Why I bought the Canon MP730
Written: Sep 17 '03 (Updated Oct 31 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Quiet, fast printing. Looks good. Built in card readers. Multiple color cartridges. Good photo software.
Cons: Pricey. Weird scanning software. Cumbersome menu, not backlit. Ink access is tight.
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend the Canon MP730. All the features work well, prints great photos. Multiple color inks and media reader are nice bonuses.
|
|
|
| kdcad's Full Review: Canon MultiPASS MP730 All-In-One InkJet Printer |
We run a small business from home and wanted to combine our scanner and printer and add multi-page scanning and fax capabilities without giving up all the surface space. So last April, I bought an HP OfficeJet d135. It did a nice job - you can check out other reviews more details - but the one major problem I had was that every third boot or so, I'd get a BSOD on my Windows 2000 workstation. I lived with it because the photo prints were so great and I really needed the multipage options. But finally, last week the sheet feeder started acting up and since I had purchased a "product replacement warranty", I took it back. The office supply store where I bought it had heard my story many times and (after some discussion) let me replace it with the Canon (I had to pay the $100 difference between the two).
At first I was skeptical of the Canon. I've been an HP printer buyer for about 10 years, but I was more worried about the BSOD problem. When I got it home, I immediately unpacked and started to set it up. It was up and running in about 15 minutes!
Unpacking and Assembly:
It may sound silly, but I was pretty impressed with how Canon packed the unit. Looking down on the box, the first thing you see is the "Quick Start" setup guide - you know, that big colorful chart with Step 1, Step2, Step 3. It showed clear images of what each piece looked like and each piece was immediately visible - I didn't need to unpack everything and spread it around the room. The other really nice feature was that the styrofoam that caps the ends of the printer were in halves. So you pull out the top halves, remove the printer. (The HP was not packed this was and it was a royal pain) The only exterior parts to assemble were they various paper holders on the input, output and sheet feeder. They all slid into place easily without any need to force or twist tabs, etc. The ink installed easily enough - all FOUR cartridges! I liked the idea of separate cartridges for each color. I had already replaced my HP color cartridge because it ran out of Cyan but I knew there was plenty of Yellow and Magenta left (lots of blue in our letterhead and logo). The only negative here was that when you lift the scanner bed to access the inks, it really doesn't open as far as I would have liked. It made installing the cartridges a slight challenge as I couldn't really see where the cartridges were going because my hands were in the way.
Setting Up:
Following the directions, I installed the drivers & software first. After uninstalling the HP drivers and software, the Canon install went fine. So I shut down and plugged in the MP730. When I got back into Windows, it recognized everything just fine - well, almost. I had a little trouble with the media reader. Windows just wouldn't recognize it. The first thing I did was go to Canon's web site a look for support. It was there, and I guess I would say that it "met my expectations" - which these days is pretty low. There was no direct solution for my problem, but I was able to figure it out from some other answers. As it turns out it was MY problem - my computer was missing the USBSTOR.INF! Once I copied it from another computer, it was recognized and now works perfectly.
Putting It Through the Paces:
I won't go into all the details of the testing, but here's the summary:
Printing Photos:
The default "Photo Quality" settings really are not adequate for printing great photos. I had to go into the printer preferences and turn the quality slider all the way up - but after that the photos were just as good as the HP (printing on Kodak Glossy paper). Printing photos from the media reader using the control panel on the printer did not provide the best photos either. The thumbnails are TINY on the index sheet, but you can tell what they are. It would be nice if you could print an index, choose you photos, then use the computer to print the photos. But the index assigns it's own numbering system to the thumbnails and it doesn't correspond to the file names (typically numbers)given to the jpegs on the media.
Sheet Feeder, Copying & Scanning:
The sheet feeder did a nice job faxing a 10 page document. It was pretty quick and went through fine. I can't say I'm truly impressed with the MPToolbox, though. (The HP "Director" was a much better tool) When you want to scan from the sheet feeder, you have to press the SCAN button and then the toolbox pops up and starts the scan. The default is to scan it as a 75dpi photo and save it as a bitmap! Who came up with that? My suggestion is to spend some time setting it up the way you will use it most and leave it at that. Otherwise the scanning is quick - no warm up time. As usual - the higher the resolution, the slower the scan. The scanning bed is not as long as the HP - 8.5x11.7 is the longest you can put in the bed, but legal size docs can go in the sheet feeder. Color copies took longer that I expected - almost a minute, but they looked good. The same sheet copied to black and white took about 10 seconds.
Normal Printing:
Seems to be fine. The blacks and colors are crisp and clear. I've seen reviews where the they claim that Black can be a little grey on cheap paper - I use cheap paper and it seems fine. Another triumph over the HP is that the Canon is QUIET. The HP slammed back and forth (enough to shake the desk and wake up my 4 y/o daughter sleeping in the next room) when printing and made these loud clicking noises as it was revving up. Canon printing is smooth and quick. I doubt its 22 pages/minute like they claim, but still quick enough.
Misc:
- I like the grey and black look of the Canon. It goes with the black computer much better that the grey and purple HP.
- As I mentioned, the menu setup on the control panel is not as easy to use as the HP and it's not backlit (which is a real shame).
-The Canon is smaller than the HP and that's mostly due to the smaller scanning bed. But also the paper is fed from the back from a (mostly) vertical tray.
-I had a little trouble when trying to print a single sheet of color paper. It kept telling me the tray was empty. It took some juggling of the paper while it was looking for it before it would recognize it. That's only happened a couple times.
- While I was not impressed with the MPToolbox for scanning, the photo print software that comes with it is much better than HP's PhotoSmart (and I'm a big PhotoSmart fan).
-Oh, and one of the first things you'll want to do it turn off the "alarms". The Canon will let you know when any little thing goes wrong - and it can be very annoying.
All-in-all, for a person not easily pleased by technology, I am very happy with the Canon. It works, it prints my photos, the drivers don't crash my computer, and it comes with media readers built in (no more FlashPath!) - what more could a guy want?
***Update - 10/31/05***
It's been a couple years now and I thought I take a minute to let everyone know how the MP730 is holding up. The short story is it still works like a charm. Technologically speaking, it is a little behind these days, but still prints great photos and all the other features still work perfectly. I have not done any maintenance to speak of other than to change the cartridges and blow the dust off of it from time to time. There are no sqeaks or rattles that weren't there to begin with.
On the down side: While I still think having multiple cartridges is the better idea, I did get in a cycle where it seemed like every few weeks I was changing one of the color cartridges. Cyan would run out and I'd replace it and two weeks later yellow would be empty. Then magenta, then cyan, then black... Pretty frustrating, but not as frustrating as paying a premium to throw away two of the colors. Also, Canon ink is not at all forgiving when trying to save a few pennies on photo paper. If you want great photos, use Canon paper - period.
All-in-all this Canon has been a great investment. I have to be honest and let everyone know that I did just recently shelve it but not for any technical reasons. It's a long story about my wife panicing because she couldn't get it to print decent photos under a deadline (see comments on proper photo paper above). Ultimately we discovered the MP730 still works fine and that my wife shouldn't drink coffee after 8pm. We did replace it with a Canon MP780, however! (look for a review on that in the near future)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kdcad
|
|
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.