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(More customer reviews)I wanted a quality all-in-one solution for my home office and personal use, and after some research my options boiled down to 2 models: the HP Officejet D145 and the Canon Multipass F80. Since I couldn't find a store anywhere that had BOTH of these models running for comparison, I bought ONE OF EACH and brought them home for my own evaluation.
I bought the HP D145 first. The PROS: Fast, great quality prints and copies even on plain paper in "Normal" mode. Makes double-sided copies. Multi-format card reader. Good software and tutorials. Intuitive and easy to use frontpanel buttons.
CONS: Printed manual only covers a few of the options, and help files on the CD cover the rest. Won't print borderless photos. If you need to copy something that has printing near the edges of the original, you need to reduce a few percentage points first or you'll end-up with cropped copies.
I printed a few photos from my PC and also from my Nikon Coolpix 995 3.3 megapixel digital camera using the card reader. If the photos are well lit and of high quality, they will print nicely on Photo quality paper. The only catch is the 1/4" border around the edge. I haven't tried printing on 4x6" photo paper yet, but my guess is that the border will print there as well. Some may not see this as a big deal, but if you want to print copies of scanned photos or digital camera images, they won't look the same as other photographs in your album if they have borders around them. An option is to make 4x6" prints on full sheets of paper, but then you have to cut them by hand. This is also a waste of expensive paper.
Having been impressed by the HP D145, but underwhelmed by it's inability to create borderless photo prints, I decided to see what the Canon F80 had to offer. For more than a hundred dollars less, it seemed logical to compare the two to see what HP was providing for the extra money. I also thought there was a chance that the quality of photo prints from the HP weren't that great, but I had nothing to compare to.
I bought a Canon Multipass F80, and the first thing I noticed was it's smaller size and compact footprint. It didn't come with a USB cable, and the only way to connect to your computer was with... a USB CABLE! It seems a little crazy to me that they don't include a cable that probably costs them pennies. Luckily, I had a extra one available. Having already experimented with the HP a couple of days earlier, I knew right off the bat what I wanted to know about this machine... so I tried to print a full page photo from the Cardreader. It wouldn't recognize the card at first, so after some digging throught the manual I discovered that the card must be formatted by the camera and NOT the PC. After I did this, and took a few new photos, the F80 was able to recognize the card (Compactflash only). I printed an index first, and compared to the HP D145 the photos were very small (stamp sized, compared the HP's ~1x2" index photos). The HP has this cool feature that let's you select the photo(s) and print sizes of images on the index page... then you scan the page and it automagically prints your selections. The Canon F80 doesn't do this, but I'm not sure how often I would even use this feature if I had it. There is nothing in the F80 manual that leads me to believe that you can increase the size of the thumbnails.
Canon F80 PROS: Higher quality photo prints. I ran a page of wallet sized prints from the cardreader on both machines, and a close inspection revealed slightly better quality on the Canon. In fact, it was impossible to tell that it wasn't an actual photo-lab print on the Canon. The HP looked good, but you could see a slight bit of dithering in some areas. Unless you use a magnifying glass on the photos hanging on your wall, you'll never notice the difference, but I wanted to point it out nonetheless. I also printed a photo using the borderless option, and WOW!! Again, a perfect photograph printed to the edge of the paper... just like you'd get from Kodak. Compared to the same full page print on the HP d145, the F80 print was larger (borderless) and brighter.
I haven't used either of these machines enough yet to know anything about the ink usage and long-term costs. The F80 uses 4 different colored ink tanks, and the HP D145 uses 1 black and 1 color tank... but the large color tank feeds ink to 4 separate color printheads. I'm not clear on how this works exactly, but I imagine that when you run out of Yellow ink, you'll need to replace the whole color cartridge. Only time will tell for sure, and I'll decide to take one of these back before I get that far.
COMPARISON:
HP D145 wins: quality of color copies and prints on normal paper, double-sided copies, index print quality, software.
CANON F80 wins: photo print quality, borderless prints, small footprint, lower cost.
UNKNOWN: speed and scanning ability (untested)
BOTTOM LINE: It depends on what's important to you. Compare the PROS and CONS and decide what's the best fit for your needs.
Good luck!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Canon MultiPass F80 Multifunction
Canon's MultiPASS F80 multifunction peripheral (MFP) is a full-featured printer, copier, fax and scanner in one compact machine. Each feature, whether operating in color or black and white, provides the versatility to make an impressive visual impact ? no matter what your company's imaging requirements are today or in the future. The MultiPASS F80 features the exclusive Canon Think Tank System. This intelligent ink-management system features four separate ink tanks ? one for each color. When one color runs out, you replace just one tank rather than the entire cartridge, reducing your supply costs. Also, a unique low-ink sensor alerts you so you can drop in a new tank before running out of ink in the middle of a print job. This machine provides the solutions to enable your small business to be more organized, productive and creative.The MultiPASS F80 does it all. It delivers high-quality legal and letter-size copies at speeds of up to 20 copies per minute (cpm) in black and white and 13 cpm in color. It also scans documents and photos at 9600 dpi in brilliant 36-bit color. But it's more than a copier and scanner; it also offers exceptional quality printing. Also included is a built-in color fax with Canon's Super G3 high-speed facsimile technology and 30-page Automatic Document Feeder.In addition, Canon's Advanced MicroFine Droplet Technology helps put truly remarkable photo-quality color printing to work for you with up to 2400 x 1200 dpi resolution. With its ultra-fine, 5-picoliter droplets, it refines color, precision and detail for magnificent photo printing even on plain paper. Whether you're printing 4" x 6" borderless photos or making color presentations, you can count on quality output every time.
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