Review: Canon Color ImageClass MF8050Cn all-in-one printer
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.
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.