Canon MF5650

They say you can't be all things to all men, but the Canon MF5650 certainly gives it a shot. The company's latest all-in-one combines a fax, scanner and mono laser printer for use in the home office.

The control panel at the front features 12 programmable speed-dial buttons for frequently used fax numbers, and you can store up to 100 further numbers using the Coded Dial button. There's also a Directory button that lets you search for numbers by name.

A 250-sheet capacity paper input tray slides out of the front and above there's a manual feed slot with adjustable paper feed guides to input thicker media, envelopes or transparencies. Print output is gathered in the 60-sheet capacity output tray, built into a cut-away section in the middle of the device and a panel at the front folds down to reveal the toner cartridge bed.

Canon quotes maximum print speeds of up to 18 pages per minute and this was borne out across the board in our tests. There are faster mono lasers, but print quality was generally good, with uniform shaded areas and crisp characters in a range of font sizes.

The lid of the Canon folds up to reveal a flatbed scanner capable of colour scanning at resolutions up to 1,200 x 2,400ppi, and the accompanying Canon MF Toolbox software simplifies a range of scanning tasks.

The interface features buttons for scanning to email, scanning to optical character recognition software, scanning to file and pdf. There are also two buttons in the software that you can set to scan straight to specified applications.

The MF5650 is a decent home office workhorse but the high price tag detracts from its appeal. However, you should be able to pick this model up for less online.

Contact: Canon 08705 143 723
www.canon.co.uk

Specifications:

• 600 x 600dpi print/1,200 x 2, 400ppi scan resolutions
• 48bit in/24bit out colour scanning
• Laser printing
• Flatbed CCD scanner
• 13.5kg
• 486 x 416 x 442mm (w x d x h)
• Presto Page Manager, Scansoft Omnipage SE
• USB2 interface