Brother DCP-310CN review

Sharing a printer across a network, whether wired or not, is relatively simple.

Unfortunately, sharing a scanner is much trickier. You can't just plug your scanner and share it using Windows. Nor will most print-servers - devices that you use to share printers over a network - allow you share a scanner.

Brother has the answer. Its new multifunction device, the DCP-310CN has an integrated network port. This means you can plug it into your router or hub and share it with all PCs on your home or office network.

The DCP is small, smart and extremely flat, but still packs an inkjet printer, A4 scanner and memory card slots for five of the most common card formats. Setup is remarkably easy: connect a cable to the DCP-310's Ethernet port and it configures itself using DHCP - a common standard for obtaining network addresses. If you don't have a network you could use the printer's USB port. Next, install Brother's MFL-Pro Suite software, which automatically detects the printer, and you're done.

The DCP's performance isn't on a par with multifunction devices designed for photographic or artistic use. Colour was a good match for our original documents, but the scanner struggled to capture smooth gradients of colour, such as the blue in the sky of one test picture. It wouldn't scan an A4 image at 600 dots per inch (dpi) so we couldn't run our usual test, and scanning at 300dpi was slow at just over two minutes.

It's possible to make direct prints of a memory card image without a PC but photo printing isn't the Brother's forte - it's very slow, taking 32mins to print our test A4 photograph at the highest quality setting. This is one of the slowest performances we've timed, and the image was grainy with dull colours. The quality of its text printing was better, and it printed our five-page document in 1min 55secs - leisurely but acceptable.

Unlike most multifunction devices we see, the DCP isn't aimed at amateur photographers but designed for home workers and small businesses. The quality is fine for a small business wanting to archive documents and brochures. And the simple network function will solve the problem of networking a scanner.