Brother MFC-8420 Laser Multifunction Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I went through a slew of hp printers. I experienced lousy, "outsourced" technical support, and had two printers fail in the same year. This on the heels of my friends brand new color laser fiasco, which was three failures in one year (also HP). They used to be the best, with printers like the 4050n and other tireless workhorses, but I think other vendors are now making significant inroads, especially in this middle ground space. You'll find HP laser printers to be profoundly expensive for what they buy, with high print costs, and low ram. The 1300 is a fine example of where HP has gone wrong.
So, we took the plunge on this 8420 (we got the "one up" D model, which includes duplexing -- works like a charm, and at about 1c a page (as the cost of paper) it will pay for itself quickly).
The upsides:
1) Very cheap toner. Especially the high yield. 6k pages for 90 bucks, which is more than any other cartridge we could find (and you get get those cheaper than 90 some places)
2) Very convenient. You've no idea how awesome a 50 page sheetfed scanner with OCR actually is until you need it. ;-)
3) Comes with a full toner cartridge. My hp's came with 1/2 full "intro" ones.
4) Best-of-breed. For it's downsides (below), it really is the best you can buy for the money.
5) It doesn't jam.
The downsides are:
1) It's a little slow to copy
2) High end color scans are not that hot. A little flat. If you want high end color scans, drop 60 bucks and buy a Scanjet 5300c. The scanner is really designed for document processing, at which it excels.
3) It's a little pricey to buy in. The high end models are overpriced for what they buy (duplexing for ~100 bucks, network for another 100-150). Yikes.
4) The software is a little "clunky", but it works
5) The warranty pretty much stinks (1 year). If you can get an extended warranty, it's a [really] good idea. With so many components, all-in-ones have that much more of a chance to fail, and they do. ;-)
Remember, inkjet printers are sold practically at a loss by their manufacturers (especially cheaper ones). They are designed to make up their money in ink cartridges. This is important when you are comparing all-in-ones.
Despite it's minor downsides, I'd highly reccomend this ot a friend. If you need something to get your business off the ground like we did, and don't want to spend a fortune or worry about being in constant IT mode keeping everything configured and working smoothly, this is the way to go. Faxing is a breeze, scanning is easy (50 docs at a time is a LOT btw), and printing is very high quality.
We combined this with a cheap bubblejet, and now we have the best of all possible worlds. We reccomend this route!!!

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Winner of the prestigious Editor's Choice Award from PC Magazine and combining all the necessary office machines into a single box, the Brother MFC-8420 is an excellent addition for home businesses or small networks. Including a laser printer and copier, color and monochrome scanner, and a 33.6 Kpbs modem fax, this convenient desktop assistant offers all the functions you need to keep printing and mailing costs to a minimum.
The monochrome laser printer and copier produces letter or legal sized pages at up to 17 ppm, with an outstanding 2,400 x 600 dpi resolution. Up to 99 copies can be sorted or reduced or enlarged at a range of 25 to 400 percent; manual two-sided printing helps you save on consumables. The scanner operates in either 48-bit color or 256-level grayscale, enabling you to scan full-color photos or monochrome documents. Either way, with an interpolated resolution up to 9,600 x 9,600 dpi, your scans will be impeccably smooth.
The fax provides a variety of sending and retrieval options designed to improve efficiency. Broadcast faxes up to 390 stations, or speed dial to any of up to 300 coded numbers. The 50-sheet automatic document feeder frees you from having to baby sit the box, while the 600-page memory guards against paper shortages. The MFC-8420 includes a one-year warranty with instant exchange service.

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Canon Pixma MX850 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2436B002) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)My brief observations seem to indicate that the MX850 really doesn't improve upon the MP830 in some important areas.
I've owned the Canon MP830 for almost a year and and I just bought the Canon MX850 for a friend, so this is a direct user comparison. The 830 has been 100% reliable, producing excellent scans, prints, copies, and faxes. The MX850 is shorter in height, but otherwise just as bulky and heavy as the 830. Canon seems to be using a less robust scanner in the 850 than in the older MP830. Scans on the 830 are consistently over 4 times as fast: a 300 dpi 8.5x11" import scan into Photoshop CS3 took about 7 seconds with the 830 and about 33 seconds with the 850. The 830 wins in the noise category as well: it's roughly 60% quieter than the 850 when scanning. The 850 produces an annoying high pitched tone while the 830 has more of a low "murmer" sound. The 850, to be fair, will not be considered to be overly loud for most environments. With scanning, the color reproduction seems fairly close between the two machines, though I'm getting more color accuracy from the 830. Copies on the 830 produced more accurate colors, too: a copy of a TIME magazine cover on a matt photo paper (with settings set to "Matt Photo Paper" and "High") yielded extremely accurate reproductions of the original, while the the 850 veered too far toward the yellow end of the spectrum. Both produced excellent detail, though. Scans of dot-screen images were well rendered with the 830, while the 850 exhibited substantial moire effects.
Not sure about energy consumption comparisons though the 850's scanner seems to be using a more compact, (newer technology?) low lumens light-producing element than the very bright 830, so it probably uses less power.
Both machines will not disappoint, but with the advantage of my brief side-by-side comparison I'd recommend that you save $40 bucks and get the MP830. They both use the same ink cartridges. One last observation: the 850's LCD screen has a much higher pixel count, but that's only one small improvement amid the 830's superior traits.
3/18/2008 - Update: I've learned that the MX850 is using "contact image sensor" technology (CIS) where as the MP830 is using the more common "charged-coupled devices" (CCD) technology. For those with an interest in the tech aspects I've included some info I found online:
"Most of large format scanners in use today use CCD (charge-coupled devices) as the primary data capture element in their construction. Recently this position has started to be challenged by the lower cost CIS (contact image sensor) technologies, which have come mainly from the small flatbed scanner market. The traditional CCD or camera scanner is able to produce a very high number of colours from the scanned original and copes with folded documents reasonably well. These scanners tend to be preferred where the image to be scanned is either photographic or has extensive use of tones and shading. CIS scanners have the advantage in providing all the optics in a space of 20 mm or so, which in the CCD scanner equivalent would occupy more like 600 mm. The secondary advantage is that CIS scanners have no need for magnification, lenses or a rigid frame - a major saving in construction costs and weight. However, CIS scanners do not do so well when scanning very pale colours or photographs."


Click Here to see more reviews about: Canon Pixma MX850 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2436B002)

This is an All-In-One powerhouse. Thanks to its patented print head technology and 5-color ink system, you¿ll create spectacular photos with 9600 x 2400 color dpi resolution1, and it¿s fast: A photo lab quality 4" x 6" borderless print takes only about 21 seconds2. Copies will be remarkably true to the originals, and when scanning photos you¿ll produce impressive 4800-dpi results, with vibrant 48-bit color depth. The built-in Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) holds up to 35 originals and enables automatic duplexing, so you don¿t have to manually turn over your 2-sided original. This versatile machine is networkable via an Ethernet connection, and offers an optional BU-30 Bluetooth interface3, so you can print wirelessly from a PC or PDA. You can also print photos right from memory cards4 ¿ selecting and enhancing images on the high-resolution 2.5" color TFT display ¿ or directly from a digital camera.

Click here for more information about Canon Pixma MX850 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2436B002)

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