Customer Reviews

Canon Pixma MP830 Office All-In-One Inkjet Printer (0583B002)

5 star:		(140)
4 star:		(92)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(38)
1 star:		(69)

 

 

I've been waiting for this printer to come out for quite some time. I previously used Canon's MP730 and completely loved it. This new version adds several great features, and after a few days of playing around with it, it has lived up to my high expectations.

The MP830 is a bit shorter and wider than Canon's previous all-in-ones, and it looks a bit more "classy" with a black-on-black keypad and a color LCD screen. There are two paper trays: the main tray is an upright tray in the rear, and a pull-out tray is located on the bottom of the machine. My old 730 had a plastic cover that protected the paper in the vertical tray from dust, and that cover is no longer included. I live is a dusty area, and if the paper gets a layer of dust on it, that dust can collect on and clog the print head. To remedy this, I've decided to use the smaller pull out tray as my primary paper tray (you can select the primary paper tray with a button on the keypad).

This printer uses Canon's new "8" series inks. While these are top-of-the-line inks (UV resistant, pigment/dye system), they are considerably more expensive than the 3 or 6 series inks used my many of Canons previous printers. Also, each ink cartridge has a small computer chip attached to it which makes obtaining remanufactured or generic cartridges difficult. At the moment you cannot find generic ink for this printer, and various websites advise against refilling these cartridges as they ink density is different from the previous inks, and doing so might wreck your printhead. So if you were used to paying $3/cartridge for generic canon cartridges, you might have to raise your ink budget for a while (currently, cartridges are about $14 each, and there are five of them in this printer).

This printer has duplex printing and scanning, meaning that it can scan/print both sides of a sheet. At some point, I was led to believe that the scanner was able to scan both sides *at the same time*, but that is actually not the case. After a piece of paper is scanned through the auto document feeder, it is sucked back in, flipped around and re-scanned. This adds considerable time to your scanning tasks. If you are pressed for time, it is actually faster to scan in "manual duplex" where you scan the front sides of pages, then manually the pages over and re-scan the back sides. However, if you want to hit the scan button and walk away, the auto-duplex does its job well. The same issue exists for duplex printing--it works, but it takes more time than if you had manually duplexed the pages.

The fax is a fax. It works fine, and some test color-faxes I sent came out well.

The copier also works well, and the duplexers allow you to make two-sided to two-sided copies, but as I said before, this takes some time.

The scanner does a great job with photos and documents. It is considerably faster than earlier models, thanks in part to the USB 2.0 interface and new scan sensor. Also, the updated scanning software is a significant improvment over previous versions.

I've printed out some photos and they are of amazing quality, which is what I expect from Canon printers. However, because of the cost of the inks, I will not be printing photos very often. The text is a bit light for my taste (the black is more like a very dark grey).

All in all, this is a great printer/scanner/fax/copier and I am very happy with it.

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Note: Unfortunately, the memory card slots on the printer do not allow for USB2.0 transfer to the comptuer. If you need to move lots of data from a memory card to your desktop, use a dedicated card-reader; using the slots on this printer takes way too long.

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ADDED 5/9/06: After having this machine for just over a month, I have to say it runs through ink way too fast. My ink status lists several cartridges as only 25% full, and is warning me that two of my colors are "almost empty." I print 90% black text, 9% color documents (web pages, rebate forms, etc), and only about 1% photos (I have only printed 2 4x6 photos since I purchased the printer). My previous Canon printers sipped ink, this machine chugs it, and at $14/cartridge, that is unacceptable. (Especially becuase the print quality isn't much better than previous printers.)

I've owned this printer now for 2 months, having purchased it after my 2 year old Canon MP730 broke down. While I love the design and print quality of both printers, somehow Canon has managed to significantly increase the amount of ink you have to purchase on the newer model. For example, I've now replaced the large black cartridge [...] 4 times in 2 months. On the MP730, I doubt I replaced the regular size black cartridge [...] more than once every 3 months or so. I've actually never written an online review like this before, but have been so frustrated with the time and expense of replacing ink cartridges I felt compelled to warn other potential buyers. I personally will be looking for another printer for everyday use, and relegating this one to photos. This printer deserves 5 stars on quality and 1 star on ink useage.

This product is the best multifunction inkjet printer on the market, bar none. It is a great update to Canon's MP780, in that print and scan speeds have increased, and the scanner scans both sides of a document at once, which is super. Based on its features and performance, it is a 5 out of 5 stars product. Nothing else comes close.

The down side is the ink prices. True, 5 separate ink tanks mean you only replace what you use, but the ink tanks are small, and run about $20 per cartridge, though you can get them cheaper online--but watch the jacked up shipping charges that put the per cartridge price back up at the $20 level. No one has come out with third party or aftermarket ink, because with this printer, Canon has "chipped" each cartridge, essentially making producing after market or third party ink replacements impossible. Several inkjet ink websites have been promising to have workable non-OEM ink cartridges for this model, but with the product being almost a year old now, there are still none available. It must be a pretty tough chip to emulate. That means no $5 ink for you--you pay full price.

I didn't know this when I bought it, and had I known, I probably would have bought another close-out MP780, which has 90% of the featuresof the MP830, but can use non-Canon ink cartridges. And of course, this fact is not something Canon would announce. My older Canon multifunction (at home) still works like a champ on non-Canon ink, and a full replacement of ink costs about $25--and I run through 2 or so sets of carts per year. $50 per year for a great multifunction that prints great photos? Not too shabby! This newer model at my office is going to cost me $100+ per ink change, so I have relegated it to photo-only printing, and mainly use its scanning and occasionally, copying functions. In fact, I might start printing photos at home so I do not spend ridiculous money on ink at work. I dislike using it to print anything, because I know that if I match my use on my home machine here at the office, it is going to cost me $200 or $300 a year for this machine. With ink prices that high, and a new machine costing about $200, we are almost at the point where it makes sense to buy a new once every time the ink runs out! I understand these companies need to make a profit, but if they cut their ink prices in half, they'd still make a killing on per unit ink sales, and consumers would be willing to pay a premium for OEM cartridges. We just dont want to be complete worked over on the ink, which $20 cartridges is.

I have owned HP and Epson all in ones. After my HP died, I researched quite a bit, and decided on the Canon MP830. I have owned canon products in the past and have been very happy, and when Amazon offered this printer for 249.99, free shipping, I couldn't pass it up. Set up was very easy and the software very good. It only took about 40 minutes to get up and running. I knew when I bought it that it did not come with a USB 2.0 cable so I bought one to have on hand when the printer arrived. Contrary to one of the reviews here, I have no problem faxing "from the glass," without using my computer.

The print speed is excellent, and the automatic document feeder a big plus! I have tried all of the features and I am very happy with the fax and print. I am a little less enthusiastic about the copy and scan. I would have to say that these features are adequate, not great. My discontent is based on the fact that the scans and copies are a little off when it comes to the color of the original. I have searched the manual and cannot find if there is a way to calibrate the color for scans and copies. I noticed that particularly with gold, the scan and fax aren't able to reproduce the color accurately. Overall it is acceptable, but like I said, not great, hence the four star rating, instead of five stars.

As far as printing and faxing, this machine is really fantastic, and I have printed several photos that have turned out perfect. Black text is sharp for an inkjet, and color printing is accurate and fast! Faxing is problem free and a breeze with the ADF for multiple pages. BTW, this machine is capable of printing a 2 sided document from 2 one sided originals, or a 2 sided original. Very nice.

Pros: Price, speed, ease of use and friendly software. Sharp black text, and great color photo printing.

Cons: No USB cable. Color calibration for copy and scan.

First Impressions: I've only owned it for a week, and its positive aspects have been mentioned in previous reviews, but here is what I find missing with the MP830:

I have been wanting to convert all of my gas receipts, bills and business cards I collect from others and assorted papers into digital files on my computer.I bought the 830 because it had an automatic document feeder/scanner combination, and the highly rated photo-qualtiy printer was a nice addition.

Once you own the machine and get the manual you find out 2 important things 1) Scanning from the Automatic Document Feeder will not yield as good results as individually placing items on the scanner (boo!) and 2) Forget about feeding in all sorts of small bills and business cards - the ADF won't respond unless its a relatively large piece of paper. (Another Boo!)

If you want a nice scanner/photo printer/copier then this is a nice one. If you want all of your documents, large and small, converted to digital files, you might want to look at the Fujitsu Snapscan 500, which can handle business cards fed into its ADF.

I will agree with a previous reviewer that having to physically turn on the printer when needed is annoying, compared to many which will come to life when a document needs printing.

As another reviewer stated, I also find it annoying that this machine cannot scan a legal size document.

Maybe I haven't figured it out yet, but from what I can tell of the Canon scanning software for the PC, it does not seem to have a lighness/darkeness adjustment which comes in very handy when copying from receipts that have different intensities of printing on them(e.g. a cash register receipt that is readable to the naked eye, but the ink is very faint).

I was happy to have the memory card reader built into the machine when I wanted a quick photo printed. Excellent!

This machine does have an enormous number of spiffy options and features when it comes to copying documents and printing photos. One example would be that you can print a plain paper "proof sheet" containing many photos, select the ones you want with a dark pencil, scan the proof sheet and the Canon will print only the selected photos. Another would be the copier's ability to fit 2 documents on the same side of a piece of paper.

This printer is getting rave reviews from both PC Magazine and PC World. That said, there's a big problem with this printer that neither review mentions: namely, duplex black text printing from ALL applications produces inferior results than when duplexing is off--and uses colour ink to produce black text when printing in duplex mode. Consequently, until this issue is addressed, the MP830 is difficult for me to recommend.

Why? According to Canon technical support, the design flaw is by choice. But more on that later.

If I don't duplex print on fast mode, the text looks very good (the problem is duplex text printing). The print quality when duplex text printing looks dotty and washed out. If you turn duplexing off, the text print quality is vastly superior.

I've reproduced this problem on two different systems with two different MP830s. The difference on fast mode when not duplex printing is quite astounding. Simply using duplex printing makes the text quality significantly worse on fast mode.

One might be inclined to believe bad quality from fast mode text printing isn't a big deal (except that the MP830 is quite capable of producing very good text quality even at fast mode--except when duplexing), but this problem also extends to standard printing when duplexing is enabled. That said, in standard mode the problem isn't as pronounced.

Basically the MP830 is using the colour inks to produce black text instead of the pigment black ink when printing text in duplex mode. I find this to be extremely bothersome. The problem exists when duplexing text in other printing quality modes, but it's most apparent or obvious when duplexing text on fast mode.

You won't find this issue listed in professional reviews from PCMagazine or PC World, simply because the reviewers probably didn't bother to check. For whatever reason, missing this issue is pretty sloppy.

If you want good text quality when duplex printing, it's best not to use this printer at all: you're using color ink instead of the black pigment ink--and the text looks vastly inferior as a result.

This is from Canon technical support:

"The unit was designed to print using "composite black" when duplexing. Composite black is created by using color inks. Unfortunately, we do not have answers as to why Canon USA made this decisions, these decisions are determined by the developers at Canon INC."

Absolutely brutal. Composite black text print is vastly inferior to the text print produced when using the black ink cartridge. Canon technical support is basically telling me that duplex black text printing on the MP830 is horrible by design. Oh, plus you have the added bonus of wasting color ink when printing inferior black text while duplexing.
Inexcusable

Upon inquiring further, this is the reason Canon technical support gives for using color ink to produce black text while duplex printing:

"Composite black is least likely to show through the other side of the document, which may occur when using black ink and printing on both sides of the paper. "

Then why can I print text on one side, flip the page over manually, print text on the other side, and not experience any issue with ink showing through to the other side? The text quality looks vastly superior when I do this instead of duplexing (I do not experience any issues).

It shouldn't be that difficult to allow a printer driver option to use the pigmented black ink with a longer drying time (because I've also been told by Canon pigmented black ink may smear when duplex priting) if that's what the customer would prefer, instead of inflicting poor text quality produced by color inks when duplex black text printing.

This issue is very easily reproduced:

Print text in fast mode with duplexing on. Then
print text in fast mode with duplexing off.
Night and day

It's not just fast mode that's affected either; it's all print
quality modes when duplex printing is enabled. More importantly, all customers have the added bonus (in addition to poor black text quality while duplexing) of wasting color ink when printing black text with the duplex printing option enabled.

Canon's response to this is that pigmented black ink will smear, bleed, or show through to the other side when duplex printing. Contrary to Canon's claim, I am not experiencing any issues when printing black text on standard on one side of cheap Britex Premier Multiusage paper (20 lb 92 bright . . . I paid less than a dollar for 500 sheets on sale), flipping the page over manually, and printing the other side again on standard. Regardless of whether I've tested using tons of different papers (and I admit I haven't), again, it shouldn't be that difficult to allow a printer driver option to use the pigmented black ink with a longer drying time if that's what the customer would prefer, instead of inflicting poor text quality produced by color inks when duplex black text printing. The option should be made available. Pigmented black ink may smear or bleed through to the other side on some papers, but it certainly doesn't do so on all papers.

What's really annoying is that even if one just uses manual duplexing (have duplex selected in the driver and have "automatic" unchecked), this issue still raises it's ugly head. Doesn't matter if you're manual duplexing or using automatic duplexing. You'd think if one were to select manual duplexing (select "duplex" and have "automatic" unchecked in the driver), the MP830 would use pigmented black ink, but it doesn't: it's uses composite black to produce black text if "duplex" is selected.

I normally don't get involved in these issues but I read some of the negative review points by some of the disappointed consumers about the Canon 830 and feel obligated to share the following. A year or so ago I did my homework and settled on a Canon MP730 as my all in one machine for my home office. It used the same ink tanks as my Canon 400 printer so I saw this as a real bonus as I had been refilling these ink tanks with ink supplies from Sam's club for a couple of years. Within a few months of using the refilled tanks in my MP730 I noticed severe degradation of the quality of color print material. Having another high quality photo printer available to me I was not very worried about this and just kept using the printer and ignoring the poor quality of the occasional color print I ran through it until a week ago when the printer started to work erratically or not at all. I took it to a very highly reputable repair center where the old guy who runs the place knows more about electronic printing then any other 10 people I have ever met. I get to go in the back when he works on my stuff and watch and ask questions as he repairs it. He showed me where the color ink jets in the print head had become completely clogged from low quality ink. He explained that in the new higher resolution photo quality printers the orifices for the ink jets had become so fine to get the detail they can render that the use of anything but the highest quality ink was nothing but a recipie for inevitable failure of these machines. In my case not only did the print head need replacing, for about $[...], but so did the contol board right next to it. This had been caused by the clogged print heads which had visibaly overheated and not only cooked themselves but the adjacent contol board as well. The new control board was $[...].

Doing the math I have decided that I am NOT going to have it repaired, that I am going to replace it with a Canon MP830 and that I am NOT going to use off brand inks from now on.

I too once thought all the warnings about off brand ink was just a bunch of B... S... made up by the evil big corporate dudes and dudets but I have changed my mind. If they were really evil they would be encouraging us to use off brand inks so they could make a fortune selling us new machines or repairs when we had finished trashing our machines by using crappy ink.

Dave Bowyer

I did a lot of research before buying the mp830 and after the first 2 weeks, liked it so much, I bought a second one for home. I can only guess, that the positive reviews are from people just after they started using it. There are multiple fatal flaws.

(1) The reason to buy this model over cheaper ones is duplex printing. Unfortunately the brainiacs at Canon use color ink to print the backside of each page! What? I print 99.5% b&w office documents, so imagine my surprise when the color inks where low after a couple weeks. When I knew what to search for, I found many other people with this problem. Come on Canon, let's get a firmware upgade.

(2) Even when not printing duplex it drinks color ink on B&W only documents.

(3) It won't print b&w documents without the color inks installed or empty.

(4) I repeatedly get the U071 error, telling me there are two of the same ink tanks installed, when clearly there are not. I have to uninstall and reinstall ink tanks about a dozen times before I can get the thing to print. Not the greatest when you are trying to quickly print something on the way to a meeting!

(5) When you have a problem with the ink tanks or one ink is out, it won't even scan!

Run, don't walk from the printer. It's very very frustrating.

I laid to rest my old HP All-in-One for the quicker MP830. Well, everything said in previous reviews is true including chugging ink. OH MY HEAVENS it goes thru ink like water off a ducks back. I had it 2 months and hardly had printed a thing on it and had to replace the ink. Now here I am only a couple of months later and now need to replace ALL THE INK. At this rate of buying ink at 15 bucks each and it needs 5 I could have purchased a color laser printer and still been ahead of the game.

We replaced an HP G55 multifunction with the Canon MP830 based on good reviews and because it was $100 cheaper than the comparable HP multifunction. We use the MP830 to print school papers, artwork for kid's projects, make copies, and occasionally scan pictures or documents. We rarely print pictures so the built-in support for printing pictures from media is not an advantage for us.

After less than a year, I have several complaints. First, the MP830 takes a surprisingly long time to turn on or switch functions. The mechanics are also fairly loud. I find I avoid using it for these reasons (and those below).

Second, the MP830 is relatively complicated to operate. Operations, like choosing fast/draft mode, that took a single button on the HP G55 take several steps on the MP830. Learning to use the MP830 features is a significant chore, particularly scanning.

Third, the ADF doesn't work very well with the bundled scanning software, which reduces one of the big advantages of the MP830.

Fourth, the MP830 goes through ink very very quickly. I estimate that we have already spent about $100 more on ink as compared to our old G55.

Fifth, the MP830 is not very robust. If any of the ink cartridges run out, or if THE MP830 THINKS that they have run out, then you cannot use any function. For example, if you run out of magenta then you cannot make Black & White copies nor use the scanner. And our printer will sometimes refuse to recognize the cartridges, even immediately after installing brand-new Canon products.

And finally, while every store carries HP ink, we have never found a big-name retailer locally who carries ink for the MP830. So when we run out of ink, we face a few days waiting for a replacement to be shipped to us... and did I mention that it runs out frequently? And that you cannot do anything once any ink runs out?

I would NOT recommend buying the MP830.