Brother MFC 7440N – Fast, But Boring

Pros

The Brother MFC 7440N is comparatively smaller in size than the multifunction units that we’ve seen around and offers precise character recognition, low print cost per page, quick text printing and really respectable quality black and white scan.

Cons

The Brother MFC 7440N has got an unpleasing design, restricted paper output tray, offers poor quality graphic prints and has internal memory less than we are use to.

Introduction

Generally we don’t see too many multifunction laser printers doing the task, and the reason behind this is that the inkjet printers offer clearly high quality print, photos and scan. But the printer industry started marketing the laser multifunction printers claiming of offering better quality at significantly improved speeds. But with the Brother MFC 7440N we found only the latter one to be true and as far as the print quality is concerned it’s not true.

Priced at $250 the Brother MFC-7440N has  got all the trappings of a multifunctional printer including the optical character identification scanning, one-touch fax, an auto-feeding copier and customizable presets, but still its better to go for an inkjet multifunction rather than the Brother MFC-7440N for color scans and printing presentations.

Design

The Brother MFC-7440N with its small footprints can easily fit into any workstation, including home, work desk or in a conventional office, but still the aesthetics of the printer are yet to be improved. Be it the conventional rubber buttons, or the lusterless gray finish of the printer, there is nothing that entices an onlooker and the printer gives the feel of a tedious office printer. While the other printers are stressing on great aesthetics, the MFC-7440N seems to be taking inspiration from Stone Age. That said, the MFC-7440N is really small in size and measuring 12 x 16.9 x 15.6 inches (H x W x D) and weighing 24.4 pounds, the printer finally gives something to cheer about.

The Brother MFC-7440N has an auto document feeder located at the top with paper capacity of 35 pages for copies, faxes and scans. Just as any other laser printer, the bottom paper loading tray here also can hold up to 250 sheets, of standard 8.5 x 14 inches. The manual feed tray which is seen almost in all the brother printers is located on top of the input tray and is for printing on envelopes, labels, and other forms. The incorporated output tray is positioned right on top of the feed tray and is a little buried in the printer, but it doesn’t pulls out of the printer and hence you are left with really tight space for taking out your finished prints.

The control panel for the printer is really narrow and is located on the frontage of the printer. The control panel contains undersized two-line LCD and an array of rubber buttons for functions like quick start keys, navigation, four single touch fax and dial pad. The LCD here is not backlit and hence operation in low light can be a tricky maneuver. In order to save space on the control panel, there also is a shift button which adds four additional quick-dial fax keys. Besides the fax buttons there is a set of buttons for each feature, including resolution, redial for fax, hook, and enlarge button for the copier; and secure and cancel buttons for the printer. The secure button gives admittance to the secured data stored in the printer memory by dialing your personal password.

The Brother MFC-7440N comes with the conventional USB connector cable, and for connecting the printer to multiple computers Brother offers a fitted 10/100 BASE TX networking. There also is 32MB of involved memory for any direct data storage, but in many of the printers from the same price bracket we have seen 64MB of memory.

System Configuration

Starting price: $166.49 – $269.99
Manufacturer: Brother International
Part Number: MFC-7440N
Printer Type: Laser – Monochrome printer
Operating System Supported: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition , Microsoft Windows Vista , Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional , Microsoft Windows XP Professional , Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition , Apple Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later

Dimensions (W x D x H): 16.9 x  15.6 x 12 inches
Weight: 24.5 lbs
Memory: 32 MB
Media Type: Envelopes, Labels, Plain paper, Bond paper, Transparencies, Recycled paper
Software Included: Presto! PageManager for Mac, ScanSoft PaperPort SE
Copying Features: 4 on 1, 2 on 1
Features: Automatic redialing and Fax forwarding
PC Connection: Ethernet 10 Base-T/100 Base-TX, USB

Performance

The Brother MFC-7440N performed exceedingly well in our speed tests, although it wasn’t the fastest, but definitely was tad faster than the average multifunction and single black and white laser printer. The Brother MFC-7440N outperformed the Dell 1125, and Canon ImageClass MF4270, which are a $250 multifunction mono laser printer and a full-feature All-in-One printer priced at $299. The Brother MFC-7440N performed exceedingly well in graphics and text speed tests, but suffered in black and white scanning.

Though, the printer didn’t have the print quality half as good as its speed and that really can be disappointing for many. The print quality was just as you expect from a laser printer. All the documents that we printed asked for an improvement and we wish Brother will use that space for improvement well in near future.

Support

Like all other Brother monochrome laser printers, the Brother MFC-7440N also gets a one-year Express Exchange warranty from Brother and a toll-free telephonic support for any sort of trouble-shooting. Users can also use Brother’s website and can get FAQs, driver downloads, and complete support center.

Word from the Experts

The Brother MFC-7440N offers satisfactory print speed and is comparatively cheap as well, but none of these overshadows the fact that the print quality is really poor; the printer has a stone-aged design and comes with plethora of hardware defects.