Canon FAXPHONE L170 Monochrome Laser - Fax / printer

The Canon L170 is by far the most dependable fax machine for a mid-volume office. I have used this unit for at least four years without a problem, and when I set up a home office recently, it was the first unit I purchased. It faxes and prints quickly and effortlessly, and with the inexpensive all in one cartridge, it is also the most economical fax out there.Most people don't realize that Canon makes most of the engines for HP. So if you're eying an HP solution, chances are it's a really a Canon.BTW, the print quality is superb. Like any machine, if you want to avoid jams, use a good quality paper stock. Almost every jamming problem that people have with their copiers and printers are due to inferior paper products with high moisture content.

This fax machine is very error-prone. The ability for the fax machine to process incoming faxes when linked to an answering machine was intermittent; often times clients would have to re-send items multiple times. The build quality is very poor and the front access door is built to withstand only a few openings and closings before the hinge system fails. As a person who expects electronic items to work, and as a person who takes very good care of his electronic items, I was extremely disappointed with this unit.

I bought this to replace an old Canon L90, but after 4 months I am back to using the L90 to send faxes. Works Ok as a printer and for incoming faxes, but paper output tray is small and cannot handle a heavy load. Not a very intelligent machine, if you send an envelope to print before you put one in the manual tray, the machine locks up with an annoying error message; the only solution is to unplug the machine and start over. Paper feed to send faxes worked beautifully for about four months, then stopped working completely, which I why I have to use the old fax machine for sending faxes.

The paper curls as it comes out and instead of having a neat stack of faxes ready to sort and file, the staff needs to clear the fax output tray regularly to avoid a messy pile of inter-leaved and curled-up unrelated papers and then we have to sort these. Especially after a weekend, this is annoying. If this is a paper or ink problem, perhaps someone from Canon could let me know.The present paper is Blizzard BLZ-41200.

I have used this fax machine at our small office for 5 years now (2005-2010) and I have swapped it out a few times and replaced it with this same model because we are all used to using this machine. Overall it is pretty good for the price of $160-$200 each. We have found it lasts about 2 years until the machine starts to make some noises and has to be repaired. We found the repairs to be more expensive than the machine itself since the machine can be found on amazon for $159 as I type this now. So there's no point in calling out a repairman to fix the fax rather than just simply buying a new fresh machine.Overall the print quality and build is quite good, but the feeder will slowly jam up or make noises after heavy use after a couple years, which is very normal and reasonable I think. After using it for 5+ years I would recommend this machine if you can buy for less than $200. You can also network it on your local LAN in your office to be a network printer too.

I only use fax transmissions every now and then, maybe once every few weeks. I've been through 3 fax machines in the past few years, 2 of them Panasonic which I bought because of the good experience I've had with Panasonic products in general. The Panasonic fax machines were not up to par at all; I had trouble with them from the start. Canon, on the other hand, and this specific model I purchased, is fabulous. Fax works perfectly both ways and the print feature is faster and better quality than any of my standalone printers. I've had no trouble whatsoever with any of the usual fax snafus we all run into from time to time. This model is very simple to install and get up and running quickly. I'm thrilled with this model and would highly recommend it. It's worth every penny, in my opinion.

This is our third L170. The first is three years old and still going strong. We send or receive more than a dozen faxes per day and the only thing it has needed was replacement toner cartridges. When another department needed a fax machine, there was no doubt what model to get. We are now on our third and we are happy with all three of them. If we need another fax machine, we'll buy another L170. It is a workhorse.

During three months of light use the machine has jammed three times. This time after opening up the printer I can't find the jammed paper anywhere. This thing jams worse than any other printer I've ever owned. Avoid it.