There is a code to which a cowboy cleaves. He never shoots first, he’s always kind to ladies, and he never buys more printer than he can handle. While I can’t speak for those out on the lone prairie, I can report that the 52-pound ImageClass MF8050Cn by Canon may be the heaviest printer I’ve had in my office to date.
This isn’t a printer for scrap-booking or creating beautiful photomontages of your grandmother. The color printing is delightfully sharp but the speed and on-board features – the lack of a picture preview screen, for example – makes this an office printer through and through. It also has a built-in copier and fax machine if you’re into that stuff. It also scans from PCs or Macs.
Because we’re basically talking about a large job printer here you won’t be printing many photos on this printer. However, it has excellent color reproduction and is just fine for color prints. A slight concern: the “media capacity” is 150 sheets on this puppy, which means you’ll have to refill it every few if you’re doing a few dozen pages per day.
A 215 page document took 35 minutes – about 6 pages per minute. This included two paper jams and paper replacement. A full color, edge to edge photo took 30 seconds while a single black and white page, from warm-up to print, took 17 seconds. If you’re printing in bulk you can hit Canon’s expected rating of 12 pages per minute (B&W) or about 5 seconds per page.
The thing is chock full of inputs including a front USB port, a rear port, and an Ethernet port. The include drivers automatically add the printer the printer over IP, which is an important consideration for offices with multiple PCs and Macs. Setup was seamless and quite simple.
So who is this printer for? It’s for a small home office or small office with about ten users. It’s a massive printer and it’s built to survive heavy traffic. The color toner comes in four user replaceable packages and the printer itself costs $499 while the cartridges cost $75.
I’m still into the Samsung CLP 315, a small, more compact printer, but if you need a monster with a scanner and fax machine, this is definitely a contender.
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