So far I am overly impressed with this printer. I had an HP officejet and an HP envy. I was really disappointed with the print quality and color that these printers had. After researching for a while, I was about to go with brother but then decided to go with this printer. I am so happy with my choice so far. Here is a comparison of a print with my HP envy and this canon. The canon is the picture on the right and the hp is the picture on the left. Wow. If you are looking for a printer with good color matching then this printer is a good choice. I usually never write reviews but I am so happy with the quality, how quickly I got this printer, and the ease of setup.
This overview will be based on whether or not this printer is a good choice, not as much as how well it works compared to other models. You’ll see why in a few minutes. My experience with laser printers includes over ten years working for HP, Epson, Canon, Samsung, Xerox and Kodak.
Most of what I will cover will be answers to concerns others have raised when they stated they didn’t like this printer.
1. Size and weight – laser printers are by nature large and heavy, especially if they are color printers. The specs are readily available. The fact that it is big and heavy is not a negative, it is the way it is.
2. Cost of ink/toner – those that are new to laser printers tend to have sticker shock at how much each ink cartridge costs compared to what they are used to with inkjet printers. Without going into hundreds of pages of technical detail, the fact is that the cost of the cartridge is meaningless. The only thing you should be looking at is the actual real cost per printed page. Laser printers are less expensive to own and maintain.
3. Comparing brands – there are only a handful of companies who actually make laser printers. Canon has made them for HP and Samsung since the beginning, they own the patents. If you buy an HP or a Samsung (whose laser printers are now owned by HP) you are getting a Canon, perhaps with some minor cosmetic/feature differences. End of story.
4. The three brands just mentioned share the unique technology that incorporates the imaging drum into each toner cartridge. Most other brands do not. Again, hundreds of technical pages could be written but I believe starting with an all new imaging drum each time I replace the toner is the better technology.
5. Service and support – while I agree that that should be expected I’m at a loss to think of one thing I have bought in recent years that has any acceptable amount of after-sale support. Welcome to the 21st Century.
All that aside, is this model a good choice? I’ve owned them all and it makes sense to me to go with the brand that actually designed the technology. For all intents and purposes Samsung is gone now that HP owns them. But it’s not all good news because when I bought this Canon from Amazon (at a surprisingly good price) it appears Canon has cut back tremendously on the number of models they offer. That either means newer models are on the way or the market is drying up for color laser printers. When you consider all factors, I believe this model is the best overall value going, and (importantly) replacement toner is very easy to find at reasonable prices. That’s important because I am having a difficult time finding toner for my still current model with the Samsung nameplate on it.
There is a word that’s sometimes used in technology – elegant. When used for tech products it doesn’t mean fancy or pretentious or showy. It means that things work the way they should, effortlessly and intuitively and that there is just something that’s hard to identify that makes it feel right. When I compare this model to the virtually identical models from the other two brand labels that are essentially the same thing there are many little things that add up to that feeling of calling it elegant. Things like where controls are located, how smoothly the paper drawer opens, the feel of the push buttons, the helpful confirmation beep so you don’t have to look to see if your job printed, the fact that the toners are preinstalled when you get it and you don’t even have to pull those messy tapes out to start using it immediately. I would use the word elegant to also describe the setup process, how logical it is, how smoothly it goes, how the subtle differences in the software makes using the product more effective.
If you are on the fence about what to get and any of this has been helpful for you, then you can trust my recommendation that of the various choices available to you it would be difficult to make a better choice than this model.
Printer works flawlessly but documentation is practically non existent. This laser printer produces crisp black and white especially in 1200 dpi mode and excellent color. Don't expect it to be a photo printer and you won't be disappointed. I got tired of dried out inkjet cartridges in a variety of cheap printers and finally bit the bullet and spent a little more on this Canon. I works perfectly but unless you want to use it strictly in its default mode which consists of 600 dpi color two sided printing, you had better do a little online research to find out how to access the other modes. You won't find it in the supplied or online Canon documentation. Unfortunately, each app seems to have a somewhat differently designed printer module and often some of the printer modes such as BW or single sided printing are hidden behind dropdown menus cryptically called "quality" or "layout" or something competely different. Othewise I love the printer but use a Canon Pro 100 for photo printing since laser printers don't provide the color gradation that inkjets can. Also, if your space is tight beware that the footprint of this printer is a little large than most inkjets. I measures about 16.5" depth and width.
Just installed and printed my first pages. Couldn't be happier. My family and I don't print much, so after years of abuse from inkjets high cost for ink that dries out before we even got to print more than a couple of pages, we said enough! Time to upgrade to laser. Now I won't have to worry about throwing major money down the drain.
Setup was easy. Remove all the tape, connect to wifi, usb or ethernet, insert some paper, install drivers either from the cd or from the canon site, and you're up and running.
It is quite alarmingly loud when it first starts up. But, nothing to worry about apparently.
Rant
I've got to admit this was a grudge purchase. After nearly 30 years of buying HP printers I've given up. The reasons are long and varied. Also I decided that if you truly need printing and scanning you are far better off buying a dedicated printer and scanner. All manufacturer's lower end (<$500) MFP offerings are a compromise nor do they offer real value. To that end I decided to abandon ink jets and go to an enterprise technology - laser. HP probably makes some decent laser printers but HP is dead to me. As such Canon is an enterprise grade company with product offerings priced toward home and small business users. When I run out of toner from the starter cartridges I may alter my opinion.
User Experience
Unit comes with toner cartridges in the printer and ready to use. Windows 10 does not have a default printer driver so you have to install one. Evidently Canon is not aware that many home computers don't have a CD drive; certainly my Surface Pro is barren. Going to the Canon website quickly offered several different drivers with confusing descriptions apart from the one titled "Recommended". What additional features they offer remains a mystery. Be careful if you automatically print the manual. The Canon manual is over 600 pages long. I browsed over a few pages that discussed security issues in great detail which would be of great interest to a corporate cybersecurity sleuth but probably has little application to someone whose printer and network are secure. It does reinforce the image that this printer despite is small size and diminutive price is an enterprise device. Once I installed the "Recommended" driver and input the WiFi info the Canon was placed in service. Laser printers are often faster than inkjets but they are page printers. That means that they don't start to print until they receive all the page data. Once received they print very quickly. Inkjets often start printing as soon as data is received giving a false impression of speed. Print quality was better than most inkjets especially photos when printing on good quality plain paper. To often inkjets saturate plain paper when printing photos leaving a smeary image. Using photo paper improves the image quality with both technologies. I was a little disappointed that a bigger paper drawer wasn't offered but it does have a manual page input, a feature that has been dropped from many inkjets. The manual feed is particularly valuable when printing UPS delivery labels. As this is a dedicated laser printer it doesn't have the ADF or the copy platen of MFP's which makes the printer much smaller. My last and forever HP printer with an additional paper tray was almost twice the height of cherished (so far) Canon.
What's Next?
While I have developed a hatred for MFP's I do need much of the same functionality they offer. To this end the additional of a scanner would solve most of the problem. When one steps up to high quality scanners they are most often exclusively page fed and have supporting software that has valuable features that will likely never be found on inexpensive MFP's. A pile of papers that would take days trying to be fed into a MFP are scanned in a couple hours with a quality scanner with few if any paper jams and image enhancing features like deskew and despeckle that are performed in real time. Some scanners offer a dedicated button which immediately prints the documents scanned so the copy function is largely retained. Also the high quality scanners can scan a variety of documents including ID's and long receipts. While I have prior experience with enterprise scanners (Documentum implementation) and have researched available scanners although I haven't found the courage to spend $429 for the Fujitsu ix500.
Conclusion
So far the Canon printer has done everything expected. Moreover I have yet to read reports that Canon managers are devil worshipers or find infants to be tasty delicacies. I'm not suggesting I have read reports of HP managers eagerly performing such transgressions but if they do surface I won't be surprised.
Feature Product
- USABILITY: Create Wi-Fi Direct hotspot from the printer to establish direct connection to mobile device(s) without the need for external router. Print on the go with various mobile solutions, including Apple Air Print.
- QUALITY AND RELIABILITY: Canon's signature reliability and engine technologies help keep productivity high and minimize the impact on support resources. Intuitive maintenance videos for common tasks like consumables replacement.
- WORKFLOW EFFICIENCY: Designed for small print jobs with first-print time as fast as 10. 3 seconds.
- COST EFFICIENCY: High-capacity, all-in-one cartridge helps reduce overall supply costs. Out-of-the-box, standard two-sided printing plus the ability to print multiple pages onto one sheet helps to reduce paper consumption.
- SECURITY FEATURES: Helps mitigate risk of confidential information loss as documents are only stored in short-term memory. Security settings can be set behind an administrator log-in.
Description
Designed for small and medium-size businesses, the Canon Color image CLASS LBP622Cdw offers feature rich capabilities with high quality and minimal maintenance.
I'm a relic from an ancient time that (was) still using an HP 990 series; an inkjet that took a black cart and a 3-color cart.
I had all kinds of refill kits, high quality inks, and tools to keep the replacement cartridge cost down. I scrounged dozens of black and color carts off eBay to keep the old beast going.
You know what? I hate inkjets with a passion; and may they burn in the hell that spawned them! I spent so much time, trying to get a color cartridge working, just so I could print a ticket to a concert, or the Amtrak pass I needed for the next morning. If there was an important document I needed to print in the last couple years, I could almost count on the color cartridge to crap out. A full-color page takes 10-minutes, and the red would fail part-way so the top 1/4 of a color document would have pink streaks. Grrr... :(
It was time to join the laser world. I haven't printed much color in a while since it was always a losing fight with my old inkjet in the ring. Researching printers, I read that a color laser would be "medium quality" compared to an inkjet; so from my perspective... simply having fast printing, sharp text / blacks, and color that would print at all would be a massive upgrade for me.
OK, I like my Canon cameras, I know they make good printers and papers, so I settled on the LBP612CDW which would also fit on my old computer desk (the shelves are big enough as it's from the CRT monitor days).
Prime delivered it a day early (thanks Amazon!). Unbox; plug in power / USB; install drivers; and it was ready to go. The first picture I printed didn't take 10-minutes, I think it took 10-seconds. It didn't smear at all either, from the tear that ran down my cheek at how amazingly sharp, smooth, and more colorful it was than what my old inkjet could do. I was shocked at the quality of the prints I got out of it. I didn't know that color lasers had improved so much... wow!
I won't have to stick toner carts in hot water just to get the yellow working again like I had to do so many times with my cursed inkjet. Last night I tossed the old printer and the carts / ink / tools in a dumpster; I would have heaved them in a nuclear fire if it was possible.
Canon... thank you!
Love this printer!! At first I thought I made a mistake since the toner cartridge refills are more expensive than Brothers ones, but I like the fact that it allows me to keep printing way past the “toner low” stage and still hasn’t forced me to change the cartridge although it’s been recommending it. It tells me that “Tinernis low and quality can’t be guaranteed” but asks if I’d like to continue anyway. I press yes and I can keep on printing. The printing quality is amazing. Now that it’s low on toner it isn’t as “crisp” but still does the job for my needs. I’ve been able to print hundreds more pages still. Once I need to print my super crisp color projects again, I’ll finally replace the cartridge. For now, my sister still gets use printing study notes on it and I can keep printing invoices.
Simple printer that produces beautiful colors and crisp blacks. Bought this because the inkjet I purchased (one of the new ones with large tanks of ink) printed terrible documents. Seems like the inkjet technology has regressed. This is the first laser-jet that I have ever purchased and I cannot be happier. As a plus the printer is not too big. The picture is of my printer on top of a regular sized filing cabinet. There is a bit of noise when it first sets up, but that is normal. After that, it is pretty quiet and really fast. I want to make a note to MAC users: The printer is automatically set to print dual sided. In order to change that you have to take an extra step to create a print profile to make single side the standard. I called Canon and got customer service to teach me how to do this (customer service is actually really great). You have to go into Safari, make sure a website is displaying (like google.com), select file from the top menu, then print, make sure one sided printing is off, then from the presets menu select "save current settings as preset", then name it....I named it "Default Setting One Sided", then click OK. Now when you open a program like Word, you have to use that preset in the printing menu to print one sided documents.
The color is much better than the two HP laser printers I dealt with this year. I’m really happy with the color printing from this printer. The HPs were consistently too dark and lost distinction between similar colors. I’m disappointed with the speed of this one over wi-fi but that seems to be a common problem printing over wi-fi with any printer I’ve tried. I almost gave it a 3 because of the speed, but it’s an inconvenience. The color quality is really good so 4 stars.
I have a small business in which I need good quality prints and so far so good, I've attached pictures.
0 comments:
Post a Comment