The Canon LC5500 laser fax is designed for the home or small office environment. Its ability to act as a printer, scanner and copier are convenient, but its below average print quality and slow transmission speeds are major drawbacks.
The Canon LC5500 laser fax has a small footprint that will appeal to buyers in tight office spaces. The unit measures 9.5 inches by 12 inches by 14.4 inches, and weighs 19 pounds. It has a paper capacity of only 100 sheets, which may be limiting for busy office environments, as it will likely mean loading paper multiple times per day. There is an automatic document feeder with a capacity of 20 pages, for automatically scanning multiple pages at once.
Unfortunately, the unit lacks a flatbed scanning surface, meaning its scanning, faxing, and copying abilities are limited to scanning documents that can be fed through the document feeder. This makes it less useful than many all-in-one machines that offer both types of scanning. Furthermore, most all-in-one machines offer faster transmission and printing speeds, and better print quality, at the same or a lower price, reducing its value considerably.
Canon LC5500 toner cartridges have a capacity of 4,000 pages for each single black laser toner cartridge. The fax toner cartridge is easy to access and remove, and cartridges are affordably-priced, resulting in a low cost per page. Competing units with larger cartridge capacities do offer lower per-page costs, however.
Print speed is slow, at only 6 pages per minute, and is a bit disappointing. Print quality is also below average, lacking the clarity and sharpness buyers expect from a laser device.
Overall, the Canon LC5500 offers many functions, but does none of them as well as its competition. As a dedicated fax machine, it fails because of its slow transmission speeds. Competing units offer better features and faster speeds for the money.
