Brother MFC-6490CW review

There are plenty of all-in-one printer/scanners around, but what almost all have in common is their A4 size.

Brother's MFC-6490CW is the first that can print on A3+ paper and scan documents up to the same size, with integrated fax to boot. It'll appeal to any small business that wants to print A3 posters or folded A4 booklets, and the scanner is big enough to digitise tabloid newspaper pages. At just over £200, home users could consider it too. You can even scan batches of A3 documents using the 50 page automatic document feeder (ADF), though the lack of a duplexer means you can't print both sides of the paper automatically. Print costs are low at 5.4p per A4 page (combined black and colour).

The MFC-6490CW isn't the sleekest printer in the world, but it's easy to use, with a colour screen and alphanumeric pad that allow you to connect to your WiFi network without the usual need for setup via USB or Ethernet. Two A3+ paper trays give you a total capacity of 400 sheets, but the printer can't auto-detect paper size, so you have to tell each tray what it contains via the menu. The upper 150 sheet tray can take glossy photo paper.

Mono text came out a bit fuzzy, but still good enough for correspondence. At around 12.5 seconds per A4 page, text printing didn't break any speed records but wasn't impractically slow. Draft prints were quick, but very pale. Colour prints were slow, but managed bold, solid graphs and illustrations. Photo quality isn't so important in a business inkjet, which is just as well: photos were clear and smooth, but very slow, and suffered flaws including fine white margins on borderless 6x4 prints, weak dark tones, and a pinkish tint to pale colours.

The scanner interface is basic, but easy to use. Scans were sharp and clearly defined, with accurate reproduction of bright and pale colours, although dark shades were less clear. An A3 scan at 300dpi took a reasonable 44 seconds. Copying quality was outstanding, with accurate colour and shading, and a mono A3 copy took just 40 seconds.

As long as you don't need fast printing ortop-quality photos, the Brother is a fantastically versatile office machine.

Author: Kat Orphanides