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Brother MFC-9840CDW Review

February 24th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Brother, Printer Reviews

The Brother MFC-9840CDW is a multifunction color laser printer, copier, scanner and fax machine with wired and wireless networking capabilities. It’s not cheap, but if you are looking for a versatile machine that does its job well, the MFC-9840CDW is a worthwhile investment. Can be a bit tricky to use, especially when you set up wireless printing, but you end up with a high quality output that’s produced quickly.

Brother MFC-9840CDW Review

Setting up the MFC-9840CDW is a breeze. After turning on the machine and installing the toner cartridges, you have three connection options: Ethernet, USB 2.0, or 802.11b / g wireless. Connecting via USB is as simple as it sounds. And when we connected to the device via Ethernet, the MFC-9840CDW automatically appeared as a Bonjour printer. The trickiest connection setup was the wireless, which required setting up IP printing. The manual, however, has a good job of directing you through this process.

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The MFC-9840CDW panel is well designed and clearly labeled. Three big buttons let you choose between the fax, scan and copy functions. The control panel consists of rubber buttons that are pleasant to use, and a bright, backlit LCD clearly displays the settings you choose.

The MFC-9840CDW includes a convenient automatic document feeder to make copying easy. A nice bonus is the ability to copy double-sided documents by pressing the Duplex button. Disappointingly, the included scanning software (buy software online) does not offer flexible scanning options. However, it is easy to use and simple.

Brother MFC-9840CDW Review

The MFC-9840CDW outputted very good results overall, impressive our panel of experts. Text quality looked clean and professional, earning a very good assessment. In our test print of a picnic photo, the colors overall were on the lighter side, but the picture looked nice overall, earning another very good assessment. The scanner output looked slightly dark compared to our control image, but the device captured fine details and the overall picture was clear and realistic. The MFC-9840CDW’s copier received a Good rating: in a test sample of a magazine cover, some details lost, and blacks looked a bit boring.

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The MFC-9840CDW’s print speeds were impressive. It took just under 40 seconds for a ten-page Word document to print, and 15 seconds for a page, Word document to print. Color scanning was a bit on the slower side: it took 1 minute and 11 seconds for an 8-by-10-inch photo scanned at 600 dpi.

On top of being an excellent all-around MFP, the MFC-9840CDW includes bonuses such as a duplexer and wireless connectivity that make it a great value. Creative Mac users would appreciate more advanced scanning software, but the MFC-9840CDW high-quality prints and scans should alleviate such concerns to some extent.

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Canon imageCLASS MF8350Cdn Review

February 23rd, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Canon, Printer Reviews

The Canon IMAGECLASS MF8350Cdn Color is a printer or various functions can be called an all-in-one printer. The printer produces high quality output at very high speeds. The printer is available at a price of $ 599, including a warranty of 1 year on-site. It has a small usability issues, but the measures which the printer makes it an excellent fit for small and medium offices.

Canon imageCLASS MF8350Cdn Review

The printer is great in its appearance and is attractive in every sense. The printer can scan, fax and network printing. It can function as a standalone copier and fax machine, complete with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) 50 pages, to enable multi-page, simplex scanning documents to legal size. The paper capacity of the printer is its strong aspect.

The tray of 250 sheets will be sufficient for most small offices. The printer is a multi-purpose tray 50 sheets, so you can half to load paper and the sheet without changing the process of switching paper from the tray. A “print duplex unit” for automatically print standard, which is printed on both sides of the paper.

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If you have additional input capacity, you can add another 250 sheet tray for the total 550 sheets. The printer can be quite easily and are one of the places where the printer is just missing some aspects of usability. The hardest part is looking for a place to keep this unit and then move to another location. The printer has its measurements, 18.9 x 17.0 x 19.1 cm and is compact, it’s something big.

The printer weighs 64.2 pounds, when the toner cartridges are not loaded. Setting up the printer on a network is not difficult. You simply remove the package of materials, the cartridges, load the paper to install, cables to connect and then finally run the automated installation routine from disc. Canon has stated that it has a complete set of oem software provided for Windows 2000, Server 2008, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Server 2003 and drivers with the printer.

Canon imageCLASS MF8350Cdn Review

You are also offered a complete set of printer drivers and software to scan drivers for Mac OS X 10.6 through 10.4.9 far and USB connections. All drivers are available on the website of the Company. Canon offers a fax driver so you can fax from any computer on the network by storing the command, “Print” from within a program and then select the fax driver.

But the driver does not install by default and you have the option to accept, “Easy Setup” to install. To install the driver, you have the option to explore, “Custom Installation” and then install the program command. Once you install the printer to get there you really surprised by looking at the speed of the printer that prints 21 pages a minute for mono-chrome and color sheets.

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The printer can easily be called as the fastest color laser that acts as an all-in-one device for its price. The quality of the output of the printer is not outstanding as his speed, it is good. The quality of the text is less. The graphical output is much fun for every business need, which includes PowerPoint handouts. It is also very good for marketing materials such as tri-fold brochures and mailers page.

You may notice small white gaps between the colored blocks that the color around the text. The photographs appeared great. The snaps can be used in advertising brochures or pins on the board of an office or client newsletters. To use the command “scan” a program, you should move to the device, set it up for remote scanning, and then return to the device to retrieve the document you had the scan. Otherwise, the process proved very difficult.

Canon imageCLASS MF8350Cdn Review

This process sounds simple if your printer is somewhere close-by, otherwise it will be difficult for you to walk now and then. As an alternative, you have two choices. First, you can send the scan directly to the hard disk of your PC from the control panel of the printer, saved in PDF, TIFF, PDF or compressed JPEG formats. Secondly, you can scan to a USB memory key that allows you to print, scan and recover the document and file to your seat, once and for all.

The installation of the printer not hide the possibility of fax driver. The graphics and text quality could be slightly improved. Also, the fax driver is not present serious problems if you know the method of installation. Over all, the printer is one of the best color laser all-in-one device for a small workgroup or office.

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Brother MFC-9320CW Review

February 22nd, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Brother, Printer Reviews

Some multifunction printers (MFPs, also known as all-in-ones or AIO’s) provide many functions. Others emphasize high-quality prints. The Brother MFC-9320CW is aimed squarely at speed, with the fastest overall time on our tests of its price range. If print speed is one of your main concerns may be only the color MFP you want.

The MFC-9320CW is an LED printer, a category that’s usually grouped with lasers, because it is actually a variation on the same technology. The difference is that instead of using lasers, LED printers use LEDs for the image of each page set as the first step in printing.

Brother MFC-9320CW Review

The natural home for the MFC-9320CW is a micro or small office with relatively light printing needs. The printer offers only a 250-sheet tray and a 1-sheet bypass tray as standard as well as maximum, no duplexer for printing on both sides of a page.

This level of paper handling can also be appropriate for a home office or as a personal printer, but relatively large size of the MFC-9320CW’s would be a tight fit. At 15.7 by 16.9 by 19.3 inches (HWD), it is a bit large to easily share your desktop, and many people might find the 50.5 pounds of weight a bit too heavy for easy move. If you do not mind the size and weight, but the printer can be neatly into a home office or as a personal printer sitting near, if not, your desk.

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Besides printing, the MFC-9320CW scan and fax, even over a network, and work as a standalone copier and fax. Office-centric features include a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which can scan, fax, copy and easy multiple-page documents, and handle legal-size pages that are too big to fit on letter-size flatbed . The printer can also print from and scan to a USB stick, and even print directly from a PictBridge camera, a feature that can be useful in such an agency, not to mention in a home office to the photos are intended for printing a refrigerator door, for example.

Unfortunately, the quality of export for the MFC-9320CW is not as impressive as his speed. However, the text, graphics and photo quality are all good enough for most business purposes, and in the range where the vast majority of color lasers fall.

Brother MFC-9320CW Review

More than half the fonts on our text tests qualified as both highly readable and well formed at 6 points, no more than 8 need for both thresholds, and more than half qualified as very readable, but not well formed, even at 4 points. Unless you need a very demanding desktop publishing, or a highly unusual need for small fonts, you need more than satisfied with the text quality.

Graphics quality was a match for most color lasers, with output that is easy enough for any internal business use, but with obvious defects. I saw a few small stripes in a graphic, visible dithering in the form of mild patterns in different, a slight misregistration (small slices of white showing on the borders between blocks of a fixed number of colors) and a tendency for thin lines disappear, although many printers do much worse with thin lines. Depending on how demanding you are, you may or may not consider the graphics good enough for, say, PowerPoint handouts. They are not quite the level I would want for the marketing materials like trifold brochures or mailers page.

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Picture quality is on the low end of the range where most color laser printers fall. Here again, I saw dithering in the form of mild patterns in some photos. In other colors were slightly off, with apples looked a little too orange, for example. I also saw a slight tint in some shades of gray in a black and white photo and some kick-aliasing in the spokes of a bicycle wheel in another. Here again, depending on how demanding you are, you may or may not consider the pictures that are suitable for a client newsletter or something similar for example discount software. However, they are certainly good enough to be recognizable photo printing from web pages.

Brother MFC-9320CW Review

When I reviewed the Brother HL-3070CW, which is essentially the single-function printer version of the MFC-9320CW, I pointed to the relatively high operating costs based on list price of the toner cartridge and drum unit , as given by Brother. With the single-function printer to sell for a while, Brother says it’s in a better position to give an accurate street price. Based on the current street prices for consumables, running costs amounted to 3.5 cents for monochrome page and 15.5 cents for color. These prices are comparable to the cost per page for similarly priced printers, which indicates that the operating costs are not a problem.

If you do not need an automatic duplex unit or expect a lot of pages to print, and care more about speed than the output quality, the MFC-9320CW offers a complete set of the MFP functions and the top speed for the price.

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Canon imageCLASS MF3240 Review

February 21st, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Canon, Printer Reviews

By most measures, the Canon IMAGECLASS MF3240 is an impressive all-in-one laser, suitable for a home office or as a personal AIO in any size office. This does not mean it’s not deficiencies. In particular, it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) and the graphics are a bit below par for monochrome laser printers. But I am impressed by what it delivers: a printer, scanner, PC fax capability, and a standalone copier and fax machine for not much more than the cost of a personal laser printer. It also prints a lot faster than other AIOs for anything near the price.

Canon imageCLASS MF3240 Review

Setting up the MF3240 is easy. It’s a little big, at 14.5 by 17.7 by 18.2 inches (HWD), but small enough to squeeze in a cramped desktop. With a weight of 26.4 pounds, the printer is strong, yet light enough to move fairly easily. Once a place for you, you just install the toner cartridge, load paper, plug in the phone and power cord, and you’re ready to begin copying and faxing. For printing and scanning, you must buy software, install it and then connect the USB cable.

CANON IMAGECLASS AIOs in general tend to be fast. The MF3240, built around a 21-pages per minute (ppm) engine, is no exception. It whipped through our business applications suite in just 8 minutes 36 seconds. The least expensive AIO with a faster time on our tests was the Editors’ Choice Canon MF5770 IMAGECLASS, which cost twice as much and is only slightly faster, at 8:17 am. The more expensive Samsung SCX-4521F was substantially slower, at 14:21.

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The MF3240 also did well on text quality, with more than half our test fonts easily readable at 4 points and only one highly stylized font need to be as large as 8 points. This level of quality you can count on to any text you want to print process.

That said, the printer display graphic quality that was a bit below par for a monochrome laser. The two main problems in my tests were visible dithering, which as mild patterns in a number of shades of gray and in the form of graininess in others, and a tendency to lose thin lines. The result was not always pretty, but as long as you stay away from thin lines, the MF3240 should be fine for internal business use. As is typical for laser printers, photo quality is suitable for printing Web pages or client newsletters, but not for photos that you would want as a souvenir.

Canon imageCLASS MF3240 Review

I ran into a little problem when I wanted a print job. The front panel has a Stop button, this button has no effect on printing, but it will stop a fax or a copy in progress. Because there is no switch, I had to pull the plug from the outlet to stop printing. I found out later that there is a way to get a job through the front panel show, but inexplicably, it’s buried deep in the menu system.

Despite the less-than-perfect graphic quality and the minor issue of the hidden cancel command, the Canon MF3240 IMAGECLASS offers a lot for the money. Unfortunately, the lack of an ADF you can not even as an option limits usefulness of the device, but that’s the only thing that keeps earning an Editors’ Choice. Regardless of the size of office you work, chances are that you want to fax, copy, scan or multiple documents at least occasionally. And on each page scanning is a time consuming task.

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Epson Stylus NX515 Review

February 18th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Epson, Printer Reviews

Calling the Epson Stylus NX515 all-in-one is a bit of stretch, because it does not have a fax machine. On the other hand, not everyone wants or needs to send and receive faxes, and eliminating that office, with a flatbed scanner, the price of this beautiful and relatively compatible printer to only $ 150. As such, the machine is worth recommending, but only for certain tasks. Read on for details about whether it fits your needs.

Epson Stylus NX515 Review

The Stylus NX515′s industrial design mirrors that of our current favorite printer, the Artisan 800, which is a fax and a host of other great features you will not find its cheaper cousin. It would be unfair to expect a $ 150 printer to the same performance as a $ 300 printer to deliver, so we will not be too many comparisons. However Printer shoppers are also aware that Epson has a $ 70 instant rebate on the Artisan 800, significantly shrinks the price delta between it and the printer we reviewed offer.

The Stylus NX515 has strong feature set for its price range, including a memory card slot, PictBridge support, and a 2.5-inch LCD screen for printing digital photos without a PC. It also includes wireless and wired Ethernet networking support, if you want a computer. The card slot supports CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SD, xD, and most of the other common flash memory architectures, but the printer will read JPEG files.

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The integrated flatbed scanner offers maximum optical resolution of 2,400 dpi with 48-bit color depth (24-bit output), and you can use it with or without the help of a PC. You’re limited to working with a maximum print size of 5 × 7 inches in this mode however, and all you can do is to crop images and use automatic fantastic Epson Color Restoration software. Using a PC and a program like Photoshop oem software gives you more flexibility in acquiring the images from the scanner but Epson utility does a great job on faded and discolored photos (and all those movies shot in the year 1970 has a shoebox or three full of those).

Epson Stylus NX515 Review

The Stylus NX515 lacks fancy touch-screen user interface is the Artisan 800, but the intuitive button arrangement and well-designed on-screen user interface makes the printer very easy to use, even without a PC. The cheaper printer is much easier to configure for wireless networks, too. The Artisan 800 must be hard-wired to your network before you can configure wireless networks, the Stylus NX515 installation wizard guides you through the process without ever need a Cat-5 cable. But you still need to manage your network in mixed 802.11g / n mode for a wireless connection, now that 802.11n IP cameras on the market, we much prefer running a pure “N” network. There is no Bluetooth support.

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We dinged the Artisan 800 for the relatively poor performance printing documents, but the Stylus NX515 is much worse, even though we have good quality writing paper designed for inkjet use. The printer is fast enough, black ink with a rated speed of 36 pages per minute, but closer inspection showed not only jagged edges on every letter, but small horizontal bands of white where the print head ensures no ink at all. We would hesitate to increase production of our resume to this printer to each member.

The Stylus NX515 is a much better job of producing photographic prints, as long as you can not compare too close to more expensive printers can do. We recently hit around HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One C309a for producing grainy and faded photographs, but that device produced art gallery work compared to the Stylus NX515 output.

Epson Stylus NX515 Review

Part of the problem with the ink could be: The Epson Stylus NX515 Epson uses older (and cheaper) DURABrite Ultra Ink. This pigment-based ink comes in a four-cartridge palette of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The Artisan 800 (and many of the printers in the Epson Stylus Photo line) uses the Claria dye-based ink. The dye-based inks tend to exhibit a wide color gamut, and the Artisan 800 has two additional colors, to boot: light cyan and light magenta. The Stylus NX515 prints appeared to be grainy, too. We attribute this shortcoming to the size of the ink droplets, the printer produces: Where the Artisan 800 to produce measuring 1.5-picoliter droplets, the smallest drop of the NX515 can spray measures 2.0 picoliters.

Conclusion

The Stylus NX515 is a good printer to produce photographs and art and craft projects. As such, we have no problem giving faxes at this price, especially since the integrated scanner is so good, but let’s be honest too. In the end, we are very disappointed with its ability to print documents.

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Brother MFC-8890DW Review

February 17th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Brother, Printer Reviews

Brother MFC-8890DW monochrome multifunction produces high quality documents at a fast pace, and it has wireless connectivity. We were not impressed by her messy and indiscriminate control panel web interface, however.

The Brother MFC-8890DW is premium monochrome laser multifunction printer. Aimed at small to medium workgroups that do not need color printing, the MFC-8890DW offers integrated Wi-Fi and a secure print function. It is not a high price tag. Unfortunately, this printer is hampered by unintuitive control and simplistic web-based interface.

Brother MFC-8890DW Review

The design of Brother MFC-8800 series has not changed for some time, and MFC-8890DW monochrome laser multifunction looks almost identical to the MFC-8860DN. Although not push the envelope in the printer design, is compact and inexpensive without sacrificing features.

For a lower price than the MFC-8860DN get an automatic document feeder, automatic duplex and a toner bay easily accessible. Together with the expected USB, Ethernet and parallel port connections, the printer offers Wi-Fi. A USB port on the front, you can scan to and print directly from USB flash drives.

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Our only concern with the design of the multifunctional his panel, which is cluttered with buttons on the resolution, duplex and tray settings. Like the Samsung CLX-6210FX, it would be better if these functions are accessible from an on-screen menu. Some of the labeled buttons are confusing, too. For example, press an arrow key instead of “OK” to enter a function, and the “Stop / Exit” button is “Clear / Back” to exit. And you can not change between the copy, scan and fax functions without returning to the main menu first.

In contrast, web-based interface of the Brother MFC-8890DW is too simple. It can be used to configure basic network settings, but lacks any significant measures such as an IP filter or 802.1X authentication. Default settings for the printer, duplex, fax and copy functions are available, but you can not configure the scanner via the web interface.

Brother MFC-8890DW Review

Despite the panel a bit frustrating, the MFC-8890DW monochrome laser multifunction individual functions are easy to configure and use. Wi-Fi can be configured and initiated directly from the multi-functional, as well as over a wired network or USB port using the included installation CD. Only one network interface can be used at a time, but the multi-saving settings disabled interface, making it easy to switch between them.

Secure printing is also a handy feature, allowing you a print job to the Brother MFC-8890DW with an appropriate password. The multifunctional will only print the document time password, to prevent wandering eyes from seeing sensitive information.

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Scan options are extensive, allowing you to scan for a local or networked PC, a USB flash drive, an e-mail or an FTP server. Depending on where you are scanning, the MFC-8890DW monochrome laser multifunction not always tell what type of file will be saved as scan, but it supports JPEG, XPS, PDF and secure PDF files. You can also start an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process to a multi-functional computer on the network.

The Brother MFC-8890DW monochrome laser printer prints black text documents at a consistent rate of 33 pages per minute when using the 300 and 600 dots per inch (dpi) quality settings. When using 1200dpi, printed with a speed of 10.6ppm, while below the highest setting HQ 1200 pages on an average of 5.1ppm.

Brother MFC-8890DW Review

While printing at the same resolution, the difference between 1200 and 1200 dpi HQ is immediately noticeable. When printing documents with higher quality settings are sharper and more accurate across a range of text sizes 7pt to 20pt. Quality of the document overall is fantastic, especially for the price. Monochrome graphics are much darker and have a higher contrast than the Samsung SCX-5835FN, but it will not replace an inkjet printer for presentation graphics.

Using a high-yield 8,000 page toner, Brother MFC-8890DW monochrome laser multifunction costs 2.6c per page, this is extremely cheap cost of a printer in this price range. Combined with an integrated wireless and secure printing functions, it makes for a great multifunction for the office. The only caveat is the control method.

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HP DeskJet F4480 Review

February 16th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in HP, Printer Reviews

HP Deskjet F4480′s multifunction inkjet printer is about as basic as a multifunction device can get. It can be used for printing, scanning and copying, but it only performs printing text with aplomb. It is a loud and has a small paper capacity. It is suitable for users who only print every so often.

HP Deskjet F4480 is a multifunction inkjet printer for people who have a small office or work from home. It can print, scan and copy, but it lacks additional features such as a memory card reader and PictBridge.

HP DeskJet F4480 Review

The Deskjet F4480 is a simple device, the paper load from the front, crossed the curved paper path and comes from the front. This means that 4480 will take a smaller footprint than desktop printers and a straight paper path load paper from the back, but you still can not sit against the wall F4480 – power and data cables from the back stabbing.

Up to 80 sheets of plain A4 paper and the printer holds up to 15 sheets of output. In our tests, we got him to hold up to 20 pages without spilling them on the floor. There is no separate output tray to sit on, after it exits the printer simply rests atop the input tray. It is a very simple printer – You do not have wings attach, you don’t need discount software, simply drop the flap and the front to expand.

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The Deskjet F4480 has two cartridges: one black cartridge and a tri-color one. They are very easy to install, just pull down the lid, wait for the holder to come to the center and push the cartridges until they spring into position. However, they can be a pain to remove because the holder moves when you put pressure on the cartridges and you’ll have the heart to make sure the cartridges can slide their groove.

Since the multifunctional uses a three-color cartridge will not deal with individual color tanks, but that also means that you do not have the flexibility to change the individual colors. You could end up with a whole cartridge, even if only one color runs out to replace.

HP DeskJet F4480 Review

The HP Deskjet F4880 comes with 60 cartridges. HP 60XL cartridges are available, too. For standard cartridges, the average cost per page is about 29 cents, or almost 3 cents more expensive than standard running costs of the HP Photosmart B109a, for example, that a higher initial investment of $ 129 has. Using the XL cartridges, the running cost is 20 cents per page. In essence, the XL black cartridges give you three times the capacity printing for less than twice the price of a standard pattern, while the XL tri-color cartridge gives you just under three times the capacity for double the price.

During our tests, the standard cartridges could our 20-testing pages A4 document to print in normal mode on plain paper as well as 27 “best” quality 6x4in photos with HP Advanced Photo Paper. We did not wait too long for the pictures: each print was released in 28sec. The 20-page test document (which is a mixture of pages of text, test patterns, images, graphics and gradients) grew at a rate of 2.1 pages per minute, with the first page in 39 seconds. This percentage will vary depending on the content of your pages, ‘s without pictures and graphics are printed faster, for example.

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The quality of the text is sharp and even reverse 6-point text clearly saw. Picture quality is not great but: there is plenty noticeable color banding and graininess and blacks had a green tint. Photos printed on HP Advanced paper were easily scratched and stained, and the ink came off on our fingers as we flicked through photographs. However, if you just want to print 6x4in photos to spruce up the office, the printing is fine.

The color ink began to run when we had the 26th photo prints and the printer just kept on printing, despite a color is exhausted. The ink level indicators in the printer driver and the printer itself does not show individual color levels, which is annoying. The control panel is actually quite primitive. It is a single-digit LCD display for photocopying, a 4-speed ink-level indicator, and lights to tell you what function is currently in use. There is no full-color LCD screen.

HP DeskJet F4480 Review

Initial setup of the Deskjet F4880 takes about 20min (for the software and hardware). When you install the cartridges, printer syringe from an alignment page automatically. Along the way, the software tells you to align the cartridges too. You only need to do this once, not to “align” cartridges during software installation. The printed page should be placed in the scanner to complete the alignment. You need to print an alignment page every time you install a new cartridge – you can not just use the same plate.

The scan quality of the Deskjet F4880 is not as good as the quality that we saw the HP B109. Our test scans suffered from many banding and a lack of definition. Scanning books can be painful, because the lid can not be removed from the scan bed to make more room for them, and the driver has no advanced options to play with, for example, you can not remove moire patterns from magazine scans.

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Conclusion

Overall, the Deskjet F4480 is a basic multifunction printer that is suitable for a small company with very light printing needs. It is the type of printer you buy when you know you’re only printing one or two papers a week, instead of printing something every day. The running costs when using standard cartridges is high, but it improves significantly when using XL inks. Whether you want to know more about cartridge spend more than you did on the printer is a different story. Also it is damn noisy.

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Canon PIXMA iP4820 Review

February 15th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Canon, Printer Reviews

Over the years we have owned a succession of Canon inkjet and admired for their beautiful color and relatively low maintenance costs. The Canon Pixma iP4820 responds to the reputation, with beautiful 9600 x 2400 dpi color output and a five-tank ink system to print borderless photos up to 8.5×11 inches. You have to sacrifice some comfort with this model, such as Wi-Fi capability and a memory card reader, but this machine is good for casual photographers on a budget who are looking for high quality pictures.

Canon PIXMA iP4820 Review

We received a pre-production model of the printer, so that our box contained only a power machine and nestled in a foam cradle. Software and paperwork will naturally accompany the shipping product, but you must supply your own USB cable. We downloaded the driver and related programs from the Canon website and had no problems installing the software.

The Pixma has a sleek, glossy black design with a few lights and buttons on the front of the unit. The body has two 150-sheet, both auto-feeders. The luggage cover, which flips from the top, is used for the feeding of stock in the letter format, photo paper, and envelopes. Among the front paper output slot is half, slender 150-sheet cassette for A4, A5 and B5 paper. We want the input / output system, but we did not like the overly thin paper cassette or front output. A release tape arrived at our jam, and it took many soft curious to unlock, so the drawer could grow to letter-size paper to hold. The front paper output tray telescopically and feels a bit too flexible, considering how fragile it is-one smooth stroke, and it’s toast.

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Unusually for a printer in this price range, the iP4820 has automatic duplexing, which means you do not need to manually flip stacks of paper to print on both sides of a sheet. Saving paper, particularly for printing available document design, eco-thinking is a plus in our book, so we tried the duplex printing function using the shelf and not using discounted software. For each leaf, the first face came from the front of the printer, was withdrawn, and again came up with the printed side.

Two buttons on the lower right front of the unit-one for power, for a RESUME / CANCEL-panel cover. There is also an LED that flashes when an error such as a failure of paper or toner is detected. Circling the printer are the cable connections around it: The power cord is plugged into the left rear, while the USB interface is on the right rear. A PictBridge port for printing photos directly from any compatible digital camera, DV camcorder or camera phone, to the front.

Canon PIXMA iP4820 Review

As much as we have many opportunities like about the Pixma iP4820 is the lack of a few key areas. Noticeably missing, given that the one photo printer, a LCD screen for previewing prints, as well as memory card slots for access to photos, independently of a PC. You also can not connect this printer via Wi-Fi.

Get up and go, all you have to do is add the five ink tanks. This model uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink tanks, plus a second, larger black cartridge. This high capacity black tank gives you some flexibility that can lead to printing ink savings. If you’re only printing in black, the printer can switch to monochrome mode, and it will only use this high-capacity ink cartridge. If, on the other hand, you want to print in color and black mixed, then the use of ink from the smaller black cartridge. This prolongs the life of the smaller black cartridge, which means you need to buy less ink.

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The CD that comes with the latest Canon printer, the drivers, a manual, and two primary apps: PhotoPrint EX and HD Movie Print. Easy-PhotoPrint EX allows automatic photo correction, plus the ability to quickly albums, calendars, and stickers. This small utility makes it easy to crop, rotate, and color to your photos before printing to adjust. The Full HD Movie Print app you can print still images from HD movies you with a Canon PowerShot and EOS digital SLR camera. We found this app useful and easy to use, although only a small fraction of users will be able to use them.

When we start to print, we found that, like most low-end inkjet printers, the Pixma iP4820 will not blinding speed. Compared to similar inkjet, but the times we saw were impressive. Our standard 20-page test file took 8 minutes of pure text and 49 seconds to print high quality of the model mode. Same pages in normal mode took 2:07. (Of note: The difference in quality is negligible, so unless you are worried about having perfect prints, we would stick with the normal mode, but rather the quality of the output later ..) As comparison, a directly competitive model, the Kodak ESP 3250, took 9:29 and 3:52 of these tasks, respectively.

Canon PIXMA iP4820 Review

The Pixma iP4820 was the ESP 3250 when printing our 10-page test document consisting of a mix of text and graphics belabor. In normal mode, it did the job in 1 minute and 36 seconds, with over one minute faster than his competitor. It held her ground when printing photos, as well. As our full page (8×10-inch), high-quality sample pictures sent to the iP4820, but finished the job in 1 minute and 55 seconds, more than twice as fast as the Kodak ESP 3250.

Print quality, overall, was high. On standard office paper, text was crisp and attractive set of 3-point, and color reproduction was very good. We also printed a full page glossy photo on Canon’s photo paper, and found the colors to be accurate and sharp. True neutral grays neutral, no evidence of a red or blue cast. Skin tones also were correct, if slightly less saturated.

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Cost per page is about average for a budget inkjet. For documents mixing text and graphics, the Pixma iP4820 will cost you about 12.5 cents per page. For monochrome pages, you will pay about 4.5 cents per page. Note that our cost per monochrome page is based on the yield of the smaller of the two black tanks. When we wrote this page, Canon no estimates for the larger tank.

Apart from the thin construction of a few of the accessories, we found little to dislike about this printer in this price range-it’s fast, has an automatic duplexing, and printing text and beautiful pictures. The lack of an LCD screen and Wi-Fi connectivity necessary sacrifices for the price, but we think this model the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for most users the budget. We recommend the Pixma iP4820 for everyone in the market for a reasonably priced inkjet, especially if you’re an amateur photographer on a budget, or you often print double-sided documents and do not like to flip over piles of paper.

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Epson WorkForce 840 Review

February 14th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Epson, Printer Reviews

A while back I reviewed the Epson WorkForce 635, saying that it “comes with all the bells and whistles a small company would like, and plenty of family-friendly features make it a great printer at home”. My thoughts on the 635 included the lack of paper and half rather small (2.5-inch) LCD. The new Epson Workforce 840 solves both problems with two high-capacity paper trays and a 3.5-inch TFT screen. Is that worth an extra $ 150 to you? I think an extra paper tray is one of the handiest accessories a printer could have in an environment where various kinds of paper are regularly used, so instead of 250 sheets, you have 500 ready to go.

Epson WorkForce 840 Review

Like the 635, the WorkForce 840 comes with built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n networks that was easy to configure and it did very quickly. I did have a few points on surfing the web during printing, so it may be that more jobs were temporarily overwhelming the connection. In both cases, the problem no longer than a few seconds.

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Epson specs show the 635 to be slightly slower than the more expensive 840 (7.2 color pages per minute compared with the 840′s 9.3 color pages per minute), in practice, I have both printers about the same, located at about 10 seconds per page 840 and for about 11 seconds per page for 635. A page from the web site took about 17 seconds to print. Quality on cheap paper was impressive, with some bleeding in the paper, resulting in somewhat sloppy looking pages. Good on paper but the print quality is uniformly excellent so you don’t need to buy software. Like the 635, when the duplex unit, you are reminded that the ink density, a simple procedure that allows pages look better with no discernible drop in quality as long as you do not overdo it to reduce.

Epson WorkForce 840 Review

Color photos looked great, with very sharp images and realistic colors. A 4×6 print took about 1:14 from start to finish – not bad, but not particularly surprising, either. Again, this is not particularly aimed at the home audience, so I suspect this will not be a problem for home users.

Pictures took a long time to print – almost 1:20 for a 4×6 photo, which is not all that competitive with other all-in-one printers. But DURABrite Ink does an excellent job (he is from dry and waterproof). Colors are vivid and bright as very sharp. There is not much in the way of editing photos on the printer itself, so if you have many photos you want to edit using your graphics software to edit to do again.

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If I feel uneasy about the workforce, it is the placement of the power and USB ports. It seems that most printers power ports are on the back right of the printer (if you look at it), while the workforce is connected to the back left, and the USB port is on the left side of the printer is not back where I find it a lot easier. Something to keep in mind in case you have limited space for the machine to turn.

Verdict

The Epson WorkForce 840 All-in-one inkjet printer for small businesses and home users. It’s fast, has two paper trays, an automatic document feeder and duplex printing and a fax machine, scanner and copier. Wi-Fi b/g/n network is built in, and multiple memory card slots are located on the front of the machine. It is a good step up from the WorkForce 635 as it offers multiple paper trays, so I would recommend if you often use two paper trays. Otherwise it is a lot more expensive than the 635, and printing speeds are about the same.

Epson WorkForce 840 Review

Key Features

  • Color Inkjet Printer
  • Automatic Duplexing
  • Fax, copier, scanner
  • Two input trays total 500 sheets, plus automatic document feeder
  • Ethernet / wireless (Wi-Fi b / g / n) networks
  • Up to 5760 x 1440 dpi print resolution
  • 3.5-inch LCD panel tilt
  • Supports a wide range of memory cards on the front of the machine

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Canon SELPHY CP800 Review

February 11th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in Canon, Printer Reviews

While more and more products are encouraging you to save images from your digital camera to portable hard drives, memory sticks or online servers so you can share them with your friends and family, it seems the idea of fewer companies are hardcopy promote snaps that you can display the old fashioned way, in albums.

Canon SELPHY CP800 Review

Fortunately, Canon has not forgotten this principle and has just announced the SELPHY CP800, which is an upgrade of the company’s previous ultra-compact photo printer, the SELPHY CP780. Available in chic black or white (the latter an unusual mix of matte and glossy surround), weighs a trim 940 grams and can almost be balanced in the palm of a hand.

The ink cartridge slides in from the side and on the other hand, two USB ports, one for connecting a flash drive and the other for attaching to a PC and to buy software online.

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The top is dominated by a tilting 2.5-inch color TFT display and a neat row of large, clearly marked menu buttons that easy to make your printing needs. At the front there is a host of memory card slots that you want to throw any format (including the rarely used xD-Picture Card) and the opening for the paper cartridge that you select will manage.

Though the CP800 is supplied with a power you must pay extra for a snap-on battery on the back (which will yield about 36 postcard size prints per charge). The machine prints three types of images – Postcard (148 x 100mm), L (119 x 89mm) and Credit Card (86 x 54mm) – and each pack comes with the right printer ink cartridge and 36 maps.

Canon SELPHY CP800 Review

If you decide to print from the PC instead of via the memory card directly from your camera or flash card, you can have some fun with the included Photo Printer SELPHY software allows you to create frames and graphics to to add or put your photo in a calendar. Warning: the female voice-over guides can drive you homicidal after extensive exposure, but fortunately you can turn it off …

ID prints can be produced, too, and a brutal Shuffle feature will arrange multiple images in a creative design. Some effects can be added (eg Sepia, Positive Film, smooth skin), the brightness can be adjusted and photos can be improved by using the Auto Image Optimize option.

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On average, pictures are after about 1 minute and 15 seconds, and that’s because they do at least three passes through the machine and color layers are added. The results, though, are definitely worth the wait when the sharpness is stunning, the authenticity and richness of the colors.

Conclusion

For the quality of images, general coolness and all-round compact, it is difficult to fault the Canon SELPHY CP800. It’s just a shame that they do not throw in the battery and you have to shell out for three different types of printer cartridge bundle.

Canon SELPHY CP800 Review

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