Brother MFC-420CN Color Inkjet Network Multifunction Review

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(More customer reviews)Update: Now I've had the Brother for over a year and a half, and I see that others have had bad luck with theirs. I will temper my original joy with the comment that my first unit did go bad (just wouldn't print), but Brother replaced it with a new one during the warranty period. They are so inexpensive that I bought another one to see me through the two weeks of repair/replacement time. That was less than great, but now I have a backup, for still less than $300.
I've never experienced much in the way of paper jams, so I would guess that at this price point, Brother just isn't providing consistent build quality. That's too bad, because the prospect of a bad unit is a real disincentive. I'm still satisfied overall, but recognize that not everyone is having the same experience. And of course the downtime resulting in purchase of a second unit was a drag. I would consider a different printer, but Epson and HP have both been such poor experiences for me (with far inferior support), that I will still probably prioritize a new Brother model when I need to upgrade. No sign of that happening any time soon though.
August 30, 2006
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Ok, I have only had this all-in-one for a little over a week. But after years of being a slave to the HP ink needle, I am so happy with it I want to dance.
I have never really seriously considered Brother in the past, and now I feel like I have been living in the wrong world. Like if someone told you "My new car does 0-60 in 5 seconds, gets 70 mpg, and cost $1500. What, you didn't know about those?"
For less than $150, I now have a very compact printer with 10baseT ethernet (goodbye nightmarishly technical HP JetDirect 300x external network box), separate ink tanks for all colors, more advanced features than my 3 year old HP that cost around $1000 with the JetDirect, sharper printing, and best of all, real, honest-to-goodness Mac OS X support. Their software and documentation shows an absolute commitment to doing Mac right. (It took a year and a half for HP to get the Mac drivers for my OfficeJet to be minimally functional, and never did manage to handle things like scanning from the unit to a computer on the network.) Brother has earned a long-term customer here, and I am telling everyone I know.
Like any AIO, the quality of printing and scanning is probably not up to what you can get in stand alone units. But for general small office/home office use, it is more than fine. If you want the highest photo quality, get a specialized photo printer with a 6-color head. But actually, the photo quality on this unit is still far better than you could get at any price only a few short years ago. It's just that we have gotten spoiled at the truly amazing quality of photo inkjets in the last couple of years.
I will probably get one of the Olympus dye-subs for photos eventually, but in the meanwhile, prints from this on photo paper are plenty good enough for posting on my refrigerator door. And the resolution and appearance of business graphics, while again possibly not up to what current stand-alones will do, are the best of any printer I have ever owned, and leagues ahead of the older HP OfficeJet I just gave away.
And the best part is, it could fall apart in 6 months, and still not cost much more to replace than I have been spending on HP ink cartridges. My OfficeJet sucked down ink like a storm drain, and the cartridges were EXPENSIVE. It became clear in short order that their business model was built around bleeding you dry on consumable costs. Those guys have quite a racket, but I'm happy to say I am out from under it.
Thanks Brother, I will sing your praises to the skies.

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MFC-420cn Inkjet Flatbed Color Fax Printer/Copier/Scanner/PC Fax (BRTMFC420CN)

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Brother MFC-490CW Color Inkjet Wireless All-in-One Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I was skeptical of Brother printers, but after having a miserable experience with HP trying to get a 6380 to work (two broken units delivered; two units returned; 4 hours on phone with tech support), I broadened my search and found consistently good reviews of this printer. I live in a mixed household (Windows and Mac), which also eliminated many competitors. Finding it on sale tipped the scales.
Out of the box, the printer is compact, has a low profile, and is a bit sleeker looking than the competitors. Overall workmanship is solid.
Only exception is the paper tray which feels a bit flimsy, but nothing that would deter me. There is also no easy way to feed envelopes or letterhead without pulling out the papertray -- and to run envelopes, you need to remove regular paper since the bypass tray is only for photo paper.
Fax machine is a nice feature to have and, thankfully, it does not come with a phone handset attachment which would just take up space for no reason.
Per the manual, the printer can NOT handle both wireless and wired USB/network connection at the same time. Not a problem for me at all as the unit will only be used via wireless.
It is energy star rated and defaults to putting itself to sleep after a period of non-use. Startup out of sleep is very fast when you send a wireless document. I tend to unplug my power strip when I won't be using the computer for a while and was afraid that the settings would wipe, but when I plugged it back in the printer sprang back to life with all wireless configurations intact.
Set up was pretty simple. Following the quick start instructions went fine. Found my wireless router, connected, printed test page, no problem. Installed drivers/software on Windows XP, and it looks to be a lot less heavy than HP's full software. Only wrinkle in installation is that it asked me several times to connect/verify the wireless connection (each piece of software plus the hardware basically asked me the same thing a few times... I probably didn't need to enter it so many times, but it wasn't difficult so I decided to be safe). No problems with Mac install either. Very simple.
Overall, the set up was easy and quick. Brother could learn a bit from HP in terms of integrating the documentation and the printer set up a little bit better, but that's a minor issue. It was easy and the thing worked right away.
Automatic document feeder on top of the machine is a great feature to have in a printer at this level, and it works well.
The wireless integration is well done. I was able to print wirelessly immediately, and, quite a pleasant surprise to find that the "scan" feature actually worked as advertised.
Scanning was as simple as dropping a document into the feeder, hitting scan, selecting which of my two wireless PCs I wanted to receive the doc, and then hitting start. Seamlessly scanned and dropped the PDF onto my hard drive.
Ditto for requesting an OCR of the paper document. OCR quality is pretty amazing. I haven't had experience with desktop/consumer OCR in a few years, so maybe they are all of similar quality now, but I was pleasantly surprised. No formatting came over, but I was able to take a memo sitting on my desk and scan/OCR it in a few seconds. The text dropped into a plain text file and had no errors in text recognition or punctuation.
Print speed appears to be slower than the box claims. I haven't tested it, but it feels slower than a lower quality HP deskjet it replaced. Could be a function of the wireless throughput. I'm not terribly concerned since this is for a low-volume home setup. Print quality is good, not fantastic (I will play with settings and see if I can't improve that). Photo prints onto plain paper are not as clear as HP.
I am also very happy with the low noise level. The printer is quiet (much more so than my prior HP inkjet) and it doesn't rattle and shake and rumble like my prior HP inkjet.
If you're having trouble getting the photo paper bypass to work, I had to resort to the manual. You need to physically move the bypass tray forward and lock it into place -- there is no software setting or configuration switch in the print properties. (You can select paper type and all the normal options there, but not the bypass.) Then when done, you pull the paper tray out and physically move the bypass tray back into standby position. At first I was annoyed, but given the frequency of printing via the bypass, I don't care. And I figure not having two paper paths probably means less chance of paper jams.
The model higher than this one is essentially the exact same unit but with a phone handset and a built in digital answering machine. I didn't think that was worth an extra $50, but if you need an answering machine it might be worth it to save footprint.
So far so good. I highly recommend this printer. For the price, features, ease of set up, size, and quiet, it is a very good deal.
I had tried the HP 6380 which had (to me) slightly better print quality, but lacked the automatic document feeder fax and the very well integrated wireless software. I also was unable to get multiple of them to work -- fatal errors on hardware, plus bad customer support, so I gave up and went to this unit... glad I did. I saved money and got a printer better suited for me.
I will update this review in a few weeks if I have any issues with reliability.

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Unattended fax, copy or scan with up to 15-page auto document feeder. Flexibility to share with multiple users with wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection. Wide 3.3" color LCD provides easy help menus and photo enhancement.Direct photo printing from media card slots or USB direct/PictBridge Interface. Print rich, vibrant photos on demand at up to 6000 x 1200 dpi. Fast print speeds at up to 33ppm black/27ppm color and high speed Super G3 33.6Kbps fax modem. 4-ink cartridge system ¿ replace only the cartridge that needs to be replaced. Other features include standard paper tray for up to 100 sheets and convenient photo bypass tray for up to 20 sheets 4"x6" glossy paper.

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