Customer Reviews

Canon imageCLASS MF4370DN Multifunction Laser Printer

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I bought this about a week ago and have been using it ever since. I have a Mac and finding a multifunction unit that is Mac compatible hasn't been easy. This unit, the MF4370DN, works great with my Mac. The lower models, the MF4350D and the MF4150D are NOT completely Mac compatible.

I couldn't find any reviews for this item - so I will tell you everything I can about it.

I know there is some comparable Brother models out there, but have heard they surge the power in the room. I haven't tested them, but I have a Brother laser printer and it makes all the lights in my home office dim when it gets ready to print. Also that model doesn't duplex print (print/copy on both sides of the page. The MF4370DN does.)

This unit works great with my Mac - it scans, prints, copies, and receives faxes. I originally bought the Canon MF4350d which despite all the information I read is not entirely mac compatible, its scanner is not compatible with Macs, which was confirmed for me by talking with a Canon rep. It would be nice if they mentioned that on their website specs instead of wasting hours of my time and then having to drive 70 miles to return it. (I didn't buy it from Amazon because they didn't have it at the time.)

Canon support told me the MF4370dn is entirely mac compatible - just hit the Scanner button on it twice so it is in "USB SCANNING MODE."

Overall I'm pretty happy with this unit. The print quality is great, the faxing speed and quality is much faster than my old thermal fax. The copier works great. The scan quality off the glass is great. The duplexing feature works great. Unit is very, very quiet - in fact I can't hear it when it's on or sleeping.

Now I can finally get rid of three bulky devices - my fax, laser printer, and scanner, and replace it with this one unit.

Cons:
1) No software comes with this unit that allows you to create a single PDF from the Auto Document Feeder. So if I wanted to scan 10 pages through the feeder and create a single PDF it can't do it. It would create 10 different documents in your scanning program, then you would have to save each one as a PDF and use another program to create a single PDF. After hours of research I discovered Acrobat Professional can create a single PDF directly off the auto document feeder. Acrobat Professional is an expensive program at $449 which is available for Mac. I happen to have it and used it successfully to create a multipage pdf. On Acrobat Professional you go to FILE > CREATE PDF > FROM SCANNER. It worked great. But some kind of software should really be supplied from Canon that can do that. Most people are not going to have Acrobat Professional and certainly won't buy a $450 program just to be able to use a $300 device. I know there is some scanning software that comes with the unit, but it's for Windows (and not sure what it can do.)

2) Auto document feeder also is giving me some trouble - it is scanning letter size pages as legal size. So there is all this white area at the bottom of my scans. Something I will have to talk to Canon about how to fix, if possible.

3) My home phone number doubles as my fax line so I run the telephone line from the wall into the unit -- and then then out to my phone. Whenever I use my phone to make a call - the MF4370DN turns on and starts to blink "Processing Data" and a green light on the side of the unit starts to blink as well. And it stays on for the whole call. Now when I talk on the phone I gotta see this light blinking in my periphery. Kind of annoying and a waste of energy if you ask me.

4)The instructions for using the scanner were not very clear. I installed what I thought was a scanning program on a CD that came with the device. After I installed it I thenspent ages looking for the scanning application which I just installed. Turns out there is no application, instead what you are really installing is the driver. You need to use your own scanning program - I use Photoshop.

5) Every time I want to scan something I need to push the Scan button twice on the device to put it into USB scan mode. It would be nice if it would automatically detect how it was going to transmit. Also you have 1.5 to 2 minutes from when you push SCAN twice to when the machine puts itself to sleep. So a few times now I have tried to scan and couldn't because the SCAN option timed out on the machine.

6) The manual is not Mac friendly. If it was it would have saved me a couple hours figuring out most of the above. I had to call Canon 3 times or so to get the kinks worked out.

But I must say that Canon technical support is bar none the best customer support I have ever experienced. A human will pick up the phone almost immediately and you are speaking to an educated, polite, sympathetic, and a very knowledgeable person who's first language is english and they live here in the good ol' USA. A+ on that Canon.

Despite the problems settings this up - I am happy with my purchase. As I am the first person to review this I am glad to pass on what I learned to help others make an informed choice and if you happen to buy it I hope that I helped save you some time setting it up.

Thanks!

I bought the printer about 3 weeks ago. It prints well, faxes great, but the scanning is where if falls short.

It came with the canon software for enabling to scan over the network. The box says it scans at 600 x 1200, but that ONLY from the USB connection. The network scanning limits you to only 300dpi. Customer support says I can get the full 600 if i connect the USB port. But the reason I bought it was to use via the network! Sounds like they weren't honest in their product description.

I would recommend another printer such as the comparable brother but I have had a lot of bad experiences with my previous brother products so I will stick with this one despite its shortcoming and hopefully wait for a firmware or software up date that will allow the full scanning resolution via the network.

Keep in mind, it wasn't too long ago when you had to purchased a $600+ printer to get the features of this one. Also, I do not like Brother printers. They are the generic brand of printers and have barely been supported by electronic retailers until recently.

This is my second Canon laser jet. The first was an all in one (print, copy, scan) MF1330. While it made flawless copies; it had no fax, could only connect to one PC through USB, and lacked the ADF (automatic document feeder). I have three PC's in my house. Two desktops and one laptop. The two desktops are running 64-bit Vista, and I have searched high and low for a modem that would work with a 64-bit OS. The only ones I found are not natively supported in Vista and cost $80+. The others were all external. If you don't know this, the Canon laser jets have a very fast first page out time. So when they say 23 pages per minute, it doesn't mean after a two minute warm up period. When you click print the PC (depending on speed) takes a few seconds plus to process before sending. With my computer, the entire print process took about 5 seconds before the page was being printed. Very nice! Imediately I noticed how quiet this printer is compared to my last canon and my Oki C5200ne color laser. Amazing for a laser jet. I hope they didn't sacrifice life expectancy or something else to get it.

I was a little disappointed. This printer didn't turn out to be everything I thought it would be, which is why I only gave it 4 stars. First of all, you must know Windows Fax & Scan does not work with this printer. That is the let down of the year to me, but it's not Canon's fault... not necessarily. Turns out WF&S only uses WIA scanning drivers and this printer uses TWAIN. Thanks Microsoft. The computer never directly communicates with the printer, so the faxing is treated like printing. As a result, the faxing portion of the software doesn't work with it either.

This printer DOES come with software for scanning. It's burried on the CD, and you must explore the CD to find it. I believe it's only for the PC, however.As the other poster said, I searched all over for the scanning software I thought I installed. Turns out it was just a driver. I own Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat, so it's not much of a concern for me. They are both TWAIN compatible by the way. One thing I don't like about this printer is the need to press the scan button prior to scanning. This is not very convenient for a network printer. It's even worse if you have a long way to go to get back to your PC. By the time you get there, the thing may have gone back into power saving mode.

Still with it's flaws, it's definately a great buy compared to similar products of the past (which were bulkier, louder, and more expensive). It does what it says it can do. Print (double sided at that), scan over the network, fax from your PC, and it's also voice line friendly! (No need for a dedicated fax line)It's a great buy.

I dont usually review stuff on amazon, but I'm going to pause for a minute and give this baby its due praise. I bought this a few months ago to replace an inkjet MFP that simply was not up to the job of being a cost efficient, fast, reliable MFP for my legal research projects (can involve printing several 25-50 page double sided print jobs). This thing simply put, works. And thats saying something b/c I have a household that uses both Mac and Windows machines and both connect to it flawlessly over the network and print with blazing fast speed, while saving paper by printing double sided. On top of that the scanner functions work over the network (only on the windows machine as of today, but canon promises me there will be a software update to correct this soon). Finally the toner use is fairly average as I get probably 2500 text pages per toner cartridge, and I will note that I have experimented with the generics offered by 3rd party companies on amazon and it works perfectly still and considerably cheaper ($70 vs. $25 for the generic). Over all I highly recommend this printer if you need a fast laser MFP that works over the network and with a mixed Mac and Windows environment.

This printer replaces a 4 year old Brother MFC that worked great but suddently died (and needs $150 to fix it). I got this printer for $199 from a local computer super store. I too had initial problems with scanning and after calling tech support (who are fantastic, quick to answer the phone, and speak English), I got it running on my network and installed the scanning software.

Other reviewers had problems w/scanning. I did too at first but after a call to tech support, it works fine. The problem with the scanning was due to the install CD only installing the driver but not the included OmniPage software. To get to that, you have to manually view the contents of the CD and go to the directory OmniPage and install it yourself (setup.exe). The included scanning software is ScanSoft OmniPage SE 4.2.

My initial network setup resulted in intermittent printing (it'd work for a few days then stop) and so the tech guy had me manually enter the IP address, subnet mask and disable DHCP.

It all works great now, it's fast printer and much more energy efficient than my other one. It's a great buy for the money - so much better than inkjets (and those $$ cartridges that only print well the first few times).

I had a brutal experience with Lexmark for two years now (see Lexmark X5470 to read up more on it), and this printer just made up for all those two years of torture.

I browsed the future shop site and this was the first printer I saw. Once I saw it I fell in love with the over all layout and design. Every thing I read up on this printer was just amazing, every thing I wanted from a printer.

The setup at first seems quite overwhelming, because there are six books two of which are only essential since the others are just reprints of the same manuals in different languages. The setup was quite easy for me to do because I'm one to always follow the instructions and do what instructions say word for word.

The only issue for me was the faxing feature. Every time a person called my home I kept hearing the fax and to fix that you have to go deep into the settings to change it. After that was fixed I honestly had no problem with this printer. It copies and prints your documents with in a second and the duplex printing couldn't have made it easier on me. My previous Lexmark printers always required me to flip the paper onto the other side once a side had completed printing. This some times got confusing because I didn't always remember which direction the printer prints the page and some times I'd have an upside down print out. This printer doesn't require you to move a muscle as it sucks the paper up on it's own and prints the second side. I remember I was in complete shock when I saw that because I had no idea that the printer was that advanced. It saved me lots of time and paper as well and allowed me to get what I wanted done with in seconds with out me double and triple checking simple things as I had to previously do with my lexmark.

Now for the scanning feature, for the first time I tried it two days back and I would say that it isn't one of the best features. This is because it can be quite confusing. When you scan a document, it requires you to complete some steps on the computer and it doesn't indicate any thing on the printer. Instead a small message appears on the PC and it's hidden behind any current windows that maybe opened. But it's nothing major, just requires a small amount of work.

As for the paper tray it's a real space saver due to it's 250 paper capacity.

This printer also has an energy saver mode, which it goes to when not in use, it's very convenient because the days of having to always turn on and off a printer are over. I can't tell you how many times I forgot to turn on my previous printers before printing. Now with the 4370dn all you have to do is press print on the computer. It's very quiet in printing and barely makes a noise which was the complete opposite when it came to the lexmark printers.

Another nice point about this printer is that, canon made it in such a way so none of the paper is visible and every thing is closed up so the printer looks very presentable. This printer also blends in well if you are an owner of a PC that has accessories which are black in color and is black it's self.

This printer also has a networking feature which may come in handy for small businesses or if you're in a home where two or three computers are hooked up. I personally don't use this feature because it's just for my computer so I can't really comment in that area.

Just be patient when it comes to reading the manual and starting the installation process because after that you will not regret getting this printer because it will do what a printer should do and more.

This was the best change I ever made and I highly recommend this product to every one!

First, the good ...

This is by far one of the easiest printers I have ever setup. When I first thought of adding a network printer to my home network I thought for sure that it would be a time consuming task (these types of things always end up being that way). Ah, but to the contrary, Canon made this by far the easiest setup of a network printer I have ever done. It's a cakewalk!

And, boy, does this printer print that first page fast. Every other laser printer I have ever had took what seemed like forever to get that first page out yet this one is out within seconds (I think the specifications say it prints within the first 9 seconds). Print quality looks fantastic, too.

Machine build actually seems quite good to me. Some of the plastic seems a bit light and appears a little on the cheap side but really the machine is quite nice looking. Its footprint is pretty small and it goes really well with all the other machines in my office of the same/similar color.

Also, I actually love that Canon has put their toner and drum units all in one cartridge. It makes for easy change out and keeps your prints looking great. Most of you reading this will probably already be familiar with replacing toner cartridges with other printers and probably have experienced getting toner on yourself or making a mess in some other way at some point. My last unit (a Panasonic MB-271) used two separate pieces and the toner cartridge was a bit weird in the way that way you put the toner cartridge in the drum and locked it in the toner was basically dumped into the drum. Who cares as long as it works, right? Well, after spending nearly $60 on a toner cartridge and locking it in the prints came out horrible and all smudged. Oh, now I need a new drum unit, too. Well, since I already loaded the toner I also need a new toner cartridge since all the toner was dumped into the drum (I tried salvaging the toner by turning the drum upside down and unlocking the toner cartridge but all I managed to do was get a huge amount of toner everywhere). Anyway, it turned out that it was going to be over a $100 for both a new drum and toner cartridge and by that point I was unhappy with the machine so sought out a replacement. Long story short, this all-in-one toner and drum cartridge IS the way to go.

The energy saver mode (sleep) that it goes into is awesome (for the most part ... more on that below) as it cuts energy use way down.

Now, the bad ...

Let me start off by saying that this printer really deserves probably 4.25 or 4.5 stars. It really is a great machine overall.

But, here is the problem that is pretty well known by reading all the reviews ... dunt dunt da da dah ... Network scanning! This Canon MF4370dn multi-function printer would have easily been a five star printer if it wasn't for both the difficult setup of the network scanning (USB scanning setup was a breeze) and the poor performance of the network scanning.

First of all, setting up the network scanner was much more difficult and not intuitive at all. In fact, the scanning software that comes with the machine doesn't even load by itself nor is it easy to find. I had to come to these reviews to find out where to find the included network scanning software, which is OmniPage. After following the instructions in the manual you actually are only loading the network scanning driver (Color Network ScanGear v2.40). To get the scanning software you have to browse the included software disk, find the OmniPage folder and then click setup. After installing the driver software you need to run the ScanGear Tool to setup your network scanner driver. After doing that you want to run the scanner setup wizard under the OmniPage folder in you programs list.

After getting everything setup the OmniPage software had many shortcomings. One large one is the lack of PDF scanning. I ended up going to download.com and downloading PDFill, which you should be able to find here:

http://download.cnet.com/PDFill-PDF-Tools-Free/3000-2075_4-10435051.html?tag=mncol

PDFill works pretty well, particularly for freeware.

The Color Network ScanGear driver stinks though. It would lock up scanning for several minutes until it fully finished processing. I'm not sure what the problem is but it seems to be the norm from what I have read. I even found the latest version, v2.43, and installed it to no avail. If you want the newest version you can find it here:

http://software.canon-europe.com/software/0033788_0010554.asp

Oh, like other users here, too. I find having to set the printer to "network scanning" a bother particularly since the unit switches back to "printer" mode or "sleep" mode pretty quickly. Although I'm sure you want it to switch back to printing by itself eventually they should make the timer a user-adjustable setting to more suit one's needs (personally, I would set it for 10 minutes whereas now you seem to get 1 or 2 minutes). Better yet, make it so you don't have to mess with the actual unit itself. It wasn't necessary with my Panasonic so I know it's doable.

Pretty much I find the network scanning to be almost worthless. It's just WAY to slow and the included software just isn't very good. Too bad, really. It seems to be the only area Canon overlooked here. Everything else about the machine is wonderful. Canon probably didn't realize how important this feature would be to users.

I did end up setting up the scanner on one computer via the USB link (be sure to load the software first, before plugging in a USB cable). The scanning software Canon has for the USB type connection was easy to install and worked very well. That software actually will let you scan to PDF (why they couldn't use this software for the network scanning I don't know). I just made a network shared folder for all my scans to go to so that they are available to all of the network computers. Not the best since I will have to fire up that machine, which isn't my main machine, to scan efficiently but all-in-all it's not the end of the world.

So, Canon, please fix the network scanning issue by doing a firmware update, a driver update, and please get us some good network scanning software. Once you do that you will have yourself a nearly perfect machine (not perfect only because there is ALWAYS room for improvement).

For us users out there, most of us aren't going to do that much scanning overall so the network scanning issue shouldn't be a make or break deal, particularly since the USB scanning works so well. The main thing is that this is a super fantastic network printer with equally super duplex printing, faxing, and coping. For under $300 it's a fantastic machine.

The printer can print, fax, scan and copy. The printing is fast and the price is good but I am only giving it 3 stars for the following reasons.

1) It can only do duplex from windows but not from OS X.

2) Network scan is very slow and the process is horrible. You have to open an application that is TWAIN compatible to scan. It is basically unusable. I was hoping that I can scan at the machine and send the file to a folder on a computer.

I use this for my home business & I have found it to be very good. I rate it strongly and bought it after I read other users reviews and concerns.

One item that comes up frequently in the reviews is the concern that scanning requires a second input from the computer to start a scan. Yes this is true but you can set in the Scanner & Cameras settings in the control Panel to default to using the MF Toolbox when scanning and it will automatically use the default scan settings created in the toolbox & save the scanned document to a designated file. Access this option as follows: Tool Panel -> Scanners and Cameras->Select MF4370->Properties->Events Tab->Change actions "Start this program" to MF Toolbox. Also you have to push the scan button twice for a USB connection -> for me not such a big concern.

I've put this machine through its paces in the last couple of weeks scanning 30-40 page documents of mixed size, large print jobs and it has worked flawlessly. I'm very happy with it.

Annoying is the premature toner low light, which I have been ignoring as the printer continues to print and copy without needing the cartridge replaced.

I highly recommend this product.

Basically I like this product in that it is faithful to its capability and performance: copying, scanning, and duplex printing.
The most favorite features using this product are "Energy Saver" and "Slient Printing." I don't need to turn off the printer everytime after use. And it is really quiet in printing.
However, there is a significant problem of paper alignment. I am a type of person sensitive to small variations, and mis-alignment problem really annoys me. Although it is not too much but still noticeable. The printing is rising from left low to right high. The variation between left and right is about maximum 2mm(0.0787"). Unlike other options such as scanning, printing is the key of this product, and Canon should have given more careful attention to the final manufacture.

Update - This is the review after using it for two years. So far it did not break down or even jammed a paper, and I am very happy with it. Probably, I would upgrade the rating from 3 stars to 4. HOWEVER, as in the first review, this printer does not perfectly align the paper or image when printing, copying, or scanning. And this is why I can not give 5-star rating.