subject: Canon i-SENSYS MF4690PL a top end machine [print this page] Canon features a great deal of multifunction models within its collection and the i-Sensys MF4690PL is definitely at the top of the range of its latest set of releases.
This particular device features a fairly compact footprint, although you'll find it deeper than many. The control panel is supported by two posts, that gives an all round impression of having a dark-grey cowl around the front of the machine. This can make it a little more cumbersome to load the 250-sheet paper tray and even more tough to use the 10-sheet multi-purpose tray, whose guides now live some 100mm within the cowl.
The Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) includes a steeply raked feed tray and it will carry 35 pages for extended copy and fax jobs. The flatbed scanner will manage 24-bit colour at a top optical resolution of 600ppi, though by using enhancement this grows to 9,600ppi.
Canon has been able to keep the control panel commendably simple to use. The 2-line by 16-character LCD display is backlit, along with three control buttons right in front for navigating menus as well as three behind for mode selection. To the right is a fax number pad and additionally to the left is a set of seven quick-dial numbers for commonly used recipients. The Start and Stop buttons are large and at the right-hand part of the panel as well as a series of controls, such as enlargement, brightness and document type, are arranged along a silver panel at the rear of the primary controls.
There's a dual-purpose USB socket placed under the control panel on the right, that allows scanning of documents directly to a USB drive as PDF files and printing or alternatively faxing of documents from a PDF.
Software furnished with the i-Sensys MF4690PL contains PageManager as well as OmniPage, well known programs with regards to document management as well as OCR, respectively. Additionally, there is the CanonMF Toolbox, giving fast and simple access to e-mail, OCR scanning and the production of PDF documents.
The device is a competent fax, not to mention possessing print, copy as well as scan options. Canon states it is able to transmit a page in three seconds and it's structured round a Super G3 fax modem, which means it can generate as much as 256 greyscales. The MF4690PL at the same time includes a 512-page fax memory, thus it will be able to deal with a lot of incoming faxes, whether or not the paper tray's unfilled.
Our five-page text and text and graphics tests generate rates of 11.1ppm and 11.5ppm, barely half the claimed rate. Whenever we tried the 20-page document, we ended up seeing 15.4ppm. The machine features automatic duplex, thus we ran the 20-page document double-sided, also, generating 10 pages in 122 seconds, comparable to 9.8ppm.
Copies of the text and graphics page required 13 seconds through the ADF together with eight seconds through the flatbed glass. Both of these times are good.
The standard of the pages created is usually fine, even though there's some moderate spatter around the serifs of text characters. Greyscale graphics are just fair, with a few tints having a blotchy appearance to them in addition to mid-greys displaying a visible crosshatching. During normal use, you almost certainly wouldn't observe these kinds of attributes; there are laser printers and multifunctions with a comparable price tag, which don't display them.
A photocopy of our text and graphics page revealed some deterioration in level of quality of greyscale duplication, so some lighter tints were almost gone. The test picture print, while using the printer's dedicated picture setting, turned out nicely, having good levels of fine detail and, strangely enough, a reduced amount of the blotchiness than we found in the business graphics print.
The sole consumable is a drum and toner cartridge. The Canon i-Sensys MF4690PL toner cartridge is rated as 2,000 pages. That places the i-Sensys MF4690PL within a fair place against its primary rivals.
