Excellent printer overall

This little boy is excellent. And you can't beat it for the price too. Also extremely easy to set up.



I am coming from an HP LaserJet also 30 papers per minute. So I was comparing it to the HP when I shopped.



My HP while it served me good was not as sharp black as the Brother is. I like the print results from the Brother much better. Plus the Brother have settings whether you're printing text only graphics general or office documents in addition you can choose "manual" and tweak the settings yourself to your liking. I also like that the size of the printer is pretty small.



The HP was a little faster from sleep mode (like 8 seconds) while the Brother 5370 takes approx. 14 seconds. Not a biggie. The processor was faster in the HP but 99% of the time you won't notice the difference. Once it starts printing it spits out papers like crazy. Very fast. One important note though: The fast 32 ppm is only if you are printing in 600 dpi mode. If you need the higher quality 1200 dpi mode print speed will be down by half! But there again 99% of the time the 600 dpi is more than enough. Some higher quality graphics may require 1200 dpi though.



Printing envelopes thru the multi-purpose paper tray is very good and they're not getting curled (like many old Brothers did) as long as you open the rear output tray. It can not print thru the regular printing area (if you do it will still print but envelopes will get wrinkled). I miss the HP in that area. It's much less cumbersome.



The printer is quite noisy. But most fast laser printers are noisy.



The duplexer worked beautifully. You just select "Duplex" or "Booklet" and the printer does the rest. Very good job with that.



I did not use the wireless networking but from the manual it seems to be a little complicated. Also from the manual is the following: "...Although the printer can be used in both wired & wireless network only ONE of the connections methods can be used at a time..." So keep that in mind if you want to use both.



I would suggest the following improvements if Brother is interested to listen:



- Make it quieter;

- Add a little high-quality display instead of all the lamps (also miss from my HP - all cheap inkjet have'em today!);

- If out of paper it should beep so I know to add paper (optional - not everyone will like beeps);

- Enable the multi-purpose paper tray to be opened with one hand (like my HP) not force me to use both hands.



Overall though it is a pleasure to use. Highly recommended.



**UPDATE**



I contacted Brother to help me setup wireless network. I must say I am amazed at the support I got. I can't recall if I ever had such a good experience with any other company! No waiting knowledgeable staff and helped me in less than minutes! And it works like a charm!More detail ...

A nicely designed printer...

Review updated on October 13 2009 to reflect firmware changes and add information on ink consumption -



The Canon MX-860 is an all-in-one printer designed for home or small business. The printing is fast sharp and clear. The auto-document feeder scans both sides of the page a tremendous time saver when you work with two-sided originals. Couple that with duplex-printing and it's trivial to reproduce two-sided forms and documents. The network connectivity also works well...in the six months I've had the printer it's operated flawlessly in a mixed Mac/Windows environment on both wireless and wired networks.



Let's look at the MX-860 on a piece-by-piece basis ...



Printing

The Canon MX-860 uses a set of five ink cartridges for printing. Two of the cartridges are black with the other three being the typical Magenta/Cyan/Yellow set. The printed output is easily sharp enough to be used for business letters; it almost rivals laser printers in quality. To save paper the printer has built-in duplexing. I haven't measured it but single-sided printing speed is quite good...I suspect that the 38 pound weight of the printer is due to some good size motors pulling the paper and moving the printhead around. Printing in duplex mode is quite a bit slower. To avoid smearing the printer waits for the first-side to dry before printing the second side.



Photographs have good tonal gradation and overall appearance however they don't equal those from a high-end printer that's specifically designed to print photographs. The difference though is slight and everybody has liked the prints that I've made. The printer has the usual slots on the front to allow you to insert your camera's memory cards.



Scanning

Whoopee! Duplex scanning! Have you ever tried to scan a stack of two sided pages? And get them merged into one file in the right order? I tried. Once. Then I went out and paid $400 for a dedicated scanner (the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510). With duplex scanning capability on the MX-860 I wouldn't have needed to do that. You put the papers in the feeder tell the printer that it's a two-sided original and push the button.



Faxing

Outgoing faxing works fine. The faxes seem to get there. Originally the designers of the fax system missed an extremely important feature...you couldn't specify the number of rings before the fax machine answered. Without that ability it was almost impossible for the machine to peacefully co-exist with your phone service in a single line household. This problem was fixed by a firmware update and current purchasers can set the number of rings before pick-up. Unfortunately Canon hasn't posted the new firmware so owners of older machines are stuck...be careful if you buy one used. +1 brownie point for recognizing and fixing the problem. -2 for not making it available... :>(



Networking and Setup

I had no problems getting both the wireless and wired network up and running. The setup is simple and straight forward. You'll need a USB cable to get the wireless network configured. It may be possible to wirelessly configure the wireless network but there are certain insanities that even I won't try. You can only use one network - wired or wireless - at once. As I mentioned in the intro it comes with both Macintosh and Windows software. Getting it to work on my additional networked computers was as simple as inserting the DVD and running the install program.



Ink Consumption

Some printer politely sip ink but this isn't one of them. It's not quite as bad as beer consumption at a frat party but in the last 2500 pages I've gone through six black and two full sets of color cartridges. That works out to slightly over 10.5 cents per page at Amazon's current (11/11/09) prices for OEM ink cartridges...fine for normal use but not great if you're going to use the printer heavily. Your ink consumption will vary depending on the mix of photos graphics and text that you print.



Packaging

You know that ubiquitous orange tape that printer manufactures use to hold everything together? It's there in spades. I wish I owned that franchise. Otherwise it looks like the printer should ship well. It's well isolated with plenty of molded styrofoam.



In summary this is my fourth Canon printer and probably the twentieth printer that I've owned. Outside of the faxing issue it works great. The duplex scanning and printing are valued additions and real time savers...I would have given it a solid five stars if it wasn't for the faxing problem. I haven't used the printer enough to get a sense of long-term reliability; after a couple of thousand sheets of paper it's been jam free and solid.More detail ...