Not very long ago we were still talking about the features found in a printer make and model. We talked enthusiastically about the print resolution, the realism of the colors, the printing speed, the anti-fading inks, meantime between failures (MTBF), duty cycle, among others. By the way, the MTBF predicts the usage time between failure that requires repair. Duty cycle indicates the workload — how many pages — the printer can handle over a one-month period.
www.canon.com
Nowadays we tend to take these values for granted. Nowadays we talk more about which printers can sing, dance, cook the meals and take care of the garbage for us. We call them multifunction or all-in-one (AIO) printers.
Actually, not all AIO printers are the same. A basic AIO printer can scan, copy and print documents. A more complete AIO printer can also send and receive faxes. As I once wrote in this column, the base components are the same for these tasks. A fax has to be able to print. A copier has to be able to scan.
So, if you combine a printer and a scanner, basically you get a basic AIO printer.
Recently, courtesy of Datascrip, I had the opportunity to play around with Canon Pixma MX876. I was told that this very new product was the high-end of their AIO line, and it made me curious. Reportedly, its predecessor, the Pixma MX868, was very much liked by its users.
I tested it using some plain paper and the result was very good. I printed a photo of Scotland that I downloaded from The Scotsman last year in full page using plain paper, and it came out great, too. The MX876 has five ink tanks instead of two or four. Datascrip did provide me with several sheets of photo paper for the review, but I did not have the heart to waste that expensive paper.
The high quality photos are made possible by a number of technologies, including the Full-Photolitography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE), which can reduce the ink droplet down to one picoliter. There are other built-in photo enhancement capabilities such as automatic correction that makes faces more visible against very bright background and multi-zone exposure correction. The ChromaLife 100+ technology combining the ink with the photo paper will preserve the colors for up to 300 years.
Unlike the low end models, the MX876 also comes with an automatic document feeder (ADF). It also analyzes the pages being scanned and makes the text look sharper. If you need to scan, copy or fax a bunch of pages, just place them in the feeder. Make sure that all the staples and paper clips are taken out, though. Do you need to scan both sides? No problem, as this printer can scan—and print—in duplex mode. It can even scan a hard cover book without forcing us to rip it apart.
The scanner has a maximum resolution of 2400x4800 dots per inch (DPI). The maximum printing resolution is 9600x2400 DPI. Canon has adopted ISO/IEC 24734 standard to measure printing speed, which uses image per minute (IPM) instead of page per minute (PPM). For the MX876, the printing speed is 9.4 IPM in monochrome or 6.1 IPM in color. In my test, the full page, an almost borderless photo came out very fast. We can save the files of scanned documents directly into a flash memory card.
Another important feature of this device is its networkability. It can be shared by a workgroup or several people in a small office. It can be connected to the network using an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi. So, it fits the need of an office where the employees keep moving from one place to another and have to make printouts as they roam around.
The MX876 is by no means the first printer that can connect to our computers wirelessly via Wi-Fi. What impresses me is how easy it is to set up. My daughter also has a network printer that supports Wi-Fi, but first I had to connect it with a USB cable to set it up for our WLAN before we could use it. With the MX876, it was easier. All I had to do was turn it on, switch on its Wi-Fi and after a while it was recognized by the network. Then I installed the driver and the software applications and it worked flawlessly right away. When I inadvertently left the paper out-tray closed as I printed a page, the printer was smart enough to open it automatically. It does not close the tray again, though.
To print out the photos you take with your smartphones is easy, too. In addition to the card reader and the Card Direct feature, there are PictBridge-compliant digital cameras out there that are equipped with built-in Wi-Fi capability.
I did not test drive the fax function, but I guess it is already a common feature among AIO printers and it should not cause any issue. As expected, this AIO printer can send and receive color fax, and it has security features that will prevent marketers from dumping pages after pages of unsolicited product offers.
Like their competitors—Brothers, Epson, HP and Lexmark, Canon has been making a number of AIO printers for different user segments. Some are targeted for home use, some for a small office or workgroups.
