Canon i-SENSYS MF8580Cdw review

Canon's i-SENSYS MF8580Cdw isn't the largest colour laser multifunction peripheral (MFP), but it's fairly tall off the desk. It's a smart modern design, with a control panel that wraps around from the right-hand side panel, but there's no attempt to hide its 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) under a dust cover. It can scan both sides of a sheet of paper automatically (duplex), and the printer can print in the same fashion, so giving you duplex prints, scans, copies and faxes. There's support for wired and wireless networks, Google Cloud print, Apple iPrint, and more comprehensive Android and iOS capability through separate print and scanning apps.

Although they look quite different, this MFP has a lot in common with HP's LaserJet Pro M476dn; both share a similar print engine, similar overall specifications, and take similar consumables, although these aren't interchangeable between the two printers. It's surprising, then, that this MFP costs a third more than HP's version: although the HP printer doesn't support Wi-Fi, it does have a colour touchscreen to this MFP's mono display and conventional buttons. In common with other Canon laser devices we've reviewed recently, many of the MF8580Cdw's icons are unfathomable: HP's control system is far superior.

We were surprised by how flimsy the main 250-sheet paper tray feels on this MFP, particularly around its thin front panel. The correct paper orientation is stamped in the base of the paper tray, but this is covered up as soon as you add paper. The 50-sheet multipurpose feed above the main paper tray also feels a bit flexible, but when the feed is open it rests on the flap that covers it when it's closed, lending it some extra strength. At least the paper and envelope orientation is marked in two places, and we printed a perfect, uncrumpled envelope on our first attempt.

Although this MFP's control panel can't be tilted through different angles, the scanner bed that it's part of rotates on heavily damped hinges to provide better access to the printer's output tray below. The cramped output tray doesn't look especially convincing, but it keeps printed pages tidy, and we appreciated the scooped-out area designed to help you collect paper more easily. During printing there are no harsh noises, but by default there's a beep at the end of every job - particularly annoying in our 25-page text test, which comprises 25 copies of a single page.

After inserting a USB flash drive in the port under the control panel, we found it simple to make basic direct scans, although we were disappointed that this wasn't possible while the MF8580Cdw was printing another job. We found direct printing more frustrating, however, as the menu initially offered an index print before saying that no content was found on the inserted disk. We had the same problem when trying to navigate to specific files on the disk which the screen simply didn't show, before discovering that PDF files are not supported. This seems like a fairly major omission, but we copied a JPEG picture to the disk, tried again and found it easy to print.