Canon imageClass MF424dw - Review 2022

A step up from the Canon imageClass MF249dw, a height pick, the Canon imageClass MF424dw ($349) is a little bigger and faster. It has more than productivity and convenience features, such as a single-pass auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), and support for USB pollex drives. Its paper-input capacity is expandable, making it an accommodating more versatile and robust monochrome all-in-one (AIO) than the Canon MF249dw—for not that much more than money. All that, and Canon's new 3-year warranty, as well as lower-than-average running costs, are more than plenty to drag the MF424dw as our Editors' Choice for a monochrome laser AIO for low- to moderate-book scanning in a small- to medium-size office or workgroup.

Rich Feature Fix

The MF424dw tin can print, copy, scan, and fax. It measures 17.ix past fifteen.v past 18.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 35.8 pounds, making it suitable to reside on larger desktops, but I suspect that most offices will need to observe the unit its own dedicated perch. In contrast, the Catechism MF249dw is a few inches smaller in top and depth and weighs almost v.5 pounds less. The Canon MF416dw, a higher-capacity and more-feature-rich monochrome laser AIO, is similar in size to the MF424dw, just it weighs about 6 pounds more. The HP LaserJet Pro M426fdw and the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, two similarly priced monochrome laser AIOs, are both significantly smaller and lighter.

As for newspaper handling, out of the box, the MF424dw holds up to 300 sheets of newspaper, split between a 250-sheet drawer upwardly forepart and a l-sheet multipurpose tray on the back. If that'south not enough, there's an option for a 550-sheet drawer ($199), kicking total capacity up to 900 sheets. The MF424dw'due south maximum monthly duty cycle is l,000 pages (with a recommended monthly print volume of 4,000 pages).

The smaller Canon MF249dw, on the other mitt, holds only 251 sheets, split between a 250-sail drawer and a 1-canvass override tray, and it'south not expandable. However, Brother's closely priced MFC-L5700DW can handle 350 sheets from two sources, and yous can upgrade it to 900 sheets, while the Brother MFC-L2750DW Forty supports just 251 sheets and is non expandable. In addition, the Brother MFC-L5700DW's duty cycle is the same as that of the MF424dw; the Catechism MF249dw is 35,000 pages less, as is the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, while the HP M426fdw's is a whopping 30,000 pages more than.

The MF424dw comes with a 50-sheet, unmarried-pass duplexing ADF, which means that information technology scans or copies both sides of a two-sided document at once, up to 50 two-sided sheets automatically. Of the competing machines discussed here, HP's M426fdw and Blood brother's MFC-L2750DW Forty come with single-pass ADFs, while the Catechism MF249dw's and Canon MF416dw's ADFs duplex in two passes, i for each side of the page. Brother's MFC-L5700DW tin can't car-duplex at all, meaning that you take to flip two-sided documents manually to scan the other side.

And then there's the MF424dw's 5-inch colour impact screen, which, bated from the Sleep, Home, and Cancel buttons, comprises the entire control panel. Not only is it spacious and easy to utilize, you can apply apps from Canon'south Application Library to customize which features and options are readily available. There are several apps, and many of them provide shortcuts to workflow profiles, such as scan to a network drive or email, or impress from various pop deject sites and repositories, like OneDrive or Dropbox.

Connectivity and Security

The MF424dw supports Ethernet x/100/1000 Base-T, 802.11b/g/north Wi-Fi, a direct connectedness to a single PC via USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi Straight. Wi-Fi Direct is a peer-to-peer network protocol that allows your printer to human activity equally a hotspot for Wi-Fi Direct-capable mobile devices, allowing the printer to connect to them without an intermediary network or router.

Third-political party mobile connections include Apple AirPrint, Mopria, and Google Cloud Print, equally well as the aforementioned impress apps that allow you to print from and scan to various deject and social media sites. In add-on, you tin impress from and browse to USB thumb drives via the port located on the right-front of the chassis, next to the output tray. Y'all also get Canon PRINT Concern app, which, among other things, helps y'all scan to and impress from diverse deject sites.

Security features abound on the MF424dw. These include: access to the printer's onboard secure (HTTPS) website for monitoring and configuring the machine; Mac address and IP filtering for controlling where traffic to the printer comes from; Department ID Authentication to allow and command access to specific features via username and password. And of class, there'south Secure Print, which allows users to print countersign-protected documents only with the right Pivot.

Over 40 Pages Per Minute

Canon rates the MF424dw at 40 pages per minute (ppm) for unmarried-sided pages. However, like most Canon laser printers, this one defaults to two-sided (duplex) printing, or images per second (ipm, where each page side is considered an prototype). In this instance, though, the company doesn't publish a duplex speed rating. (I tested the MF424dw over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.) We test all printers that come up out of the box ready to print two-sided pages in both duplex and simplex modes, which includes the other Catechism models mentioned in this review.

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The MF424dw churned out our 12-page Microsoft Discussion text document in duplex mode at 28.6ipm, which is fast, and at 41.3ppm for one-sided pages, or just over its rating. The Canon MF416dw managed 17ipm and 35ppm, respectively, and the Canon MF249dw churned at about 13ipm slower than the MF424dw in two-sided fashion and 14ppm slower in simplex way. Brother'southward MFC-L5700DW beat the MF424dw by a measly 0.7ppm, and the Blood brother MFC-L2750DW fell just over 5ppm behind. Unfortunately, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M426fdw was tested nether a retired set of protocols; thus, I can't compare its results here.

When I combined the previous Microsoft Word test results with those from printing our Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents containing color, graphics, and photos, the MF424dw's print speed dropped to 21.3ppm in simplex mode and 15.9ipm in duplex way, which isn't bad for a printer in this class. The Canon MF249dw managed 5ppm slower in simplex and 4ipm slower in duplex, and the Canon MF416dw churned at about the same speed every bit the MF424dw. Brother'due south MFC-L2750DW and MFC-L5700DW managed about 6ppm slower and 0.3ppm faster, respectively, than the MF424dw.

In addition, while this isn't the type of printer you would print photos on, except mayhap when they're embedded in a larger document, I tested the MF424dw'due south photo printing speed anyway. It converted to grayscale and printed our two highly detailed and colorful four-by-six-inch test snapshots at an boilerplate of vii seconds, which isn't unusual at all for a laser AIO. Most of the monochrome light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation AIOs discussed here came in well below thirty seconds on this portion of our tests.

Consistently Practiced Output

I've seen monochrome laser AIOs that print better than the MF424dw, merely not many. Most of them usually fall down a little when it comes to printing grayscale graphics or photos. That's not to say that the MF424dw's graphics and photos are perfect, but they're practiced plenty for most scenarios, including PowerPoint handouts and other prints designed to print (as much as blackness-and-white tin can impress, anyway).

Both serif and sans-serif text came out well-shaped and well-spaced downwards to 4 points, the smallest font size we exam. The decorative fonts we test looked better in nigh cases than I've seen from about other monochrome laser printers, too. Despite the fact that the printer had to convert their colors to grayscale, our business organization graphics (charts and graphs) also came out looking good, with only barely noticeable blotches here and there. For the nigh part, gradients flowed evenly, and dark fills were solid.

I've seen ameliorate grayscale photos from other Canon monochrome printers, such equally the imageClass LBP251dw, a single-function model, but the MF424dw's grayscale images were improve than simply passable. The merely existent event is that all of my examination images came out a bit too light, without a lot of depth and deep blacks, merely they were entirely legible in that all subjects in the photos—people, objects, landscapes, and then on—were totally recognizable. The photos should piece of work well, every bit mentioned, as parts of larger documents.

Respectable Cost Per Folio

One of my ongoing complaints about entry- and mid-level light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation printers is that they cost as well much to use. Most printer manufacturers charge likewise much for toner for this form of printer. The good news about the MF424dw is that if you buy its highest-yield toner cartridge (9,200 pages), your per-page running costs should be near 2.3 cents, or most one full cent less than at to the lowest degree a few of its competitors.

By comparison, the Brother MFC-L2570DW's running costs are 1.3 cents higher than those of the MF424dw; the Canon MF249dw's are 1.2 cents higher. On the other hand, the HP M426fdw's are about 0.1 cent lower; the Brother MFC-L5700DW'southward are 0.7 cent lower; and the Canon MF416dw's running costs are virtually 0.seven cent college.

These pennies and fractions of pennies may not seem like much, just keep in heed that a 1-cent departure will toll you $100 for every 10,000 pages you print, $1,000 for every 100,000 pages—y'all go the idea. The higher the per-page difference and the more you print, the higher the running costs volition be.

Equally Monochrome Laser AIOs Go

There's very piffling to dislike about the Canon imageClass MF424dw. While its photograph output could be a little richer, this isn't by any means a photo printer, and it prints what it should impress—text and graphics—quite well. It's loaded with productivity and convenience features, such as a single-pass duplexing ADF and the ability to expand newspaper-input capacity and sources.

If toll per folio is your primary business organisation, you should check out Brother's MFC-L5700DW (though information technology lacks an car-duplexing ADF), or 1 of Brother'due south other midrange monochrome laser AIOs. When it comes to overall value and print quality in a low- to mid-volume home-based or small-scale office or workgroup, still, the Canon MF424dw is our new Editors' Option.