There are printers and there are printers. We are all familiar with the small cube-shaped laser printers that display some bake sale pamphlets or a school book report that are designed to sit on a shelf near your desk at home. So, there are giants like Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw, a printer that oscillates between the ordinary home laser printer and the huge multifunctional office machine.
Although this printer will not group and staple your projects, it will do almost everything else. It has a built-in scanner – just lift the lid, drop the page and use the built-in LCD screen to send the file to a mobile device, PC or, if you are in 1996, a fax machine – and a pair of paper trays , one for odd sizes and one for letter / legal.
This guy is great. It weighs about 64 pounds and measures 43 inches tall and measures 21 x 29 inches. It takes up a lot of space. Be aware of this before dedicating a seat at your desk to this.
The printer prints in color or black and white duplex and supports wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity. You can also connect it to a computer via USB. A generous 5-inch screen lets you choose from a variety of functions and settings, and you can also use the built-in NFC function to connect phones to the printer with a single touch. There is also a USB port on the front of the device for fast printing of documents and photos.
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The speed was above average in my tests with about three seconds for black and white printing, seven seconds for color printing. That last number was definitely affected by a system in which the printer spit out three color pages at once and heated the color toner for the next three pages. Canon estimates about 3,000 prints for the included black toner cartridge and about 2,000 for the color cartridge, although its mileage may vary.
As a standard printer, it works perfectly. It is one of the few printers I tested recently that connects seamlessly to my home network and was available for all devices in the home, including phones and laptops. This was surprisingly invigorating, because I definitely experienced frustration when trying to get multiple printers to connect to my local network. The MF743 found my network and remained connected consistently.
The speed, as I mentioned above, is average and I managed to make some very heavy prints – 50 pages or more – in a few minutes.
The device’s screen is large enough to access basic printer features. The configuration is best performed on the remote administration system which essentially turns the printer into a web server, which allows you to enter address book entries for the scanner’s e-mails and faxes, update user profiles and change settings. Unless you are tasked with setting up this printer for a small office, you can use it immediately and can easily ignore the most complex settings.
Canon does not recommend photo paper on this printer, so I tested all of these prints on plain letter-size printer paper. The black and white reproduction was perfect and you will find no flaws in this template for text documents. The color test prints were surprisingly bright and clear and I found the color accuracy to be acceptable. Again, this is not a photo printer, but photos sent from an iPhone directly to the printer are clear and sharp.
The copy feature was a little disappointing. I printed out a color test page that I had printed before and ran it back into the copier. The result, as you can see, is quite irregular. Each color had an orange tint and there were many artifacts caused by the light that shone on the print. I also tested the identity copier on a standard driver’s license and some other cards. The copied results were below average, but readable and, if you are not demanding, usable for record keeping. The printer scans at 600 DPI, which should be more than enough, but it looks like the integrated scanning and printing system doesn’t work as well as it could.
Digitization was a completely different story. The scanned images looked wonderful on the computer, and Canon includes the MF Scan Utility for scanning on Windows or macOS. By being connected to the network, you can start scanning from anywhere and the results are incredible. In fact, scanning and printing from a computer may be the only viable method for copying color documents using this printer.
But, see: the best place for this printer is in a small office. It’s a lot of firepower for home use – the paper tray holds 300 sheets, which is absolutely much more than the needs of a family with children. If you’re, say, scanning papers in a doctor’s office or other professional situation, it’s the perfect printer. As it costs $ 400, with black and white and color toner replacements reaching just under $ 100 each, you would spend less than on a more powerful copier / printer combination, and it does almost everything you need to. a small office. ID and passport scanning are great complements (as long as you are scanning and not copying) and the fax feature is, as they say, the icing on the cake of the 1990s.
There are some features that standalone devices would probably do better. If, for example, you purchased this for the ID scanner and plan to print the IDs immediately, a separate ID scanner may be the best solution. Or, if you plan to copy a lot of documents and color images, there are definite limitations for this printer. But if you’re doing well transferring scans to your computer and then storing or printing them as needed, you’re definitely in good hands.
Canon makes great photo printers. This is not one of those. This is a heavy job for a printer designed for small to medium sized offices. Print quality is fast, economical and solid, and a definite upgrade to other multifunction printers that I have seen in this price range.
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- Great print speed.
- Sturdy paper tray and design.
- Color copies are not good.
- Perfect for a small office.