Electronics For Everyone

Panasonic KX-FLB881 All-in-One Print/Scan/Copy Office Machine

User Reviews about Panasonic KX-FLB881 All-in-One Print Scan Copy Office Machine

I had a Brother multi-function color printer fax scanner. It was a complete DISASTER. I was constantly replacing cartridges. All the specs were complete BS. The resolution was terrible. I could not make any sense of patient ECGs faxed to me.

This Panny is a savior. The copies, prints and faxes are clear and crisp. It also prints out pretty fast. I guess that is the most critical aspect.
This machine is very functional and is good for a home or a small office. It has a solid feel to it and the set up is easy. I hooked it up to my house wireless network and it works great. Importantly it is vista compatible but I am yet to play with Read iris software.
My only advise to Panasonic - a larger surface to scan larger pages or books would make this a killer machine.

As other have mentioned, it is a wee bit louder and it does consume a lot of electric power and causes lights to flicker. But, these minor issues do not dent its overall performance.
-- I love this machine

The scanner on my Canon multi-function machine died after just 3 years, so I decided to switch brand, and upgrade to a network-capable machine with scan-to-email functionality like I have at work, at a target price point of $250 or less.

I love this machine! The very fast copying speed, the scan/copy zoom feature, the built-in networking, and the scan-to-email feature make this a winner! If you don't have a printer server in your home network, it takes some time to figure out how to rig this up so that it uses the SMTP server from your ISP, but once you got it set up, with just 5 button pushes, you can scan a small stack of document and it shows up in your email account as a PDF attachment in just a few minutes!

The start-up speed to print the first page is also very fast.

Although I am very happy with this machine, I do have a few bones to pick:

1) When using scan-to-email feature, it can't handle very large number of pages. When I tried to scan much more than 7 pages, it failed with an error saying that the document set is too large. In my view, the machine should be able to handle as many document via scan-to-email as it can handle faxes, or the capacity of its 35-pages input tray.

2) When I tried to scan-to-email a 8.5 x 14 real-estate form, the results shows up with the pages being truncated at 8.5 x 11 inches, so the machine isn't smart enough to handle the legal size papers. I had to work-around this by do a photocopy and use a 75% zoom reduction to fit the legal-sized page into a standard page, and then scan that into email.

3) It would be nice if this machine can do duplex printing, like some of the Canon or Brother models.

4) An additional paper tray would be nice!

5) Lastly, the documentation on how to configure the machine to email scaned document isn't too good. Unless you have your own printer server at home (which not many people have, even the tech savvy ones), you end up having to scour the web to discover various SMTP servers and ports out there that you can use. HINT: it's best to ask your service provider for the SMTP server name and port so that you can use to set this feature up.

Overall, I got this machine on Black Friday this year for $150, and for the price, I can't really ask for anything more. This machine works like a charm, as a networked printer, scanner, and scan-to-email. (who really needs to fax any more if you can email attached PDF focuments). -- Great laser multi-function machine! Can scan-to-email!

After my wife's HP PSC2110xi died (printed less than 100 pages in it lifetime and tried 2 new cartridges), I have decided I will not get any HP machine (I have always recommended HP printers to my friends and family, and used HP myself, but lately their printer is so disposable, and with the ink cartridge scam, enough is enough). I have never have a Panasonic printer before, so I decided to give it a try, and I am quite impress with the quality of this machine (both the build and the output quality). Although it said it only supported M$ Windows, the printer supports PCL5 so I used a HP laserjet 5 driver in XP and it works fine, the scanner is TWAIN. So I don't think it would have any problem supporting other OS (I have not tried it on other OS yet).

I am very happy with this machine so far, the only thing stopped me from giving a 5 star is, it doesn't have a main on/off switch to power off the machine. In case you wonder, the drum and the toner are 2 seperate units. Most of the other low end laser printer have both piece integrate into 1.
-- pretty good all in one

I purchased (and returned) 3 separate models from HP within a week as I could not get the software to load properly or the wireless capabilities of the machines to work as designed. HP technical support is beyond ridiculous and has been outsourced overseas. If you are not Allstate, Walmart, or another large commercial retailer, and, if you don't purchase millions of dollars worth of equipment and service contracts every year, then HP doesn't care about you. Trust me, I worked there for many years.
DON'T BUY HP...

Now about this machine...

This machine is not stylish and is more of a business quality machine than something for the average home office, but if you are looking for a quality printer, scanner, copier and fax, this is the machine.

It has a document feeder, color scanner, and ethernet network capabilities. It is well made, and easy to setup and install. I loaded the software and setup the machine on a desktop and two laptops in less than 40 minutes. The scanner software is ReadIRIS which is a $100 value if you purchase it separately.

You can print, copy, scan, and fax via the network interface.

I would give this machine 5 stars, except it is a little louder than you would want and it does pull a lot of electric power which causes the lights to flicker in my home office which is quite annoying. But, I will trade the annoyance for quality craftsmanship and a machine that actually does what it's designed to do.

I highly recommend this machine.

-- DON'T BUY HP!!!