canon a 2 out of 10 while the HP OfficeJet L7000 series would get an 8 or 9.
Printing graphics and pictures: The images printed with insane amounts of color, blowing out the images so they were unrecognizable from their original appearance. I think this is so they can appear to have "enhanced" or "more colorful" images, but really it's just oversaturated. I even removed the color enhancing features in the settings and it still printed the same way. I shouldn't need to tweak image settings before printing to get them to print out like they should. Changing settings is for making the image print different from the original. I showed the printouts to the original artists who sent me their images and they were amazed at how many colors were added to their artwork. I even looked at the originals on their own monitors (which looked like mine) and verified it. Compared to the HP OfficeJet Pro L7000 series again, the HP printed it exactly like it should have. I compared both images side-by-side, and I can't believe the Canon was this bad at reproducing accurate color. I also noticed lines going across the black areas of the image with the Canon.
Scanning through the ADF: I have stacks of both pencil and ink drawings that I need to scan, and I wanted to place them all in the ADF and have it go to a PDF file. I also wanted the scans to look similar to the originals. However, this is not possible with the Canon for some reason. I tried scanning with the included Canon software and the only way I could get a good scan is when I lifted the top and put the page directly on the glass. Whenever I scanned through the ADF it looked horrible. I could see the page scanning perfect, but then the software messed it up after the whole page was finished scanning. I turned off all the settings that would change the document, but it still did this. I was able to customize the settings for scanning on the glass, but not through the ADF; even though the settings are available to you to customize on the ADF, those settings don’t actually function. When scanning on the glass, you have the option to set the type to "Photo," while in the ADF you can only select "Color Document" and there is no "Photo" setting available. I called Canon's tech support again. After telling me I needed to uninstall and re-install their software, which I did, and after hearing them tell me it was my "Windows XP," I learned that the Canon engineers actually decided to DISABLE this feature when scanning through the ADF because "they don't want people scanning with the photo setting through the ADF." Unbelievable! Looking at the box this Canon printer is packaged in, they have a color document with a photo placed on the ADF, but according to their own engineers, they don't want people to scan these sorts of pages like that. It’s either false advertising or stupidity. I guarantee that page on the box won't scan through with very high quality. So it's actually the Canon software that makes the ADF useless, but the printer itself is capable of doing it. Granted, you can use the WIA driver to scan instead of the Canon driver, but that really just proves it; the hardware can do it but the Canon software prevents it. The WIA driver means you'll have to crop every page though, and I just want something to work properly.
So I returned the Canon today. I really wanted to like it, but unfortunately I don't recommend it to anyone.
(You'll also need to purchase a USB cable even if you want to install this in a network, since they don't include one even though you can't complete installation unless you have one connected.) -
"Great network all in one" on by Loraneb
Pros: Can network scan and print, low cost
Cons: Scanner should remember settings better; plain paper tray could be bigger
Summary: I had an HP L7780 in my small office which was absolutely horrible - so horrible that I ended up selling it on Ebay, but that's another review. I bought this MX700 to replace that machine. I was looking for a network printer/scanner since that is what we mostly use the machine for. I haven't tried faxing. Copying works fine. It allows several adjacent people to use the scanner. The scanner utility is OK, could be a bit better in terms of remembering settings. It has a front tray for plain paper and a rear tray for photo paper. The front tray is quite miniscule in the amount of paper it can hold. I have had lots of Canons - ip4000, ip3000, mp830, mp530. I like Canons because the ink tanks don't cost too much and their tech support is still in the United States (HP is out of the country). Overall, I am satisfied with this machine and would recommend it.
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"Fatal flaw if your fax shares your phone line" on by Steve in LA
Pros: Prints and scans well, nice software interface with a mac, small and lovely to look at
Cons: Printer answers the phone with a fax tone regardless of how it's set to answer
Summary: This is a great printer in almost every respect BUT:
I'm on my second one from Canon tech support, and both have the same problem: The printer takes over my shared fax/phone line about 30 seconds into some incoming calls. This despite its being set to "telephone priority", which is supposed to require you to manually turn on the fax for incoming fax calls.
Canon has been very nice about it, and it's great not to have to talk to India about your printer. But tho they are aware of the problem there is no fix yet. If you share your fax line, you may want to wait until there is.
This printer would be an "8" for me without this fatal flaw.
Canon Pixma MX700 user reviews
