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Brother DCP-9010CN review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £321
inc VAT

High consumable costs make this otherwise decent MFP an expensive proposition to run

Specifications

single-pass colour laser, 16ppm print speed, USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 401x428x491mm

http://www.morecomputers.com

Brother’s DCN-9010CN doesn’t have any fax capabilities, but it does have everything else you’d expect from a small business MFP. It even comes with Nuance’s PaperPort 11 SE document management suite to help you organise and collate your scanned documents. It’s worth noting, however, that this is a heavily cut-down version and many options simply prompt you to upgrade to the full version.

Brother’s installer simplifies the process of setting up the printer’s full driver and software suite (with or without PaperPort), which means you can go away and let it do its thing. It also offers to change your Windows firewall settings automatically if necessary and detects the MFP on your network.

Brother DCP-9010CN

The printer’s built-in control panel interface works well enough and the menus are clearly laid out, but the buttons are widely spread and oddly positioned. The OK button, for instance, is located below the directional buttons, rather than the middle of them. Plus, the arrow keys act as both Confirmation and Back buttons, and this makes it a little difficult to tell what they’ll be doing at any particular point in time. We also found it particularly hard to retain changes made to settings such as copy brightness. There are separate banks of additional buttons to control scan, copy and print settings, but these can be a little confusing. The Scan to PC option is clear and easy to use, however.

There’s also a HTML interface through which you can adjust the printer’s default paper settings and set the default brightness, colour and contrast of the copier with ease. You can also use it to control the printer’s network presence.

Brother DCP-9010CN

The printer’s fairly well built, but its automatic document feeder feels a little flimsy and tends to pick up multiple pages unless you riffle and stack them very carefully before scanning. A pull-out special media tray lets you print on envelopes or card, but the default paper source doesn’t switch automatically when you open it, so we had to open the printer’s properties to select the manual tray to do this. Unfortunately, our envelope test print came out curled and somewhat crumpled at one corner.

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Basic Specifications

Rating **
Maximum native print resolution 2,400x600dpi
Max optical resolution 1,200×2,400dpi
Output bit depth 24-bit

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4 16ppm
Quoted speed, colour A4 16ppm

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0 27s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0 32s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces USB, 10/100 Ethernet
Optional printer interfaces none
Size 401x428x491mm
Weight 22.7kg
Noise (in normal use) 52dB(A)
Duty cycle one-time maximum not disclosed; 1,500 pages recommended

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size up to A4
Maximum paper weight 163gsm
Standard paper inputs 2
Standard paper input capacity 300
Maximum paper inputs 2
Maximum paper input capacity 300
Duplex (code, cost if option) No

General

Printer technology single-pass colour laser
Language(s) PCL6 and BR-Script 3 emulation
Supported operating systems Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.3.9+, Linux
Maximum printer memory 576MB
Other laser features and options £72 each

Buying Information

Price £321
Price per colour A4 page 16.4p
Price of 2nd paper cassette N/A
Warranty one year onsite
Supplier http://www.morecomputers.com
Details www.brother.co.uk

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview 14s
A4 document at 150dpi 15s
A4 document at 300dpi 20s
6x4in photo at 600dpi 18s
6x4in photo at 1200dpi 1m 6s
Single 35mm negative at 2400dpi N/A

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.0 13s
Time for single A4 colour copy 1.0 17s
Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0 45s

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies 99
Copier zoom range 25-400%
Max mono copy resolution 600x600dpi
Max colour copy resolution 600x600dpi

Fax Features

Fax modem speed N/A
Max mono fax resolution N/A
Fax memory (maximum mono pages) N/A