The Canon imageClass D880 ($700 street) is built around a 16-page per minute (ppm) printer engine that Canon says is equally appropriate for a printer or copier (it works at 18 ppm for copying).

Canon also says, however, that the unit is copier-oriented, which means that although it can serve as a printer and standalone fax machine, complete with a 30-sheet ADF, it also leaves out some basic features, notably the ability to scan to or fax from your computer. Unless you don't need a scanner or PC fax capability, that counts as a serious drawback.

At 15.1 by 18.8 by 17.4 inches (HWD), the D880 is large enough that you probably won't want to share your desk with it. You will need to keep it nearby, however, since its only connection choices are a parallel port and a USB 1.1 port, which we used. Setup is quick and easy, with only one toner cartridge to install.

Output quality is more than respectable for a monochrome laser, with ratings of excellent for text, good for graphics, and at the high end of fair for photos. Well over half of our test fonts were easily readable at 4 points, with none needing larger than 8 points. Graphics and photos both showed dithering, but the ratings for both are better than for most monochrome lasers.

Performance was relatively slow for the price, with a total time on our business-applications suite of 17 minutes 18 seconds (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com). For comparison, the $600 Brother MFC-8840DN took just 8:42, essentially half the time. Our Adobe Acrobat files in particular slowed the D880 down, taking about 4 minutes each, compared with about 28 seconds for the Brother printer.

The D880 also took a long time to return control to the current application. Again, it stumbled badly on the Acrobat files, holding the program hostage for roughly 3:50 of the 4-minute print time for each file, although we could switch to other programs and use them during that time. Even on our 50-page monochrome Microsoft Word file, it took 20 seconds to return control, compared with a typical 1 to 3 seconds. This level of performance, particularly the slow return of control to the application, makes the D880 hard to recommend unless you are primarily looking for a copier and fax machine, and consider printing to be a minor extra.

Sub-ratings:
Text:
Graphics:
Photos: