Brother DCP-540CN review

Primarily aimed at home users, Brother's DCP-540CN is an inkjet MFP with a network port, so it's easy to share on a home network.

Setup is fairly easy, with instructions on the 2in colour screen to direct you to the ink cartridge slots and the USB and Ethernet ports, unusually located under the scanner. The printer supports a range of media sources, including PictBridge and a selection of digital camera memory cards.

There are some interesting design elements, but the general build quality feels rather flimsy. A removable paper tray makes it easy to load A4 paper, but we found it hard to align 6x4in photo paper correctly in the specialised sliding photo tray.

Unfortunately, the DCP-540CN is let down by its poor print speed and text quality. High-resolution printing is painfully slow at 1.5 pages per minute, while lower-quality modes produce pale text with poor character definition.

The DCP-540CN performed well in our mixed colour printing test and produced good-quality colour print-outs even at its mid-range 'normal' resolution. Dark tones were somewhat muted at all but the highest resolution, though, and black text suffered from poorly defined edges.

Photo printing quality is acceptable, with decent contrast. However, the colour looks rather flat and slightly undersaturated, and the resolution appears to be too low on areas of light colour. It produced six 6x4in photos in just under 14 minutes, but all of these were misaligned to a greater or lesser extent, with visible white edges even on borderless prints.

The scanner is unremarkable and rather slow, taking over a minute for a 300x300dpi A4 scan, and two minutes, 41 seconds for a 1,200x1,200dpi photo scan. Our colour test showed a slight blue cast. The specs claim a maximum optical scanning resolution of 600x2,400dpi, but the driver only let us scan at resolutions of up to 600x1,200dpi.

The DCP-540CN performed reasonably well as a copier, producing a mono copy in 35 seconds and a colour copy in 40 seconds. Mono copies had a slightly gritty appearance, and text reproduction in general was slightly fuzzy. It also includes an automated document feed (ADF).

Overall, the DCP-540CN is one of the more expensive entry-level inkjet MFPs we've seen. Its colour printing is good, but it is let down by slow print speeds for high-quality text, persistent alignment issues in photo printing, and imperfect scanner performance. Canon's Pixma MP510 is faster, cheaper, has lower running costs and produces better-quality prints, making it the better buy.

Author: Kat Orphanides