Brother DCP-310CN review

Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Nov 2004

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Brother is targeting home offices with its new inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs), and the DCP-310CN certainly looks businesslike.

It's black and metallic grey and has a tidy control panel with an LCD. Ink travels to the print-heads via capillary tubes that require less height than on-head cartridges, so despite its integrated scanner the device has a low profile.

The DCP-310CN has an Ethernet port and we were impressed by the driver's thorough network support. It's possible to print and scan from a PC as if the device were connected directly, and memory cards inserted into its five-format reader can be accessed across the network via FTP. You can also scan directly from the DCP-310CN to a chosen network PC. Remarkably, it can print one job while scanning another, which is a feature we didn't expect at this price.

Although its text print quality was reasonable, the Brother performed slowly on our print tests. It took over 23 minutes to print 50 copies of our school letter and over two minutes to print our mixed-colour document. Photo printing was incredibly slow at the highest quality setting. A test print of six 6x4" photos took 54 minutes and the results had prominent grain and lifeless colour.

The slow scanner took two minutes and 25 seconds to capture a 6x4" print at 600dpi. It struggled with smooth colour gradients such as the blue sky in our barn test image, but its performance wasn't bad for an MFP. It's clearly good enough for high-quality mono photocopies, where text remained legible for more than five generations.

Although the DCP-310CN reads memory cards and supports direct printing, it's no use if you need to print photos. However, if you need a flexible network all-in-one and can live with its slow printing, it gives you a lot for your money.

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