Photograph: Rick Rizner

The Canon ImageClass MF 5750 looms 17.4 inches high and 19.1 inches wide. I liked the layout of the front panel, which includes three large buttons for copy, fax, and scan, flanked by fax settings and copy settings and a good-size LCD menu in the middle. At $399, it costs $100 less than the other three monochrome MFPs in our July 2005 issue's lineup.

The MF 5750 was reasonably quick, too, matching or exceeding the average speed posted by the monochrome MFPs here on all three functions--printing, scanning, and copying. It printed both text and graphics documents quickly, at 14.9 pages per minute and 7.9 ppm, respectively. This unit also scanned a color image in 27.2 seconds (about average for the group), and it copied a page of text in 4.1 seconds (1 second slower than the average).

The MF 5750's print quality, though not stellar, was reasonably good. Like most other models here, it produced sharp, dark text that was legible even at 2-point type size. A series of narrow parallel lines looked straight and even, with virtually no banding. A grayscale photo printed at default settings appeared too light and a bit washed out, though it was smooth and clean. And photos printed in the Best mode yielded graphics with much better contrast.

The MF 5750 earned the top score for copy quality, with straight black letters in a copied page of text. Printed color scans had a smooth texture and reproduced color accurately. On-screen, however, scans looked dull and too dark.

Canon's MF Toolbox scan software lets you scan via the PC and save the image to an e-mail message or graphics file. You can configure two custom buttons to choose the scanner and to designate where to put the scan; thereafter, clicking a button will save the scan to the preconfigured place. Other than a fairly extensive driver, MF Toolbox is the only software Canon bundles with the MF 5750.

The main paper tray holds 250 sheets, but Canon doesn't offer any additional paper trays as options. You can choose to add ethernet (for $179), but this option enables you to use the device only as a printer on your network.

Upshot: This well-appointed MFP should be up to handling the workload in most small offices.

Lisa Cekan