Dimensions 15.4 x 17.7 x 16.8 in. (WxHxD); weighs 28.2 pounds
Rating: - Wow, this is the way to go.
Awesome:
1. Very quiet.
2. Goes in to hibernate quickly to save energy and bursts back to life instantly when needed.
3. Great print quality.
4. Does it all (except for color)including fax, copy, scan, and duplex printing.
5. Duplex printing saves a lot of resources (paper and money).
6. Most of the settings and buttons are user friendly.
Not so awesome:
1. The manual that comes with it is nice and easy to read and use, but skips too many "advanced features". For advanced features you must look at the online .pdf guides.
2. Even with the advanced guide, it is not immediately obvious to me how to set up the machine so it will screen calls as phone or fax. It wants to answer all calls as a fax machine. I need to experiment more with the available (but confusing) settings that should fix this.
I like having a do it all printer but also realized I no longer need or want color. Here's why:
1. Printing photos at home is not what the marketing would like us to believe. Sending photos to Kodak or Shutterfly (or any online photo printer) is cheaper, of better quality, and of more archival quality than printing at home. It also offers more choices of print size and paper quality and so forth. It's just not quite as fast. Email the photos in and have them in a few days or a week at most.
2. Color inkjet printers do not work well long enough. They frustrate me as contributing too greatly to our throw away society. It is cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink, print heads and other needed repairs that come up after a year or two of use.
This Canon is great and it is unreal that it lists at such a low price for the quality and functions you get.
Rating: - Canon Image Class MF4150 Laser Duplex printer
This printer is an excellent little workhorse that takes up a very small footprint of space and provides an outstanding printed page. I bought it to scan batches of invoices and documents so that I could go paperless and this machine is perfect! It permits batch scanning so that you just load up the feeder and scan the stack into one PDF document that can be safely saved to your computer for years! No more file cabinets crowding your office....just scan and save!! The feeder doesn't jam or double-feed the pages. It's positively effortless. And the best part? It's a color scanner! And a copier, and a fax, and a printer! And it duplexes. As usual, Canon has created another fine machine. Definitely worth the money...crisp, clean printed pages and the toner is only about $65 for replacements. The reviews I read before purchasing it were accurate in their praises for this printer.
Rating: - Why have I been using inkjet printers for so long?!?!
After much frustration with many brands of inkjet printers, I'm surprised I didn't switch to laser sooner. After owning the MF4150 for a month, I must say that it's just "dreamy". I use it for home office purposes, mostly for printing and copying. The print quality is great with the double-sided printing being a HUGE plus. Double sided copying takes a bit more "paper flipping" and can't be accomplished through the ADR (as far as I know), but works well.
I would have liked the printer to work over a network, but I'm happy to settle for this price. With the money I saved, I picked up a Linksys WPSM54G print server (which is specially made for multifunction printers). Print was a breeze to set up, though I haven't figured out scanning or faxing over the network yet (less of a priority for me).
Another huge plus is the cost of printing. Inkjet printer ink is very expensive, and I think I messed up an inkjet printer with after-market ink. The Canon toner cartridges are comparatively inexpensive and I don't have to resort to after-market (and perhaps more questionable) toners.
Finally, the price is a no-brainer. Through a combination or price-matching and rebates, I was able to get the mf4150 for $[...]. Still, the $[...] price is hard to beat for the quality and features (especially when you compare it to other multiplex laser printers).
This is easily the best printer I've ever owned. :-)
Rating: - Scan to PDF by pressing 2 buttons!
I spent less than $250 and all I have to do to scan to PDF is:
1. Put originals on Auto Document Feeder
2. Press the SCAN button
3. Press the Start button
My multi-page searchable and selectable PDF opens in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Wow! Amazon sells less capable machines that can only scan to PDF in black and white only and without a flat bed scanner for $450-650 making this the best bargain on the planet. I admit I had to play with the driver settings in the Canon Toolbox to get the settings I want (scan to PDF, not JPG, grayscale, not color...) but I didn't have to read the manual and the thing is incredibly intuitive to use. I can't believe how fast it scans the documents. The ADF just sucks them right in like an industrial machine. I tried a new HP at Staples for $200 and it took forever to micro-feed the page in the ADF inching its way very slowly.
I did notice that even though the PDF looks nearly perfect, when I copy and paste into a text file some of the letters may be missing, especially if the original is italics, a funny font, or right near a graphic. Not a big deal for me but might be if you are a contract lawyer. I did NOT install the freebie third party software and I did not try the OCR setting in the Canon Toolbox so for all I know it's easily resolved using one of those two options. I don't care enough to find out. The scans are also skewed ever so slightly sideways when fed through the ADF. This is not enough of an issue if you're trying to share documents or submit receipts and if you need art and publishing grade scanning you probably want a dedicated scanner anyway.
The Canon driver and Toolbox is all you need. I'm not a fan of freebie teaser software that comes bundled with printers and is a challenge to uninstall. The Canon CD gives you the Custom option to not install programs you don't want. Thank you Canon!
Set up was relatively fast. I slowed myself down by reading the entire quick start guide first since this is my first laser printer and I didn't feel like screwing anything up. The only thing the install program does not do for you is set the "Canon MF4100 Series UFRII LT" as your default printer. I figured that out on my own when I clicked print and the computer wanted to print to the old printer that I had already removed. Right-click on the "Canon MF4100 Series UFRII LT" in "Printers and Faxes" and choose "Set as Default Printer" to resolve that issue. I've also tested 2 sided printing and it works like a charm.
2 sided copying:
One reviewer complained that this machine does not do 2 sided copying. I still have yet to read the manual but all I did was push the "COPY" button, then the "2-Sided" button then "Collate/2 on 1" button, put two papers on the ADF and pressed Start. One double-sided copy of both originals came out just as I expected. For all I know I pushed one button too many but it still did what I expected it to do.
This thing is seriously feature-laden. There are a lot of buttons on the control panel that are clearly labeled and look intuitive and while I probably should check out the manual to get a clue as to what are the many things it can do, the truth is I have no intention of ever reading the manual. For printing documents, scanning and 2-sided copying I didn't have to ready any instructions and those are the features I will use most. I can't believe how many features they packed in at this price point and that the ones I need actually work fast and reliably.
For one person or a small office of up to 4 people I think this canon is all you need. I would not want a group of 100 users slamming on this thing. It does not look designed for that. I suspect that's why it costs $250 and not 3 times more. An industrial machine would have a tougher paper tray that could withstand careless slamming and a rock solid output/paper catch instead of a plastic tabs sticking out. Not that it's a flimsy or weak looking plastic tab. It feels solid. But it's not a large workgroup machine. A large workgroup machine would also be rated for printing tens of thousands more pages per month than this thing probably is. I rarely print more than 100 pages per month and for me this is fine.
While I can tell it's not meant to support a group of 100 users and the printing volume that comes with that, I do NOT feel that the Canon looks fragile or poorly constructed. It looks like it should give me years of trouble free use. I have yet to see anything else in this price range with these features. Good job, Canon.
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