Brother MFC-685cw – Decent Features, But No Performance

Pros

The Brother MFC-685cw has a compact design, has memory card reader, the PictBridge port here supports USB flash drives. On top of this the printer has integrated answering machine and handset and the secure mode of the printer lets you receive fax in password-protected memory.

Cons

The Brother MFC-685cw’s average speed is rather slow for general tasks and even the print quality here can use the room for improvement. Apart from the paper refilling cassette and photo engaging tray asks for complete detachment of the cassette.

Introduction

The Brother MFC-685CW is a rather cheap multifunction printer which brings plenty of features in comparatively small space. But the bad thing here is that in approach to jam plenty of features in a small space the print quality and print speed delivered by the printer gets a blow and limits up to being average only. The MFC-685cw is the ideal printer for only those who wants nothing but maximum functionality in their printer and are really short on space. If you also are one of such consumers then the Brother MFC-685CW is just what you have been looking all through your life. One another decent option for you is the Canon Pixma MX700. It won’t give you the advanced fax feature, but you definitely will get decent print quality and fast prints which works in a specialized capacity.

Design

The design of Brother MFC-685CW is quintessential low-profile and that is what makes it suitable for home offices and homes. Measuring 18.4 x 14.6 x 7.1 inches (W x H x D), the MFC-685CW can easily get into your home office or home. Mounted over the top of the printer is the 10 page automatic document feeder, as it is flushed with the scanner the printer becomes rather less bulky in comparison to most of the other multifunction printers with that have ADFs. Positioned on the frontage of the printer are two memory card slots and a PictBridge USB Port.

The control panel for the printer is rather clear cut. One of the surprising things here was the 3.3 inch color LCD which is a widescreen LCD; this is something that not many of the multifunction printers had before. The wide screen LCD lets you preview the pictures on one side while viewing the related information on the other side. Located at one side of printers LCD is its fax panel and message center. The message centre of the printer includes the buttons for erasing and playing back voice messages, whilst the fax panel of the printer comprises of buttons like redial/pause, fax preview, speaker phone and hold, and also an alphanumeric keypad. Located on the left side of the message center there is a corded handset that lets you make and answer fax calls. The remaining half of the printer’s control panel hosts controls for switching in between the printing tasks as well as between menus, menu navigation, start and stop buttons and OK button.

The Brother MFC-685CW prints with its four-ink system, which has individual tanks for each ink used. Rather than installing the ink tanks straight on the print head, the ink tanks actually are installed in a compartment in positioned in front of the printer. The black ink tank is sufficient enough for around 500 pages and is priced at around $23.49, whereas the rest of the cartridges of magenta, yellow and cyan are good enough for 400 pages and will cost you around $12.99 each. According to the numbers we have found during our testing, using the Brother MFC-685CW will cost you around 4.7 cents for every black page you will print and 14.4 cents for every full-color page.

System Configuration

Starting price: $173.30 – $201.99
Manufacturer: Brother International
Part Number: MFC685CW
Printer Type: Ink-jet – Color, Photo printer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Apple Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit versions)

Dimensions (W x D x H): 15.7 x 14.6 x 7.1 inches
System weight: 18.5 lbs
Print Technology: Ink-jet Color Photo printing
Ink Palette Supported (Colors): Magenta, Cyan, black and yellow
Supported Flash Memory: Memory Stick, CompactFlash, SD Memory Card, MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture Card, USB flash drive and Memory Stick Pro

Ink Type: Brother Innobella ink
Standard Memory: 32 MB
Features: Fax forwarding and automatic redialing
PC Connection: USB host, USB, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11b and Ethernet 10 Base-T/100 Base-TX
Software Included: Presto! PageManager, Drivers & utilities, and ScanSoft PaperPort SE
Direct Printing Specifications: DPOF and PictBridge
Included Accessories: ScanSoft PaperPort

Performance

The performance data for Brother MFC-685CW isn’t as impressive as some of the features we’ve discussed above. In comparison to some other $200 price bracket Multifunction inkjet printer, the performance shown by Brother MFC-685CW didn’t standout. In fact the MFC-685CW was the slowest in text printing and delivered sluggish speed of 2.76 pages per minute. Its competition Canon Pixma MX700 with speedy printing time of 7.41ppm was almost three times faster than MFC-685CW. Although, the scenario almost reversed during the photo printing test and Brother MFC-685CW came on top with 1.30 pages per minute. The next fastest in the list was Canon with a score of 1.30ppm.

Though the speed test was somewhat acceptable for Brother MFC-685CW, but the same can’t be said about the quality. The print quality was consistently poor for the printer right from the texts to photos to documents. So this was a bit concerning about Brother MFC-685CW.

Support

The Brother MFC-685CW comes with one-year standard warranty from Brother. You also can get toll-free telephonic support from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET. Support can also be availed through the e-mail using an online form. Brother’s site also offers downloadable software and drivers, FAQs, manuals and user gui

Word from the Experts

The Brother MFC-685CW inkjet multifunction printer comes with plethora of features at the cost of print quality and speed. So if you are looking for speed and print quality then keep looking, but if features matters the most of you then this is a great option.