Canon i-Sensys MF4690PL

By Simon Williams,
Rating:
Price as reviewed:£371 371
Best price: £377.99
The machine is a capable fax, as well as having print, copy and scan functions. Canon claims it can transmit a page in three seconds and it's based around a Super G3 fax modem, so can produce up to 256 greyscales. The MF4690PL also contains a 512-page fax memory, so should be able to cope with plenty of incoming faxes, even if the paper tray’s empty.
Canon claims a top speed of 20ppm for this machine, but our five-page text and text and graphics tests produce speeds of 11.1ppm and 11.5ppm, barely half the speed. When we tried the 20-page document, we saw 15.4ppm, but you’d have to be printing a long document to reach 20ppm. The printer has automatic duplex, so we ran the 20-page document double-sided, too, producing 10 pages in 122 seconds, equivalent to 9.8ppm.
Copies of our text and graphics page took 13 seconds from the ADF and eight seconds from the flatbed glass. Both these times are excellent, making this machine a great little digital copier, from the speed point of view.
The quality of the pages the device produces is generally good, though there is some slight spatter around the serifs of text characters. Greyscale graphics are only fair, with some tints having a blotchy look to them and mid-greys showing a noticeable crosshatching. While in normal use, you probably wouldn't notice these attributes, there are laser printers and multifunctions at a similar price, which don't exhibit them.
A photocopy of our text and graphics page showed some deterioration in quality of greyscale reproduction, so that some lighter tints were virtually lost. Our test photo print, using the printer's dedicated photo setting, came out well, with good levels of detail and, curiously, less of the blotchiness than we noticed in the business graphics print.
The only consumable Canon quotes is a drum and toner cartridge which it refers to as a fax cartridge. This is a small unit, which slides deep into the interior of the printer section of the machine once you've hinged the scanner section up and opened a cover. The cartridge is rated as 2,000 pages, giving a cost per page from the cheapest source we could find (£30 from www.printerinks.com) of 1.5p. This puts the i-Sensys MF4690PL in a reasonable position against its main competitors.
You may also like...
Sponsored Links
advertisement
You may also like...
Latest Desktop Software News
VMware acquires desktop virtualisation start-up Wanova
Virtualisation giant adds Mirage image management to its growing portfolio.
Latest Desktop Software Analysis & Insight
Could the UK ever build a Facebook?
Inside the enterprise: Building a $100bn tech company is a tall order. But the UK could still boost its technology industry, argues one expert.
advertisement
Most popular
- Apple iPad 3 vs iPad 2 head-to-head review
- ICO: Fines for cookie law breakers
- Hutchison denies it will pull plug on Three UK
- Sony Vaio T13 Ultrabook review: First look
- BlackBerry 7 OS certified to carry 'Restricted' UK government information
- Facebook floatation marred by Nasdaq glitch
- Open source software driving cloud-based innovation
- CIO: Career is over?
- EMC World 2012: Tucci declares Documentum is here to stay
- Dell PowerEdge R820 review
Register for IT PRO
You'll get exclusive member benefits including free whitepapers, downloads, Webinars and weekly newsletters full of the latest IT PRO news, reviews, insight and expertise.





