Canon MX870 Quick Review

I bought an MX870 for a pretty decent price in Australia – somewhere around $200 IIRC, which isn’t bad for a AIO from a product family that is consistently in the PC Pro A-List.

In fact, I didn’t question my purchase for a second, having really liked the MX860 before it. So, how does it stack up?

Likes
- All the features of the MX860, and more
- Scan as PDF to SDCard (I do this a lot with papers to archive, and then copy to my PC and organise once a fortnight)
- Scanning to SD card is quicker and easier than scanning to PC/etc
- Separate tanks for printing (they last a LOT longer than the ‘refill’ warning from the printer
- Excellent quality printing with decent ink
- WiFi scan/print
- Duplex print and scan

Dislikes
- For some reason, scans the first page of a multipage really slowly… but then the second, third, etc. scan almost as fast as I can open the lid and change the pages
- VERY sensitive ADF. Standard 80gsm A4 paper is about it. Any payslips, car rental statements, fanfolded leaflets, etc. etc. will jam
- How do you unjam the ADF?? Admittedly I’ve still not looked, but the only solution seems to be to yank hard enough, and hope it doesn’t tear
- Refuses to do anything once a cartridge is completely and utterly empty – annoying if you just want to scan something
- Sometimes takes ages to warm up
- You have to manually select ‘scan to card’ every time you power on! Why can’t it just keep it as a default?