Multifunctional printer Canon PIXMA MX870 has an impressive set of features and is pleasant and comfortable to work with. It is a perfect assistant for small offices and offices at home. For such modern office-oriented multifunctional devices, working not only in office but also at home, the external view is of importance. It should naturally fit into the interior of your home, which is not a place for classic office devices with a lot of protruding trays. But in this case it should have the same functionality as that of the office "workhorses".
Canon PIXMA MX870 fully meets all the above requirements. When folded, it looks pretty likeable, and what is more important, it looks naturally in the interior of your house. Wherein, the device can boast a respectable set of advanced features, among which it is worth noting a wireless network, as well as two-sided scanning, copying and printing.
Canon printers of PIXMA MX Series is difficult to confuse with products of other manufacturers, but from each other they differ very slightly, and if you do not look at the label with the index model, it is sometimes difficult to understand what device you are dealing with. The MX870 and its predecessor, the MX860, look alike as twins, except for the color of body panels, which became a bit darker. Black lining on the scanner cover is not glossy, as in most of the more affordable models, so they are practically immune to fingerprints and minor scratches, which is a significant advantage for devices aimed at small and medium-sized offices.
The MX870 weighs 26.1 pounds, and it is 19.4 inches wide, 17.1 inches deep, and 8.9 inches high. Its control panel includes 2.5-inch color LCD display and a 4-way round button, surrounded by a rotating selector, four buttons for print, copy, scan and fax, a full numeric pad, buttons to copy and scan in black or color, and one-touch keys for dialing fax numbers, set beforehand.
Canon PIXMA MX870 can be connected to a PC using a standard USB-cable or over a network, both wired and wireless. It is worth noting that the Canon PIXMA MX870, like other multifunctional devices, presented in January 2010, enables printing from Apple iPhone with a wireless connection.
Scanning
The scanner is installed in the upper part of the device. The cover is disclosed at an angle of approximately 60 degrees, which is enough for comfortable work, but still slightly larger opening angle would be better. But the cover can be fixed at an angle of 20-25 degrees of disclosure. In addition, it is worth noting another nice feature, a heavy scanner unit with removed backup goes down smoothly and should not to be held.
The cover is equipped with an automatic document feeder (ADF), which is a separate cause for pride, because thanks to it automatic duplex scanning is possible. ADF scanning limits resolution to 600 dpi. However, you do not need a larger resolution for document scanning, and as for photos you’d better use a tablet computer, because apart from restrictions on the scanning resolution, the document feeder module has a limit on the density of paper.
In an autonomous mode the scanner can record images on a memory card or USB-flash drive. Scanning settings offer selection of the type of available images (document or photo), format for saving documents (JPG, PDF, compacted PDF or TIFF), and resolution (75 dpi, 150 dpi, 300 dpi, 600 dpi). You can also select the size of a scanned image. In addition, there is a mode for automatic cropping, which allows you to scan oversized documents. As in many Canon multifunction devices, equipped with color graphic display, a preview mode is provided, which facilitates the work with the scanner. In addition, settings include a mode of sharpening increase to be activated.
ScanGear is a scanning software, quite recognizable, and there are no significant differences from previous software versions. There are three mode settings: a fully automatic mode, a basic mode with a choice of source and destination, as well as an enhanced mode, which allows you to change a lot of settings, ranging from resolution and up to tone and color balance. In addition, the enhanced mode allows you to create settings’ profiles, the number of which is unlimited.
Printing
There is a 4-color printer in the MX870, but five cartridges: a standard CMYK color model plus a separate cartridge of higher capacity with black pigment ink designed for printing high-quality texts. A printing head is quick-detachable. The procedure for replacing ink cartridges, as in most modern models of printers, the Canon as well, is quite simple. Firstly, all the seats are indicated, so it is impossible to mix up the location for installation, and secondly, all the cartridges are LED illuminated with several options (permanent illumination means that a cartridge is full, blinking slowly - needs to be replaced, blinking rapidly - the ink is out).
The printing unit has two peculiar features, or rather two big pluses, fairly important for office work. Firstly, availability of two paper trays: a standard rear tray and a cassette to put the paper in for everyday printing, that is very useful when you need to alternately use a variety of paper types and sizes. On the whole, paper capacity offer you more than enough 300 sheets of paper: 150 sheets from a sliding cassette in front, and 150 sheets from a rear tray. Secondly, there is a duplex unit, but unlike the HP devices, it is not mounted and does not take up extra space, so you can learn about its existence, only if you read a list of features. Duplex printing enables to perform printing on both sides of a sheet of paper automatically with no necessity to turn over the pages manually. Both functions are likely to have a profound effect on the office work, increasing its productivity and resulting in saving the paper. In addition there is one more tray for paper input, the automatic document feeder (ADF), which handles up to 35 sheets of plain paper for copying and scanning.
In general, the printer is quick enough. After power is on, printer is ready for work in 20-30 seconds, and pause between printing tasks is only a few seconds, of course, if the printer has not yet been "asleep". You can be upset with traditional for Canon printers’ pauses for service operations during printing, which occur when you perform continuous high-volume printing. The duration of these pauses is 2-5 seconds, but sometimes is up to a minute, however, the latter is very rare.
Given the availability of readers from flash drives and a color display, a standalone operation of the MX870 is taken for granted. Print settings include a selection of the original size and type, print quality, print mode activation without frames, suppression of the "red-eye" effect, date and file imprinting, as well as automatic and manual correction of the image, which includes the same settings which are available in the print settings on PC in the "Processing" tab. Print settings are divided into five tabs: Quick, Home, Page, Processing, Service.
Copying
Apart from a standard option Copy mode offers many other versions. They include, for example, a two-sided copy in all possible variants (1-sided original to 2-sided copy, 2-sided original to 1-sided copy, as well as a 2-sided original to 2-sided copy), two and four copies on a single sheet, borderless copy, image repeat (18 options), sorting out by copies when creating more than one copy of a multi-page document, copy with faded colors correction, copy an open book with black frames removal, copy with margin for binding and copy with removal of binding holes, which is very convenient when copying document filings.
There is a possibility to preview the original on the LCD screen, as well as scaling in the range of 25-400% in increments of 1% to see the changes on the display. In addition, there are a lot of options for format conversions and fitting to the paper size. Print settings include selection of quality, paper size and type, intensity, imprinting of page number, as well as the choice of page orientation.
Faxing
For office MFPs faxing feature is important no less than direct printing, because this type of document transmission is still widely used. Canon PIXMA MX870 can send and receive both black/white and color images, and each mode has a separate key for the process to be started. You should not forget about the duplex printing, which can significantly save paper and your time when receiving faxes. To save paper, you can also save the received messages in the MFP memory and later select and print only necessary ones. The MX870 memory is enough for saving 250 black-and-white pages. Setting of groups and speed dial numbers is standard and includes 99 cells.
Canon PIXMA MX870 features a lot of functions, which modern MFP are equipped with. They include cable and wireless network access, built-in memory card reader, ADF with the possibility of duplex scanning, automatic duplex printing (here it is worth noting that its implementation is more successful than in competing HP devices), as well as a built-in fax transmission module.
