Aloha! I have owned my Panasonic KXFP80 fax machine for 6 months and have obtained a pretty good idea of its usefulness and reliability.

The first feature that influenced my purchase decision was that this fax printed on plain paper. All output is printed on standard letter size printer paper. This means that there are no irregular sized faxes, no thin and curly chemically coated paper, and no fading over time.

Second, this Panasonic unit DOES NOT use ink jet cartridges. This feature heavily influenced my purchase decision. My PREVIOUS fax was a Canon Multipass 2500, a behemoth whose ink jet heads would continually become clogged after short periods of use/disuse. I wasted a lot of money on both this Canon unit and several replacement ink jet cartridges that dried up after minimal use. I had to repeatedly clean the heads--and I mean hundreds of times--and I believe that this overuse of head cleaning caused the machine to die after less than 18 months :(

During this period I also became aware that ink jet cartridges, once opened, do not last very long--a year or less according to many instruction manuals--whether you use it or not. Thus, I was happy to find that this Panasonic unit uses a roll of dry carbon film to produce its output.

The carbon film is not that cheap, however Costco began to sell a similar Panasonic fax unit and so replacement carbon film became available at a good price. I believe the cost per page for the film is about 6 to 11 cents, depending on where you buy the film.

The surprising thing about this fax machine is that I use it more for copying than sending or receiving faxes! Because I am self-employed and work from home, this copier, err, I mean fax machine, comes in incredibly handy. You can reduce/enlarge at 6 different presets from 72% to 200%. The copies are not up to the quality of a standard copier, especially for graphics. Text copies are pretty decent.

There is one unique feature that this machine has that I have not seen anywhere else. This machine can be programmed to page you (if you have a pager) when it receives faxes! So if there is an important fax that you are expecting and you are not near the machine, it will let you know when a fax has been received.

This relatively compact model also includes a handset so it could even replace one of your phones. I have had no problems with reliability, although it has jammed a very few times while making copies.

The major fault of this fax machine is that it is very slow when it has to scan/send a complex document. For example when I fax a form that contains a lot of fine lines and areas that are shaded gray, the machine slows down considerably, taking more than a minute per page. With printed or written text that has more white space, the speed is much better. The machine has a standard rated speed of 15 seconds per page. In comparison, I have seen more expensive machines from other manufacturers rated at 2 seconds per page, which I guess must mean that they are about seven to eight times faster.

If you frequently have to send or receive multi-page documents, this inexpensive fax machine is probably not for you. If you are a light user and would like the added convenience of a sheet fed copier, than this machine may be suitable for you. Overall, taking into account performance vs. cost, I am satisfied with this product. My net purchase price was $80 which included a $20 discount offer from Officemax.com.

Thank you for reading my opinion. --Lokino :)





Recommended: Yes

Purchase Price (if leased, monthly payment): 80
Machine age (Months in use): 6 months