Brother Black Compact Inkjet All-in-One with Fax and Wireless

Brother Black Compact Inkjet All-in-One with Fax and Wireless Networking
Customer Ratings: 4 stars
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program In case you got down to the reviews and didn't realize what you're looking at: the Brother MCFJ265W is color ink-jet, multifunction machine. It prints, scans, and faxes. It's wireless. It's an inkjet. It's pretty cheap.

I assumed at first, that this was one of those scam printers which lure you in with price, but don't work very well and charge a wad for replacement ink. Not so! Within the realm of cheap inkjet printers, the output is plenty adequate. You can print photos in a pinch, but it's perfect for printing out maps, web pages, and other notes where color adds to the information. And the OEM replacement ink is reasonably priced, and available on Amazon.

I use a Mac, and as far as I was concerned, set up was easy. There are several modes of wireless, as well as a USB cable connection. (Cable is not included.) There's an included CD with software, but I went to Brother's website and downloaded the latest version. Installing just the printer driver got me printer function, without any additional cruft. I had to install the TWAIN package to get scanner function, which put a little icon in the menu bar. (A *color* icon, actually, ruining the default-black OS X menubar look. Ahem.) And it locked up my menu bar at one point, freezing the clock and nearly making me late for an appointment. But other than that, I've had no problems. I no longer have it auto-load on login, and quit when I'm done with it, and that's been fine.

Scanning was near miraculously easy. I pressed the scan button. The scanner operated. A file appeared in my "Pictures" directory. That's it. The scan was gorgeous, too.

The printer prints reasonably fast. It's quiet. It doesn't vibrate or have any weird smells or do anything objectionable. Since it's inkjet, it doesn't take gobs of power to start up as a laser printer -no flickering lights. The print quality is fine, but it's not as precise and high-contrast as a laser printer. If your business presence involves looking good on paper, you probably want to spend a bit more on your printer than this. For everyday household printing, though, this is easy, fast, cheap, and totally readable. There is no real output paper "tray" -printed sheets just poke out the front, waiting to be taken. If you're printing more than a couple pages, there's a little tongue that can be extended to catch them, but I wouldn't let a whole lot of pages build up there. (Which you probably can't since the input paper tray isn't all that large either.)

There's a very nice color LCD screen on the front, which makes setup easy. It even shows you a little animation of how to install the ink cartridges. The cartridges are easily loaded on the front side, behind a hinged door. Each of the three colors and the black are all separately replaceable. The starter ink claims to be "approximately 65%" of a full-sized cartridge, so the printer comes with about 290 pages worth of ink.

Overall, as a household printer for everyday personal printing, I think this is a great choice.

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