The Canon Multipass F30 - The High Quality / Low Cost of Ownership Multifunction Champ
Written: Jan 05 '02 (Updated Jan 21 '02)
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Pros: Produces high quality scans, printouts and copies, low operating costs, easy to setup and install
Cons: Size, initial cost (street price $290-$350)
The Bottom Line: The best combination of speed, quality, and overall cost available in a multifunction device.
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| nc10's Full Review: Canon MultiPASS F30 Ink-jet Printer |
What is the Multipass F30?
The Multipass F30 is one of Canon's two new entries into the new wave of combination inkjet printer/copier/scanners. The F30 is primarily designed for home users, although it can be shared over a network. (For about $140 more, the F50 adds a fax machine to the package) The F30 serves as a color inkjet printer/36 bit scanner for your PC (but not for your Mac), as well as a stand alone color or b/w copier.
"In the box" you'll find the F30 itself, plastic input and output trays to be connected to the F30, a plastic input tray cover, a 60 page user's manual with table of contents and index, a power cord, a printhead, one complete set of full size ink cartridges, and a large foldout glossy Quick Start Guide. Needed, but NOT included, is a parallel cable and/or usb cable.
I've noticed some inkjet printers come with small "starter" ink cartridges, and it should be noted that full sized cartridges are included with this model.
I'd describe the user guide as barely adequate, it was clear and contains much of the key information you need, but it seems designed for the casual user. Many of the details I wanted to know were not included. The index often does not refer you to the most appropriate page, ie, the entry for copying takes you to page 44, which has a small trouble shooting section for "F30 will not make copy" rather than to page 21, the start of chapter 4 titled "How to Copy". Much of the missing information is included in an 140 page electronic manual on the cd, but I would prefer that Canon include a hard copy of this manual with the F30. On the other hand, I found the quick start guide to be just that, a terrific quick start guide.
The packaging appeared to be well thought out, easy to open, yet protecting the F30 well.
Installation and Setup
Setup of the F30 is easy and straightforward, thanks to the Quick Start Guide. You will need to decide whether you want to hook this unit up to your serial port or usb port, and then purchase the correct corresponding cable to do this. I chose to use a USB connection.
Setup of the F30 goes as follows:
1. Remove all of the shipping tape and packing materials. A special tape is used to hold different parts of the F30 in place during shipment. The Quick Start Guide walks you through removing the tape and packaging with clear pictures to make sure you don't miss anything.
2. Attaching the input and output trays. The trays install easily, and seem sturdy enough to hold up with normal use.
3. Connect the power cord to the printer and outlet, and power up the printer. The Quick Start Guide even shows how to connect the power cord for the most technically challenged user.
4. Install the printhead in the F30. The printhead and inktanks are accessed by pushing a spring loaded button on the side of the F30, allowing you to lift up the hinged scanning unit on top of the F30, giving access to the print mechanism. Canon inkjet printers are different from HP and Lexmark printers in that the print head and inktanks are separate. (This leads to lower ink refill costs, but the $65 print heads may eventually require replacement.) This step must be done carefully to avoid damaging the print head, but is easy to accomplish. Open the print head, slip it into the holder on the printer, and close the locking lever, which ensures it is positioned properly.
5. Install the ink tanks in the print head. There are 4 ink tanks to install, black, cyan, yellow, and magenta. Separate tanks for each color keeps costs down. Remove the packaging and protective tape from each ink tank and slip it into the color coded slot on the print head.
6. Next, close the scanning unit and run the printer through an alignment check. Pushing the "Align Print Head" button on the F30 prints out page of black and color bars, and you are asked to chose one that is most solid. This is a little tricky in poor lighting or if you have bad eyes.
7. Finally, you install the Multipass software. Insert the cd and follow the onscreen menu. During the installation you are asked to connect the printer to you PC (and the guide says it is important to not do this until instructed). The software then restarts your computer and you are ready to print, scan, or make copies. The multipass software adds two windows/icons to your desktop/system tray. One shows the status of the F30 (printing, scanning, idle, etc) and the other, the Multipass Toolbar, includes a set of buttons accessing printing, scanning or other functions. Some of the buttons can be modified to access any program you want to work with the printer (a fax program, photo editor, etc).
8. The last step, optional, is to install the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for the scanner. The F30 includes a full version of the widely respected Omnipage Pro.
DOES THE Multipass F30 WORK?
Yes. I first installed the F30 on on a system that included an Abit motherboard, 750 mhz Intel Celoron processor, 128 mg ram, Soundblaster 16, Creative Labs Riva TNT video card, network card, and a 20G hard drive, running Windows ME. The installation proceeded smoothly, and everything works as advertised.
Copying
The F30 can copy any size up to legal size documents. The control panel on the top of the F30 is well laid out, and intuitively designed. Casual users won't have much trouble performing all the basic operations. Copies can be reduced to 25%, or enlarged 400% by pushing one button to select enlarge or reduce then pushing +/- buttons to adjust the size in 1% increments. A menu to select one of a few preset copy ratios, say 78%, to reduce from legal size to letter size, is available.
The default copies are in black and white, pushing one button allows you to set the copier to make color copies. The default "normal" mode for color copies produces very good copies which match the color and appearance of the original on plain paper pretty well. There is also a "fast" mode (less quality) and a "fine" mode for high quality. I did not see a lot of improvement in fine mode.
Copy exposure can be adjusted to produced good copies of light or dark documents. This works pretty well, as I have made copies of faint carbon copy receipts that look better than the original carbon copy. The F30 can also make a mirror image copy of a document, and can tile multiple copies of a single image on one page.
Copying speed is limited by print out speed. I found full page "normal" color copies take about 1 minute and 20 seconds. B/W copies are much quicker.
Printing
Blank paper is loaded into the near vertical printer tray on the back of the printer. This tray has a plastic cover which should prevent the paper from picking up moisture or dust from the environment. Envelopes, glossy paper, banner paper, photo cards, t shirt transfers, transparencies, and magnet sheets can also be loaded onto this tray, which has an adjustable paper guide. The "almost straight" paper path through the printer should result in few paper jams (I have had none in the first 10 days of use).
Print quality is very good, both black and white text and color graphics on plain paper look very good. Color printouts are a little better than printouts from HP 812 and HP 840 printers my family also owns. I detect no banding in printouts containing large blocks of one color, and even small white text on colored background looks pretty good, although the letters do look a slightly fuzzy on normal paper. Maximum print resolution for b/w is 600 X 600, and 1200 X 2400 in color. Full page color printouts come out of the printer feeling a little wet, and take a few seconds to dry. These color pages take a little over one minute to print, while a page of b/w text takes less than 10 seconds to print.
Scanning
My first impressions of the scanner are very good. A full page scan only takes 5 seconds for b/w or greyscale, and 15 seconds for color, much faster than my several year old Visioneer parallel port scanner. Scans are saved in BMP, JPG, or TIF format. The Multipass Toolbar, always present in your toolbar or on your desktop, has buttons to select default scanning operations, with each button either configured to open the ScanGear scanning package, giving you control over the scan, or configured to just acquire an image using your default settings for your preferred application (email messages, photo editor, etc). Quality of color scans is very good, while grey scale scans are not quite as good. A wide range of scanning quality settings in color, grey scale and black and white are available, from 75 - 600 dpi. The OCR sofware (Omnipage Pro) is reputed to be one of the best packages available, but I have not used OCR software enough to rate it effectively. I did try scanning a few pages from the Multipass manual, and after scanning a page in a few seconds, Omnipage Pro identified all of the text accurately and retained much of the proper editing (line spacing, paragraphs, etc). After scanning, it pointed out each questionable letter, number, or word identification, and allowed you to correct it.
Other Comments/Cost Ownership
Once I decided to buy a multifunction unit, I found Lexmark, HP, and Canon all offered widely available, affordable models. The Lexmark X73 ($150) and X83($200) were cheapest. However, I had previously owned two Lexmark 5700 printers and each had lasted less than a year, exhibited mechanical problems, and had a high cost of ownership (ink). Print quality was great, though. The HP PSC 750 ($250) and PSC 950 ($400) were more promising choices, as I have found HP printers to be ultrareliable, and to provide consistently good printout quality. I ended up choosing the Canon F30 ($350 list price) over the HP models though, because most reviews I read predicted a lower cost of ownership (lower ink costs), and most reviews gave the Canon a slight edge in print/scan quality and print speed. Most people will likely find the print quality of both of the Canon and HP models acceptable, and will base their choice on the tradeoff off between the lower initial cost and smaller size of the usb-only HP PSC 750 against the lower operating cost, larger size, and dual/usb parallel connections of the Canon F30.
I purchased the Canon F30 from Dell during their December 2001 sale specials, for $290 shipped (10% off $350, plus a $25 off $150 coupon plus a free shipping special). Inkjet refills for the Canon appear to be reasonable, Sam's club sells a set of replacement ink tanks (1 each cyan, magenta, and yellow, and 2 of the black tanks) for $48. Office supply stores sell sets 1 of each color and 1 black ink tanks for ~$40. The estimated cost per page for the F30 is 2.6 cents/page for text, and 20 cents/page for color, while costs for the PSC 750 run about 6 cents/page for text and 28 cents/page for color, according to tests reported at CNET.com. Other reviews report similar results.
Support
Web support is adequate, but not outstanding. The Canon web site offers a few online FAQ's, free toll telephone support while under the 1 year warranty, email support, and a searcheable database. An online, Canon supported message forum would be a great addition. Online versions of the manual, quickstart guide, and driver downloads are also available.
Should you buy a Multipass F30?
Yes. If you can afford the initial cost and have space for this unit, you will have made a good investment in a low operating cost high quality printing/scanning solution. The cost of this unit is about equal to buying an equivalent scanner and printer separately. Purchasing a combined unit does save space, provides the ability to make copies with your PC turned off, and is simpler to setup and operate, when compared to a separate scanner/printer. The F30 is about 17" wide, 24" deep, and 12" high with the scanning lid closed. Another 12" is required to fully open the scanning lid which is hinged along the back of the F30. More information on the Canon Multipass F30 can be found at the manufacturer's website here: http://consumer.usa.canon.com/multifunction/mpf30/index.html
Thanks for reading this epinions. Any comments you might have to improve this review would be appreciated.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 290
Operating System: Windows
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