Brother MFC-J430w Review: Fast MFP for Little Cash

For a printer that retails for only $100 (as of January 3, 2012) and is heavily discounted online, the Brother MFC-J430w color inkjet multifunction (copy/fax/print/scan) gets things done in a hurry: Text pages print at a brisk 7.6 pages per minute or faster. Other strengths include sharp text output and below-average ink costs, if you stick with the high-capacity supplies. You get some nice features for the price, but note that color graphics quality is merely adequate, paper capacity is minimal, and automatic two-sided printing or scanning is nonexistent.

The MFC-J430w's appearance is best described as conventional. The all-black MFP has a small, 1.9-inch LCD that tells you what's going on, plus the usual array of navigation, job, and fax buttons. The buttons are logically placed, and navigating the menus is very easy. You can even scan to a PC directly from the control panel.

Although the MFC-J430w is easy to set up and supports both Wi-Fi and USB connections, it has no ethernet, no card slots, and no USB/PictBridge port. If you frequently need to print photos from a camera, look for another MFP. The input tray holds just 100 sheets, and the ADF for the A4-size scanner holds 20 sheets. It's definitely a light-duty machine.

Brother has implemented one software feature that's currently unique: The iPrint&Scan app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7 lets you scan from the MFP directly to your phone or tablet via Wi-Fi. It's pretty cool. Printing over email happens through Google Cloud Print, which has apps for iOS and Android, but not Windows Phone 7. Brother provides both PC and Mac drivers, as well as OCR software (Scansoft Paper Port 12 for Windows and Presto PageManager for the Mac).

Alas, while Brother embraces the Mac, it's less than a bear hug: You'll find no support for even manual two-sided printing. Also, you'll need to download the latest driver from Brother’s website to get around a problem we encountered using version 4.1.4 from our installation CD: The Mac scanner driver would not install automatically. We confirmed that the company solved this problem with driver version 4.1.5. (If you've already installed version 4.1.4, you'll have to download and install the new driver, then delete and re-add the printer, to fix the problem.)

The MFC-J430w's ink costs aren't as low as those for the Kodak ESP C310, a like-priced competitor, but they are cheaper than average if you use the higher-capacity cartridges. With the standard 300-page cartridges ($15 black and $10 per color), you pay 5 cents per page, 3.3 cents per page per color, and 15 cents for a four-color page. The 600-page XL cartridges ($25 black and $15 color) reduce costs to 4.2 cents per black page, 2.5 cents per page per color, and 11.7 cents for each four-color page. Stick with the XLs for the best deal.

Output from the MFC-J430w is competent. Text appears dark gray rather than black, and color graphics look clear but a bit washed out, with shadows that darken too quickly. Our larger photo scan suffered even more from the steep contrast curve. Copies are generally good.

I mentioned up front that the MFC-J430w is fast. As I noted, in our tests, text pages printed at a faster-than-average 7.6 ppm on the PC, but they exited at an even more impressive rate of 8.2 ppm on the Mac. Half-page photos printed to plain paper at a brisk 4.8 ppm, but slowed to a more normal 1.2 ppm when we used Brother's glossy photo paper. Full-page photos printed on the Mac to the same glossy paper took about 2 minutes apiece, which is about average, but scans and copies to plain paper were quite quick.

If your scanning and printing needs are minimal, but you want jobs to be done in a hurry, the Brother MFC-J430w is a cheap and efficient option. The output is serviceable, the ink is affordable, and--aside from the lack of automatic duplexing--the MFP has no salient weaknesses. If your budget is even tighter, the Canon Pixma MX360 has a lower purchase price, but its ink costs are higher.

View the original article here

Brother MFC-J280w

As a budget MFP geared to a home office or micro office, the Brother MFC-J280w ($100 street) is a mixed bag, having some strong business features while lacking some sensible, complementary ones. Like the Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-J430w ($100 street, 4 stars), it’s decidedly business-oriented rather than home—unusual for an MFP at its price point. It has some nice touches, like good speed and a low claimed cost per page, but the MFC-J430W presents a better rounded and more compelling package.

The MFC-J280w can print, copy, scan, and fax. It lets you fax either from your computer (PC Fax), or standalone faxing without needing a computer. However, it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) for unattended copying, scanning, or faxing of multi-page documents. It also lacks a port for a USB thumb drive as well as a media-card reader. The MFP is compatible with the Brother iPrint&Scan app, which allows you to print or scan from an Apple, Android, or Windows 7 Phone mobile device on the same wireless network.

The matte-black MFC-J280w is reasonably compact, measuring 6.3 by 15.9 by 14.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 19.2 pounds. It has a 1.9-inch color touch screen with touch panel controls for navigating menus. It has a 100-sheet paper tray, a bit meager for home-office use, and lacks an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper.

The MFC-J280w connects to a PC via a USB cable, or to a network via WiFi (802.11b/g), but lacks Ethernet connectivity. I tested it over a USB connection with the drivers installed on a computer running Windows Vista.

Brother MFC-J280w

Print Speed

The Brother MFC-J280w printed out the latest version of our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software) at a zippy 4.3 effective pages per minute (ppm), matching the speed turned in by the MFC-J430w. It proved faster than the Editors’ Choice Kodak ESP C310 All-in-One Printer ($99.99 direct, 4 stars), which chugged through the tests at a 2.7 ppm clip.

In contrast to its business printing speed, the MFC-J280w turned in a lackadaisical 1 minute 57 second average in printing out 4-by-6 photos, effectively tying the MFC-J430w (1:59). The Kodak ESP C310, which is a more home- than business-friendly MFP, turned the tables in photo printing with an impressively low average of 46 seconds per 4-by-6 print.

Output Quality

The MFC-J280w’s output quality was a touch below par across the board. Text quality was suitable for schoolwork or general business use, but not up to use with documents like resumes in which visual impact is important, or documents with smaller fonts.

As for graphics, illustrations generally looked slightly pale or faded. Some dithering (solid areas appearing grainy) was apparent, and several graphics showed minor banding (a regular pattern of faint stripes lighter than the background).The graphics were suitable for displaying data in reports or PowerPoint handouts, though I’d hesitate in giving them to, say, a client I was seeking to impress through their visual appearance.

In some photo prints there was considerable loss of detail in brighter areas. Still, most of the prints could pass for drugstore quality. Printing photos proved tricky, as the printer frequently failed to recognize Brother’s letter-sized photo paper (even with the driver set for it) and I’d have to reload it, sometimes several times.

Other Issues

Brother’s claimed running cost is 3.8 cents per monochrome page and 10.7 cents per color page, a low figure for a printer at its price. The color figure is even lower than that of the MFC-J430w (11.3 cents).

The Brother MFC-J280w is a rarity, a budget inkjet MFP with home-office chops but few home (namely, photo-centric) features. It has very good speed, a low claimed cost per page, and some nice flourishes like the ability to work as a standalone fax machine as well as to initiate faxes from your PC. Still, it lacks some of the features of the similar, Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-J430w—such as an automatic document feeder, which lets you fax, copy, or scan multi-page documents without having to feed each sheet in by hand. If you’re looking for a more home-oriented budget inkjet MFP, be sure to check out the Kodak ESP C310.

More Multi-function Printer Reviews:

•   Canon Color imageClass MF8080Cw
•   Brother MFC-J280w
•   Brother MFC-J625dw
•   Canon imageClass MF4570dw
•   HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275
• more

View the original article here

Brother MFC-J825DW review: Midpriced MFP with CD/DVD printing

Brother's new $150 (as of September 27, 2011) MFC-J825DW color inkjet multifunction printer (print/scan/copy/fax) is a budget-friendly choice for your small or home office, enhanced by a few higher-end features--namely, CD/DVD printing and some Web connectivity. A two-year warranty sweetens the deal.

The MFC-J825DW installed easily via Wi-Fi (USB and ethernet connections are also available), and it has a clearly designed interface. The front LCD is 3.3 inches wide diagonally--so small that you might not recognize it as a touchscreen. Though it's a tad cramped, it works; and it also offers access to some Web apps, including Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, and Picasa. The straightforward control panel has a keypad for faxing and labeled buttons for the main fax, scan, copy, and photo functions. The photo functions are for snapshots loaded via the unit's SD and MMC media card slot or PictBridge port. The on-screen printer driver is easy to navigate, and PaperPort 12 is included for organizing scanned documents.

The MFC-J825DW's ability to print to CD/DVD is a nice perk. Simply remove the caddy handily stored within the scanner lid, load it with printable discs (regular 120mm size only, not 80mm minis), and feed the caddy into a special slot in the printer's front input area. Regular paper handling is adequate for a low-volume home or small office, thanks to a 100-sheet input tray, a dedicated 20-sheet photo tray, and a 20-sheet automatic document feeder for the letter/A4 scanner. Duplexing is automatic for printing, but not for scanning. The unit scans from the control panel to a PC without a lot of configuration fuss. The like-priced Canon Pixma MG5320 offers CD/DVD printing and better paper capacity.

In our testing, the MFC-J825DW printed text pages at a rate nearly 10 pages per minute on a Mac, and at 9 ppm on a PC. For printing snapshot-size photos on plain paper, the MFP clocked in at 4.6 ppm, but when we switched to Brother's own photo paper, the print time slowed to less than 1.2 ppm. A letter-size, high-resolution color photo took nearly 1 minute, 52 seconds to print on a Mac. Scans came out quickly, at between 20 and 35 seconds for snapshot and letter-size photos.

Overall, the quality of the MFC-J825DW's prints was good. Text looked dark and crisp in most fonts. Photos printed on Brother's own glossy stock looked quite nice as well, though the color palette was a little on the light side. On plain paper, the same photos appeared faded and grainy. Scan quality was one of the few disappointments--orangey and a bit cartoonish, with harsh shadows.

Brother's prices for replacement ink cartridges for the MFC-J825DW are about average. The 300-page, standard-size cartridges include a $15 black (which works out to a slightly high 5 cents per page) and $10 cyan, magenta, and yellow (3.3 cents per color per page). The 600-page, high-yield cartridges are a $25 black (4.2 cents per page) and $15 cyan, magenta, and yellow (2.5 cents per color per page). A page with all four colors would cost an unexceptional 14.7 cents with the standard-size cartridges, and an economical 11.7 cents with the high-yield cartridges.

An inkjet multifunction printer bedecked with a few advanced features, the MFC-J825DW is a worthy contender for your low-volume, small-office bucks. The Kodak ESP Office 2170 offers cheaper inks, but it's much slower and lacks automatic duplexing.

View the original article here

Brother MFC-9970CDW Color Laser All-in-One, $520

Brother's MFC-9970CDW is a top-notch color laser all-in-one that prints, scans, copies, and faxes--and it uses inexpensive toner. When we reviewed the MFC-9970CDW a few months ago it was selling for $700, and that price has held. You can get it for only $520 at OfficeMax, though, if you use coupon code CART20 at checkout.