Canon imageCLASS MF656Cdw - Wireless Duplex Color Laser Printer, All-in-One with Copier, Scanner, Fax, Auto Document Feeder, Mobile Ready, 3 Year Limited Warranty, 22 PPM, White

For the last month I've been researching and debating which AIO color laser printer to get after being completely fed up with inkjets and all of the cartridge issues that come along with them, especially Epson. There are a lot of mixed reviews out there for this MF644Cdw, but I took a chance on it based on even worse reviews for other comparable brands, like HP and Brother. I'm glad I did. I feel compelled to write a review based on my surprisingly good experience so far.First is the initial setup. A lot of reviewers reported a horrible setup experience. This was not the case for me. Unbox it, untape it, turn it on, connect to your wifi using the LCD panel, and load the drivers on your PC (download the latest from Canon's website). That's it. I have only tested on Windows at home so can't speak for MAC drivers. I also haven't experienced any issues with the touch panel functionality. Some people say they have to push unreasonably hard on the LCD screen to get actions to register. This is not my experience and mine accepts inputs just fine like any other office printer I've ever used.Prints came out perfect right out of the box starting with the first test page, although I did go through the full gradation calibration anyway just to be thorough. Seeing how I don't plan on using this for full photo prints I left most of the print settings at their defaults, but you can bump up the quality higher than the default dpi if you desire. Copies were accurate and scans were more than sufficient.I was most concerned with the scan quality based on some online reviews, but I found that the scans on the glass plate turn out to be more than acceptable even at the standard 300dpi. You can easily modify this to go up to 600dpi which produced great results. I'll note that I have not yet attempted to scan using the ADF function. There are additional scan quality settings in the settings menu as well as copy settings, so experiment with them to see which suits your needs. For copy, I set mine to the "Text/Photo/Map (Quality)" setting which proved to be sufficient, but there is a "Printed Image" option which provides even more detail. There are a ton of settings on this thing, and I'm still testing all of them out one function at a time. The MF Scan utility allows for customizing scan quality settings, file types, destinations, etc., but it does lack any truly helpful post-processing or cropping. Some users have reported that the NAPS2 utility addresses these post-processing shortcomings if that is an issue for you. I have not yet tested it but plan on doing so soon.The only hiccup I've encountered so far was when I tried to use the MF Scan Utility to pull a scan from the printer to a PC. The utility wouldn't connect to the printer no matter what, even though the printer was online and I could print to it just fine. No number of uninstalls/reinstalls of the scan driver or utility made a difference. Rebooting the printer did not help either. Surprisingly, I found that a simple reboot of the affected PC fixed it (an increasingly rare occurrence these days) and now everything is working. Finally, scan to email works great and is not too bad to set up at all using the Remote UI.You definitely want to set up the Remote UI pin during initial setup in order to fine tune this thing. It will help immensely when customizing and enabling features. Also, download and read the manual! I was able to configure everything over the course of about two hours including getting the Android Canon print app to print from my phones.I've been using this thing for only one day so far but have really put it through it's paces. Sleep mode works well with adjustable timers. Wake from sleep works perfectly for me (using DHCP reservation for the printer wifi address). Wifi signal is good and stable at about 40 ft away from router through multiple walls and obstructions. Double sided print works great. The only features I haven't tested yet are ADF scans, fax, and print from USB drive.The bottom line is that I was a bit skeptical when pulling the trigger on this one after reading hundreds of reviews from multiple sites. I ended up narrowing it down to either this or the Brother 3770. The brother has much better scanner specs and reviews, whereas a lot of reviews of the Canon mention functionality issues or disappointing scanner quality. On the other hand, the Canon seemed to win when it came to color accuracy and overall print quality. Reviewers also had some pretty bad things to say about the Brother toners and drum. It turns out my primary concern with the Canon MF644 scanner was unfounded and it performs better than expected. If you are looking to archive old photos for enlargement and print then you are better off getting a dedicated standalone scanner anyway. But for everyday documents or photos that you don't plan on enlarging this performs very well.I'll try to update this review as time goes by if I end up running into any issues or if there are any surprises when it comes to toner usage and replacement. Until then, I have to give this 5 stars based so far and will be recommending to friends and family.

I had a Cannon MF644cdw for a few years and it worked great. This one is just the newer version. My mf644cdw started putting black streaks on the prints and then just started running the paper through without no printing at all. Toner was good and new just no printing. Then started making a funny noise. While looking up trouble shooting tips online i came across this newer version. Well being a Tech junkie and my wife not so much, Ummmm, well the old printer became unrepairable and honey we need a new printer. Print quality has been great on both the 644 and 656 but I will have to say a bit better on this 656. time from sleep to print has greatly improved as well. I will also say that this printer has the cheapest toner cartridges to replace of most all color laser printers. I work from home so it does get alot of use. Document feeder work great and to tell the truth I dont remember ever having a paper jam from either printer on the feeder or printer. Cant say much about the fax feature as I have never used it on either printer. Setup is very easy right out of the box. Just plugged it in went through a few setup questions on the display and bam it was hooked to my wifi and up and running as network printer. Scan to email can be a bit tedious to set up but I got the below instructions from another reviewer and worked perfectly.So Hopefully this will help someone (wish I would have found earlier). This type of information should have been in the manual in some way. I found this in the Canon community discussion. Note that this setup is configured for using a gmail email address to configure- so you need a gmail for this to work correctly (otherwise a few steps will need changed like the SMTP server and port number...)1- If you are using GMail, you have to setup an 'App Password' for your Canon to work.2- Go to Google.com and click on your picture (upper right hand corner) and select 'Manage Your Google Account'.3- Click on 'Security on the left hand side'.4- Scroll down to section that says 'Signing in to Google'.5- Make sure '2-Step Verification' is setup. If it is not, add 2-step verification now.6- Click on 'App Passwords' to setup a password for your Canon. You may have to sign into your Google account again.7- Under the 'Select App' down arrow, select 'Other (custom)'8- Enter a name for your Cannon. I put my model number in the field: MF644Cdw9- Select the 'Generate' button. This will generate a password. Copy/Paste this password or write it down.10- Find your Cannon's IP Address. I selected 'Status Monitor' on my Cannon; then selected 'Network Information'; then selected 'IPv4'; take down the numbers listed under 'IP Address'.11- Open up Chrome and enter the IP Address from step 10.12- Select 'System Manager Mode' option and select 'Log In'. If you have setup a 'System Manager ID' and 'System Manager PIN', enter that information and then select 'Log In'.13- Select 'Settings/Registration' button on the right hand side.14- Select 'TX Settings' on the left hand side.15- Select 'E-mail/I-Fax Settings'.16- Select 'Edit' button on the upper right hand side.17- SMTP server = smtp.gmail.com18- Email Address = [enter your email address]19- Check mark 'Use SMTP Authentication (SMTP AUTH)'20- User Name = [enter your email address]21- Check mark 'Set/Change Password'22- Password = [enter the password generated from step 9 above]23- Check mark 'Use TLS for SMTP'24- Check mark 'Verify Certificate'25- Check mark 'Add CN to Verification Items'26- Check mark 'Use TLS for POP'27- Check mark 'Verify Certificate'28- Check mark 'Add CN to Verification Items'29- Scroll up to the top of the page and select the 'OK' button to save these settings.30- Select 'Network Settings' on left hand side.31- Select 'Port Number Settings'32- Select 'Edit' button in upper right hand side.33- Change 'SMTP' field to = 46534- Scroll up to the top of the page and select the 'OK' button to save these settings.35- Select 'To Portal' link in the upper right hand corner.36- Select 'Address Book' button on right hand side.37- Click on '01' link and select 'Edit' button. Add your email as the first email address.(Later go back and add what other email addresses you may like to scan to in the future)38- Scroll up to the top of the page and select the 'OK' button to save these settings.39- Go to your Cannon and test the Scan to Email function.40- Check email to see if you received the email. If you didn't get email, check 'Status Monitor/Cancel' button under the 'TX Job Log' section for Error Code specifics.

I had an old Epson workforce for years that really served me well. But as time went on it worked less and less reliably and seemed to lose functionality(good old planned obsolecense). Also everytime I would go to print I needed to do a nozzle clean and kept buying new cartridges. I wanted to get a laser printer because you don't have the hassle of nozzles and I also wanted a document feeder for doing large multi document scans. I got this printer for under $300 which I think is a great price for a machine of this caliber. It was very quick and easy to set up and while it was noisy during setup it runs pretty quiet for printing and scanning. I've read that people have had trouble setting this up and I'm not sure why. For my windows 11 machine it was litterly plug and play after downloading the drivers. It also scans and prints very quickly and the quality is very good. I haven't used the fax but I'm sure it's fine and I don't plan to do too much faxing anyway. The only things I think I can complain about are; 1)the size(it's big but not terribly so for a multi) and 2)I wish the scanning resolution was more than 600 dpi (especially for photos). Those are my only complaints and really, it's not a big deal. It's a great machine for general printing and scanning. If you primarily want to scan and print photos you may want to look at another machine because the limited resolution even using just the flat glass for scans. And also laser isn't the best for photo prints. But the scans it does do are great for documents and photos where you don't need a lot of resolution. It's a great do-it-all machine and an amazing price for a color laser printer.