Canon ImageClass MF4380dn

The Canon ImageClass MF4380dn is an all-in-one mono laser SMB printer. The first thing that caught my eye was the size - it is quite 'slim' for a laser printer with a height of 36 cm.

The front panel includes three large backlit buttons for copy, fax, and scan, flanked by fax settings and copy settings and a small LCD menu in the middle. The big quick-buttons for starting and stopping/resseting copy and scan tasks is very convenient for quickly starting or stopping a scan/copy job. But on the downside I felt the built quality was not up to the mark - feeling a little plasticky and not that sturdy.

The first thing that caught my eye was the size - it is quite 'slim' for a laser printer.

On the performance front, the Canon MF4380 fared reasonably well speedwise on all three functions--printing, scanning, and copying. It printed text document quickly, at 16 pages per minute (surprisingly the speed for both the normal and draft mode were the same). It scanned a color image in 28 seconds (average fora laser printer), and it copied a page of text in 13 seconds (a little slow here).

The Canon MF 4380dn's print quality, though not stellar, was reasonably good. Like most other models here, it produced sharp, dark text that was legible even at 2-point type size. A series of narrow parallel lines looked straight and even, with virtually no banding. A grayscale photo printed at default settings appeared too light and a bit washed out, though it was smooth and clean.

Copy quality was reasonably good, with straight black letters in a copied page of text. Printed color scans had a smooth texture and reproduced color accurately. On-screen, however, scans looked a bit dull.

Feature-wise, it comes with usual options you normally find in an all-in-one laser printer and apart from the familiar offerings you will not find anything extra. It comes with network support, automatic duplexer (printing on both sides without manual intervention) though it supports only A4 and LTR paper size - not a big deal if you are using it mainly for home use. The main paper tray holds 100 sheets, and comes with a automatic document feeder capacity of 50 sheets.

Canon's MF Toolbox scan software lets you scan via the PC and save the image to an e-mail message or graphics file. You can configure two custom buttons to choose the scanner and to designate where to put the scan; thereafter, clicking a button will save the scan to the preconfigured place. Other than a fairly extensive driver, MF Toolbox is the only software Canon bundles with the MF 5750.

Even though it might be a bit on the higher side regarding the printer price (Rs 38.995), the running cost is quite low at Rs 1.1 which might be quite handy for heavy users.