180 of 184 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic All In One for home and school, December 7, 2007
This review is from: Canon Pixma MP470 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2177B002) (Office Product)
The MP470 is a superb value at under $90 and is a very flexible tool. It has excellent text output, decent photo output and a useful scanner/copier.
* Easy to set up and use
* Great for home and school
* There are better choices for business and photograhpy
* A little noisy
Seriously, the text output is fantastic. I'm back in college and have had to print out over 1000 pages of PDF's for my classes this quarter. My workhorse 4-yr old Canon i860 printer was fast and could use cheap non-OEM inks but it often made for very hard reading which wasn't worthwhile. This quality of the MP470's text on plain paper rivals that of the HP 5000-series Laserjets at work.
I seem to average a little over 220 pages of text (which includes images) from the CL40 black ink cartridge. That's nearly 9˘ per page, which is not spectacular. For general use I prefer printers which use two cartridges (one black, the other tricolor) as opposed to 4,5, or 6+. It may cost a little more but it's so much easier to keep track of spare cartridges you will inevitably have to keep on hand.
The LCD is easy to read and the media card slots are handy but as someone who uses Photoshop to at least sharpen the images I print, the card slots aren't used much at all.
The scanner is OK, not great but not bad. Documents scan and print clearly, photo's are OK. I have a Canoscan 8400 and it's much faster and accurate but it cost twice as much as the MP470. I think for school and household use, the scanner is fine. For serious photo scanning, a dedicated scanner will be much better.
My one criticism of this printer is the noise. Not as loud as dot-matrix but it's louder than any printer I've used, including the MP160 (which my partner uses for her work). There is a quiet mode with a timer, so you can make the printer quieter (and slower) during certain hours of the day.
I have a certain disdain for all inkjet printer manufacturers for adopting the "Gillette" model; sell the product near cost and earn the profit on the consumables. Not only is this deceptive model for the purchaser of a printer but I think it encourages waste by making many printers 'disposable' compared to the cost of ink. My 2˘... Having said that, Canon seems to be the best of the bunch right now. Due to their design, Epson has head-clogging issues and higher per-page output cost. HP has very lightfast ink but their non-business models always have paper handling issues. Lexmark is undistinguished (and Dell inkjets are just Lexmark printers that have no Mac compatibility).
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49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Printer Cheap Price. Best bang for the buck., November 1, 2007
This review is from: Canon Pixma MP470 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2177B002) (Office Product)
This is an excellent printer for those of you who will only use it occasionally. It has fast printing & the print quality is excellent. If you plan to scan only once in a while this will do the job. If you are a heavy scan feature user look for a printer more specific for that. I use this to print directions, some pictures, boarding passes & to make scanned PDF documents. It has worked great for my needs. If you are a heavy duty printer user I would suggest one of the higher end Pixma models.
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124 of 138 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, October 23, 2007
This review is from: Canon Pixma MP470 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2177B002) (Office Product)
Canon Pixma MP470 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2177B002)
After reading the rave review in one of the leading computer magazines I was anxious to try the MP470. The magazine raved about the outstanding scan results attained by this equipment. Since my primary need was to scan photographs this sounded like the one for me. The MP470 is an excellent printer and produces great results, but its scanning capability is not good. Perhaps my unit was flawed since the results I obtained were poor. I tried various adjustment to improve the clarity but to no avail. I have returned the unit to Amazon and purchased another brand.
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