Canon Color imageClass MF810Cdn Review

The Canon Color imageClass MF810Cdn ($999) is the lower-end model of a pair of heavy-duty color laser multifunction printers (MFPs) that Canon recently introduced for small to midsize businesses. As such, it brings good paper capacity, solid output quality and a wealth of office-friendly features to the table. Its prime differentiator with the Canon Color imageClass MF820Cdn is speed; the MF810Cdn is somewhat slower and sells at a lower price.

Design and Features
The MF810Cdn ($999.00 at Adorama)(Opens in a new window) can print, copy, scan, and fax both single- and two-sided documents, print from a USB thumb drive or mobile device (the latter only if your network has a wireless access point), scan to a USB thumb drive, network folder, or PC, can work as a standalone fax machine or send faxes from a PC.

Measuring 24 by 20.1 by 22.3 inches (HWD) and weighing 95 pounds, the MF810Cdn is a large and heavy MFP. You’ll want to put it on a table or bench of its own, and round up at least two people to move it into place. Its large, tilt-up front panel includes an alphanumeric keypad for entering fax numbers and other information, a four-way controller, and a 3.5-inch color touch-screen LCD. On the side is a port for a USB thumb drive.

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A 50-sheet duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) lets users copy, scan, or fax both sides of multipage documents at up to legal size. It first scans one side of a document, flips it over, and then scans the other side. A 550-sheet main paper tray and a 100-sheet multipurpose feeder, as well as an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper, are standard. You can add up to three optional 500-sheet paper trays ($299 each or $549 for three), for a maximum paper capacity of 2,100 sheets.

The MF810Cdn offers Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) and USB connectivity. It doesn’t support Wi-Fi, but you can still print to and scan from it from an iOS or Android mobile device if there’s a wireless access point on the printer’s network. Apps and protocols it supports include Apple AirPrint, Mopria Print Service, Canon Mobile Printing, and Canon Mobile Scanning for Business. I tested the printer over an Ethernet connection with its drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

This printer comes with several drivers: two Canon host-based (UFR II) drivers—one of which supports Microsoft XPS Document Writer—a PCL5c and a PCL6 driver. The most important driver, at least for businesses that rely on PostScript printing, is a PostScript 3 driver.

Printing Speed
In its default duplex (two-sided) mode, the MF810Cdn, rated at 26 pages per minute (ppm), printed out our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic(Opens in a new window)‘s hardware and software) at 6ppm. It was a tad faster in our tests in simplex at 6.6ppm. Note that rated speeds are based on text-only printing, while our test suite includes text documents, graphics documents, and documents with mixed content. The Canon MF820Cdn, rated at 36ppm, tested at a faster 7.1ppm in duplex and 8.3ppm in simplex. We timed the Dell C3765dnf Color Laser Printer , our Editors’ Choice medium-duty printer for small to midsize businesses, at 8.2ppm in its default duplex mode and 10.1ppm for simplex. The Dell model is rated at 23ppm for duplex printing and 36ppm for simplex.

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Output Quality
Output quality is average for a color laser across the board for text, graphics, and photos. Even average text for a laser is very good, and the MF810Cdn’s text should be fine for any business use, except those requiring very small fonts.

With graphics, colors for the most part were bright and well saturated in our tests. One illustration showed significant posterization, a tendency for abrupt shifts in shading where they should be gradual. In a couple of illustrations, thin colored lines were nearly lost. The graphics should be fine for any internal business use, and perhaps for PowerPoint handouts, depending on how picky you are. In general, photos looked good in our tests, but in a couple of cases, their backgrounds were a bit blotchy.

Running costs for the MF810Cdn, based on Canon’s prices and yield figures for toner and other consumables, are 1.6 cents per monochrome page and 13 cents per color page. Its black-and-white cost is good for a printer at its price, while color costs are a bit on the high side. It has the same running costs as the Canon MF820Cdn, while the Dell C3765dnf’s color costs are 1.5 cents per monochrome page and 10 cents per color page.

With a maximum monthly duty cycle of 67,000 pages, the Canon MF810Cdn is built for somewhat lighter-duty use than the Canon MF820Cdn’s 88,000 pages. The Dell C3765dnf’s maximum duty cycle of 80,000 pages is between the two.

Conclusion
You can save money by going with the Canon Color imageClass MF810Cdn over the Canon MF820Cdn, but you do take a hit in speed, and the MF810Cdn isn’t meant for quite as heavy use as its Canon sibling. The MF810Cdn also falls short of the Editors’ Choice Dell C3765dnf, which is considerably faster, has better graphics quality, and has lower color costs. Still, the MF810Cdn is a likeable workhorse color MFP with solid output quality, a strong feature set, and it can be augmented with as much optional paper capacity as any small to midsize office is ever likely to need.