Canon ImageClass MF4570dn

Good device, good drivers, bad installer for Windows 7

My Environment: 100% Windows 7 PCs, an iPad and two iPhones.

As a professional consultant within the print industry, I did a lot of research for what to put in my own home office related to print devices. I reached out to vendors, got corporate VAR pricing, but in the end, I saw that this was sold for $212.00 online with no shipping cost and jumped on it.

The device is fast, quiet and efficient. The toner won't last too long, but there are plenty of options for buying new or reman toner for the device at a fair price so I am less concerned with that as I typically do more scanning than printing.

The rating is for the device itself. The quality is excellent and the speed from energy saver is very fast (which since I pay for the power in my home, is important to me).

PROS:
Included duplex is fast and quiet(ish) and I haven't had a jam yet (and nearly all the prints were duplex)
First Page Out time is short
The wireless network was fairly easy to configure and is reliable.
Network Scanning utility is very good. I love being able to scan to my computer from the MFD without needing to do anything at the PC itself.
Good Scan, Print and Copy quality (haven't used fax...)
Its small and doesn't make strange noises when I don't expect it (some MFDs do annoying things, like calibrate, when idle).

CONS:
Does not have Airprint support. I use a small laptop as a server, so its not an issue after I installed Fingerprint (google it, its a real great solution)
Low Toner Yield (always an issue at this small device and this low a price)
Installation required disable of UAC

As good as I feel about this device, if this device was being sold for more than say $275 (shipped) I would have possibly chose a different model. The lack of Airprint is a big deal for me as my family and I use my iPad quite a bit.

TECHNICAL NOTE: The setup, once I turned off User Account Controls (which is on by default in Windows Vista and 7), worked great. That lesson, however, took over an hour to figure out. If you are going to install this device on a Windows Vista or 7 PC, turn off UAC (search for UAC in the start menu), reboot and install. You can turn UAC back on after the install completes.

No Mac drivers

Be warned that as of this date there are no Mac drivers available for this Canon all-in-one. Canon says they should be available in a week or two (would have been nice to know before ordering and trying to set it up).

One star right now until the drivers are available, then we'll see how well it works.

toner cartridge doesn't last long

This is a great printer/copier/fax machine and it's much smaller in size than the brother laser printer we used to use. So it's saving us on space and does the same exact thing the Brother did. This new machine says the toner is rated for 2100 copies. The brand new canon 128 cartridge we just bought last month is already out (a real one not the refurbished kind) and it only lasted 1675 copies! If that's the case and if each cartridge is going to be like that then I'm gonna need a new cartridge about every month for my busy small business. That's ~12 new toner cartridges a year and at $80 each and that seems like a lot of money. Everything else about this laser printer is great. I just wish the toner cartridge lasted longer.

Do not buy this printer if you have a Mac

Before buying this printer I checked the specs and it clearly states that it is Mac OS10.x compatible. I got the printer and after unpacking it, and looking everywhere in the manual to figure out how to install the printer with my Mac Mine, I could find absolutely zero information. Then I looked on the box to see if it even said anything about the Mac compatibility. On the box, once again there was the Mac OS symbol and next to it in small print it directed me to Canon USA for a driver. After finding a driver, I downloaded the driver and installed it. The instructions that came with the driver then sent me on a chase to find how to add the printer from system preferences on the Mac. After spending nearly two hours and something that should hopefully take no more than 10 minutes and being extremely frustrated, THE PRINTER IS GOING BACK. Save yourself frustration and do not buy this printer if you have a Mac. Now in all fairness, I did not call customer support, but really......is it really that hard to put all the necessary information on the disc that comes with the printer and setup some auto install function.

Excellent price for so many features

This machine has many features for a low price. If you want to take advantage of all the features, setup isn't terribly simple, but it isn't extremely complicated either. It just takes a bit of time and following the steps in the Starter Guide carefully. Here are the pros and cons.

PROS
- Relatively easy setup of all features when using the Starter Guide
- Completely network compatible; ie all major features (print, scan, fax) are available over the network and can be accessed at the machine or from any network computer. I set mine up by ethernet connection to my router and everything worked great. I found it was best to install the MF Network Scan Utility software on each network computer to get the machine to recognize the network computers for the scan function. That software is actually useful, though and not bloatware. You do not need to install any of the Canon software to get just the printing functions to work.
- Totally quiet when not printing.
- Very fast printing even when duplexing.
- Platen glass is great for scanning or copying books. Top tray is great for scanning loose leaves.
- Well packed for shipping

CONS
- Network installation limits placement of the machine near a router or other ethernet access port. Not a major limitation, but I thought I'd mention it.
- Loud during printing.
- While basic printing, scanning and faxing is relatively easy to set up, it can be difficult to figure out how to get some of the more sophisticated features to work.
- Lots of packing material even inside the machine. Every bit must be taken out before the machine is used and its easy to leave a piece in there.

Overall, I highly recommend this multifunction printer and would buy it again. It is well worth the time and effort to it takes to learn how to get the most out of its myriad abilities.

Great Printer - win7 driver was a pain

I'm a big canon fan, have lots of their products, and this printer does not disappoint; fast, quiet, clean, and great value. I don't know why I did not think about getting a laser printer long ago. I had no idea that the experience I have in the office of near instant duplex printing, walking up with a stack of papers to copy, or scanning into a PDF could be had at home for such a low price.

(I'm just annoyed with myself for battling on for so long with my endlessly self cleaning and expensive inkjet printer, (will still use that for some colour printing, but gone are the days when I printed photos at home when they are better done on line by service providers), plus struggling with my old canon scanner that no longer works on windows 7.

One annoyance with this Canon printer driver is if you have a work related windows 7 set up: you must have a LOCAL administrative user to install the drivers, else it will throw an error. Having a network/domain account with admin rights does not work, which seems like badly written driver software and an unnecessary struggle.

Just posting this tech tip here: [...]

Best little multifunction printer available today

We have recently acquired a Brother 7360n and a HP 1217nf all in one laserjet printers along with this Canon MF4570dn. It was interesting to see the different approaches taken by these three companies to produce a product for the home and small office market. The HP had the least refined design and the highest price by far for replacement cartridges but was easy to setup and get running. The Brother 7360n had the smallest footprint as it does not have a tray that sticks out from the side but is contained within the space of the main body of the printer. The Canon took a middle ground with a trap that sticks out 4 inches but has a very nice transparent dust cover and lid and has an exit tray for the printed pages that is better than the Brother approach were the pages are ejected to a space inside the printer and they tend to jam.

Printing is fast for all three multifunction laserjets but the big difference is in what happens after the page is printed. With the Canon there is immediate silence, with the HP silence after about 15 seconds, and with the Brother the loud fan noise continues for a full 11 minutes. After some research I found this to be a common defect across the Brother laserjet line, even with units costing 2-3 times as much as the 7360n.

Cost for the replacement printer cartridges is much less for the Brother and the Canon than for the HP printer which is double theirs in cost. There are also high capacity cartridges available for the Canon and the Brother but not for the HP 12xx series laserjet printers.

Setup was about the same with all three manufacturer's printers with a couple of exceptions. The Nuance software provided with the Brother is a couple notches above the similar software provided by Hewlett Packard and Canon. Setting the IP address for the printer was simple and straightforward with the Brother and the HP printers and Byzantine with the Canon 4570n printer. Canon makes this even worse by not providing a manual as a simple PDF but instead requiring the installation of a Web application that is the last step in the installation process.

The Canon 4570 installation process looks for the IP address of the printer which by default is created by a DHCP server. Not a good idea if you turn the printer off as it will then be assigned a new IP address and your computers will not be able to print to it.
Setting the IP address is a 10 step process within a bizarre menu structure that is as counter intuitive as I have come across in 30 years of working with computer devices. Canon's product managers would be wise to go out of their labs and look at how Brother and HP do their menu and UI designs.

In terms of easy to use controls with a minimum of key entries the Brother 7360n is the best followed at a distance by the Canon 4570dn. Worst is the HP which is hobbled by a very small keypad that leaves little room for task specific buttons and so menus are required more for even simple copying or faxing.

For scanning the Brother with the Nuance software comes out on top with the ability to enter computers by name and push scanned images to the computer where they can appear as a PDF file that is ready to save or to attach to an email. Scanning with the HP is also easy. Canon makes more difficult in that it has to be set as "remote" to control it from the PC. The Canon does make it easy to scan and have the scan go automatically to a computer. I use this feature with a NAS box that is mapped as a network drive on my computer. All scans go through the computer to a Scans folder on the NAS box with a new folder that is date stamped to hold the scan(s) making them accessible to any computer on the network.

I only have done it on the Canon but its document feeder when used with the scanner and the software provided will let you take multiple pages and put them in the document feeder and then the Canon scans each one in sequence and the software on the computer creates a multi-page PDF file automatically that contains all the scanned documents into one file. This is a very big time saver.

For printing and copying I can turn on the Canon and have the first page printed in 15 seconds. When the last page has printed the Canon is silent until the next print job which after the Brother and HP experiences is greatly appreciated and reason enough to buy the Canon over theirs.

Loading paper can be easily done without removing the tray and only Canon provides a dust cover for the tray that tilts up for loading paper. After months of use there has never been a paper jam and many different types and weights of paper have been used with the printer. Copying is also easy and can be done with individual pages or multiple pages can be run through the document feeder so that it can be left unattended if desired. Printing is very fast and the laserjet cartridge as been much less expensive than inkjet cartridges so the payback is very fast.

Overall when compared to the HP and Brother multifunction laserjet machines the Canon comes out on top - at least at this time. I say at this time as in 6 months Brother may have new models without the fan problem and they would be a good buy if that happens.

For Mac users a bit annoying installation, but only a little bit

Until a few days ago, my all Mac household was being forced to run Windows on a virtual machine in order to use Canon MF5770 which does not have any Mac drivers. It was a terribly convulated setup, breaking every few months and a major pain to restore. Got this printer MF4570dn a few days ago. The brand choice was very easy - we've had Canon printers (both laser and inkjet) for a long time, and they are phenomenal. The MF5770 that this printer is replacing, worked without any problems at all for almost 5 years for us. It would still be in use if we remained a Windows household.

The package contains a phone cord but not a USB cord. You will need that cord if you plan to use the printer locally (i.e. attached directly to your computer). For Mac users, you WILL need that cord for scanning. My printer is attached to the router for network access.

Now, to the point of the review...(for Mac users)
Canon seems to have kept the Windows users in mind when it prepared the printer's packaging. While the printer itself works tremendously well on Mac, the installation is aimed squarely at Windows users. The install CD that ships with it does not have Mac software on it. Don't waste your time looking through it. You'll have to get the drivers from Canon's website. Just search for "canon mf4570dn drivers" or something like that. When you do get to the website, you'll select the OS. Making this selection gives you a bunch of files to choose from, including .exe files in addition to the .dmg files. No idea why! Then you have to download each file individually - the printer driver, fax driver and the MF toolbox. Canon? Could you not have combined them all into one easy to install package? Was it that difficult? Sigh!

Anyway, once downloaded, install the drivers and the toolbox. Setting up the printer on both Snow Leopard and Lion is easy enough. The only vexing part was the fax printer setup. Everything about the fax printer seemed to setup smoothly. But any time I tried to print to the fax printer (to send fax from my laptop directly, without needing to print and then fax), an error message popped up "No recipients listed in [Recipient List]". That was the hardest part of the whole installation process.

Ultimately I figured out the "problem". All you have to do is, choose "General Settings" in the options drop down box and that lets you type in a recipient's fax number (see pic in customer images section of amazon). After that, its flawless.

Network installation basically just involved adding the printer on your mac. The printer had done the acquiring ip etc all on its own without any input from me whatsoever and was ready to go!

About the printer itself, I'll keep it short. It is excellent - for all four purposes, printing, copying, scanning and faxing. And, in case you missed it, yes you CAN fax directly from your mac.

On Mac, the printer needs to be connected with a USB cable if you want to scan. You can use MF Toolbox or Preview
etc to scan. Just finished scanning a multi-page document into a single pdf. No problems.

FYI, the included starter cartridge is rated for 1000 pages according the supplied manual. I ordered a replacement standard/full cartridge based on some other reviews. That package will likely remain unopened for some time!

Another reviewer has criticized this printer due to the fact that you have to press the scan button to be able to scan. Meaning, if the printer is in the copy mode, and you try to scan, you'd get an error message.
While this may be a major annoyance for Windows users (and I'm not sure if it is), for Mac users, its not that big a deal since network scanning is not available to begin with. I cannot even imagine what would I want to scan without first placing it on the machine which makes the idea of remotely scanning a bit of puzzle to me. I mean scanning remotely, not network scanning. The ability to scan TO a networked computer wouldve been great!

All in all, an excellent multifunction printer for mac. Get it!

*** UPDATE January 2012 ***: The starter cartridge ran out after a little more than 680 pages (there's a counter on the machine). The machine still works awesomely well connected to a router where it acts as a network printer and fax machine (with a phone line attached). It is also connected to my iMac with a USB cable for scanning. Still sticking by my original assessment...Get it!

Perfect for small office

I have had this Canon about two months, and LOVE IT! I run a single-person office, and use it to fax, scan, print/copy. The speed is all you could ask for; almost instantaneous from Power Save to ready to copy. It prints clearly with excellent quality. Many functions can be accessed directly from the printer; you have to download some software from Canon (easy to find) to scan. Scanning is the least intuitive, as you still have to do some manual setting on the machine, it seems, before using the desktop software to complete the job. Nonetheless, when you do that you can scan to PDF or other types of documents easily.

The first cartridge, which was not a full version, lasted me a good 2-3 weeks; I was very satisfied. I'm on my first full cartridge now, which arrived a day prior to the printer. Amazon shipping was right on time, as always. The only thing this printer lacks that I could have used, was an ID copy feature, but that is a small price to pay for something that does everything you need, does it well, and quietly. The settings for loudness are much better than on the previous Canon I had; you can have this one truly do things quietly so as not to interfere with the other office functions, whereas on the older one I had, you could not. Highly recommended!

Good MFP with a subpar interface

I am coming from using a Canon MF5200 multifunction. The 5200 did not have network support but overall I am very happy with the 5200 features and interface.

This unit is fairly similar in design and I won't go into too much detail about what others have already said. Decent print quality, good scanner and compared to its rivals, probably the best MFP at this price point. I particularly like the duplex support which is not present in competing products at this price point.

However, with the networking support, Canon has botched the interface on this unit. On the 5200, if the unit is in scan mode and I sent it a print job, the print job would still print with the unit remaining in scan mode. Likewise, if the unit is in copy mode and I initiate a scan from the PC, it scans, no need to change the mode from the printer's panel. This unit however is not like that at all. If the unit is in scan mode, printing simply queues until the mode is changed. It cannot be changed from the MF toolbox but someone has to walk over to the unit and change it. If it is in print mode, a scan from the PC will fail. There is really no excuse for this and is inconvenient in an office environment where if the last guy scanned and forgot to switch the interface, the print queue stalls.

For home use, great unit. Would I use it in the office? No way.