If anyone can, Canon can - just s l o w l y.... (Canon Smartbase MP370)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Canon Smartbase MP370
Date:	13/03/06 (942 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality scanning & printing, stand-alone photocopier.

Disadvantages: Very expensive to run, can be slow

** Important note: I have no idea why this item is listed under Fax machines, as this model does not have a fax included. However, I did not identify the category - the product was already listed on dooyoo. I'll try and get it moved, but in the meantime, please bear this in mind when rating **

The Basics
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The Canon SmartBase MP370 is an all-in-one solution combining a colour printer, scanner and photocopier, together with the ability to print photographs directly from your digital camera. The MP370 comes with some bundled software (ArcSoft PhotoImpression and ScanSoft Omnipage 2.0 SE) to help you get started.

Appearance
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The MP370 looks very smart. It is mainly constructed in a black, shiny plastic finish with grey lid and grey panels on the side. The front of the printer opens to reveal the paper delivery tray (where your print outs end up), whilst the top of the unit lifts up to reveal the scanner glass.

Across the top of the unit are the main control buttons – there’s an on/off button, then separate buttons for each of the main functions. The function you are currently using is lit up with a yellow LED, so it’s easy to see at a glance what mode you are in. Beneath those is another control panel, which allows you to access the various options and settings for the printer itself. There are also two buttons to allow you to choose between the black and white and colour modes. The look of the whole unit is minimalist and stylish.

The unit is pretty compact too, measuring around 9 inches tall x 15 inches deep and 17 inches wide. Ok, it’s still going to take up a fair chunk of your deskspace, but compare that with how much room a separate printer, scanner and photocopier would take up and you’re saving a lot of room.

Specifications
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The machine can print or scan up to 1200 dpi (dots per inch), although in reality, unless you need to produce professional style graphics or text, you won’t use the higher settings. It’s also pretty nippy, printing out 18 pages per minute in black and white or 12 pages per minute in colour.


Set-Up and Maintenance
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Installation is incredibly easy, thanks to Canon’s approach. As well as the normal manual etc., there’s a quickstart guide which gives you a graphical view of how to get started. Printed on poster-size paper, it takes you through step by step, showing you exactly what to do and in what order. It even takes you through the calibration process, so that you can check you’re getting the best available quality from your printer. In total, from taking the printer out of the box to having it installed probably took a maximum of 15 minutes.

Changing cartridges is also pretty easy (which is a good job, since it’s something you will find yourself doing pretty regularly). Pull down the front of the printer and the cartridges will move automatically to the centre of the printer (there are separate cartridges for black and white and colour). You then just need to pull out the old cartridge and slot the new one in. The printer will then ask if you’ve just changed cartridge, select Yes and it will clean the print head for you, making sure your printer stays in top condition.

Jam-wise, this unit is also pretty good. I’ve had it for almost 3 years now and in that time have probably had fewer than half a dozen jams. Better still, on the rare occasion when it does jam, removal is easy. There’s none of this opening dozens of draws and slots to try and find out where the jam is. There’s only two places to look: the paper feeder and the delivery tray. Find out where the jam is and gently pull the paper out – easy!

Ease of Use
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Switching between functions is a doddle – simply press the button for the function you want to use (e.g. Scan for the scanner) and you’re ready to go! However, don’t worry if you forget this, because the unit is usually intelligent enough to recognise what you are trying to do, and switch itself into the right mode, without you needing to do anything.

Another nice feature is that there is a drop down paper delivery tray which opens up to collect your paper when using the printer function. With some printers, if you forget to open this, then the paper gets jammed inside. That’s not a worry with this printer as it will automatically slide the printer tray open for you when printing starts!

The most annoying part of the unit is switching it on and off – it is incredibly slow to warm up. Press the On button and the printer clicks and whirrs away for at least 30-60 seconds whilst it warms up before it’s ready for action. Worse still, it does this every time you switch on. Being environmentally conscious, I switch off the printer when it’s not in use, which means I have to go through this rigmarole every time. OK, a minute may not be a huge amount of time, but if you’re switching it on and off several times a day, it mounts up. Similarly, it makes it difficult if you just want to print something very quickly as you have to factor in the warm-up time.

Switching off is equally a pain. Once your print/scan/copy has been done, the printer whirrs away doing various things (returning the scan/print head to its start location) and you have to wait until it’s finished doing this before you can switch off. With other printers I’ve had, you can press the Off button at any stage and, once it’s finished doing it’s internal stuff, it will switch itself off. With this one, if it’s working away when you press the Off button, it will just ignore you – you have to wait until it’s finished. Again, it might sound a minor niggle, but the number of times I’ve “switched off” the unit, only to return an hour later to find it is still on is ridiculous.

Let’s consider each of the functions of this unit in turn.

Scanner
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The scanner is probably the strongest part of this unit. Lift up the lid and place your item (up to A4 size) onto the glass, fire up your scanning software and off you go. The unit comes with ArcSoft Photostudio 5.5 (for pictures) and ScanSoft Omni page 2.0 SE (for text) supplied. PhotoStudio is incredibly easy to use. Click on the scanner button to launch the scanner interface. This gives you the basic options, so all you need to do is choose these. You can alter the size of the scan area (to scan just part of a page) and the resolution (anywhere between 75 dpi and 1200 dpi). Click the Scan button and leave the machine to do the rest. It’s very easy to use and you’ll have your first scan completed within minutes of getting started. The scanner is pretty quick – exact speeds obviously depend on the size of the image you are scanning and at what resolution you are scanning. As a general guide an A4 image scanning at 75 dpi takes a couple of seconds, whilst an A4 image scanned at a higher resolution (say 600 dpi) may take around 15-20 seconds or less – pretty nippy!

Results are extremely good, with excellent colour reproduction on your scans, even at lower levels. In fact, the results are so good that I find I rarely need to go above 100 dpi scanning resolution – this is whether I’m scanning stuff for webpages or to add to documents to print out.

Printer
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The printer was the main reason I bought this unit, and to be honest, it’s pretty disappointing. As mentioned above, although printing itself is pretty fast, you need to factor in the “warm-up” time, which makes printing off a quick copy of something virtually impossible. Print quality is very good. The printer has 3 different settings: Draft, Standard or High Quality. To be honest, the Draft quality is more than good enough and I use this all the time for all documents – letters to friends, official business letters, posters for various organisations I do work for and so on. I’ve only ever used the high resolution setting (in colour mode) once and the results were superb. However, if you are printing photographs, it’s definitely worth investing in special-coated glossy paper – you will really notice the difference. I tried printing a photograph (in high quality mode) on ordinary paper and was disappointed with the results – colours were smudged or unclear and it was difficult to distinguish between different shades of the same colour. I then tried some glossy paper, and the colour quality was as good as if I’d taken the photo down to Boots and had them process it.

The drawback, however, (and the reason you’ll want to run this printer in Draft mode most of the time) is that it is incredibly expensive to run. I don’t do huge amounts of printing (probably fewer than 30 sheets a month) and yet need to buy a new black and white cartridge around every three months. Branded cartridges cost about £8, (although you can pick up cheaper, unbranded options ), so it’s not cheap. If you do a lot of printing, or use this unit in a home office environment, I think you will find it incredibly expensive to run.

The other problem is that, although the unit supports double-sided printing, it’s awkward to use. My previous printer was a Hewlett Packard, where double sided printing was a dream – the printer would print one side, then drag the paper back into the printer to print the other side. Easy! The Canon doesn’t do this – it prints out all the odd sides and ejects them into the paper delivery tray. You then need to collect the paper, turn it round and put it back in the paper tray (making sure it’s the right way round, although the software does tell you exactly what to do), click the button to say you’ve done this and it will then print the even pages. It’s very cumbersome and means when you’re printing a longer document, it’s difficult to go off and do something else, as you need to wait around to turn the pages over.

Photocopier
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I’ve only ever used the copier a couple of times, so can’t comment too much on it. However, it is pretty easy to use. Select the copier option, select whether you want black and white or colour copying and how many copies you want. Place your item on the scan plate and wait for it to be delivered.

A nice feature about the photocopier is that (unlike the other functions) it works independently of your PC, so you can use it without having to switch your PC on

Quality is extremely good and shows the strengths of both the scanner and the printer (since obviously both are involved in the photocopying process). However, again, it is very expensive – as far as I can see, there is no option to switch to draft quality – everything on the photocopier is printed out at normal quality level. To be honest, unless you’re in a desperate hurry for something, it’s probably going to be cheaper to run down to your local copy shop, where you’ll pay 4p per copy or less.

PictBridge Compatability
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There is another function to this unit, which allows you to plug a compatible digital camera in and get your photos printed out without the need to download them onto your PC. However, I can’t comment on this, as I’ve never used it.

Conclusion
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I couldn’t really recommend this model. I bought it because it received consistently high reviews in the computer press when it was released and was disappointed with it from the start. The slow warm up/shut down process is incredibly annoying and the running costs very high. There is no doubt that the documents it produces are of very high quality, but even at a relatively low usage, you are going to spend a lot of money on consumables. I believe the Canon MP 370 is no longer available to buy new. If you have the chance to buy one second hand, my advice to you would be to look elsewhere: there are better multi-function devices available.

Summary: A good quality unit, let down by high running costs.