Product Reviews

Brother is aiming big with its latest multi-function device. The MFC-6490CW combines a colour inkjet printer, scanner, fax and copy functions, and the important ability to handle A3 pages - a not-too-common feature on inkjets at this price.

Even though Brother describes this as a compact device, that doesn't mean the MFC is small. It packs in so many features that it looks rather large and boxy, and it's inherently more suitable for a small office. It's worth considering for the home if you're looking to consolidate the footprint of several devices, though.

A large portion of the case is taken up with the paper trays, which sit entirely within the hardware when holding smaller paper sizes, and they only protrude a few inches when expanded to hold A3 pages. Their capacities are on par with laser printers around the same price, with 150 pages in the top tray and 250 in the bottom, though the latter can't accommodate glossy paper.

There are plenty of connectivity options, with wifi in addition to PictBridge, and traditional cabled USB and Ethernet connections. They're easily connected deep inside the case and run along a small trench to the outside, so you are unlikely to accidentally pull one of them out. The power and telephone cables, however, attach in a recessed area on the left-hand side, but the power cable only sticks out a short way. Still, we wish that Brother had found an equally hidden place for these, too. Photo printing direct from cards is thrown in for good measure, with slots for the common formats, including SDHC up to 8GB.

The case is rather subdued with an almost entirely matte finish, except for the fold-out 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and the front panel and display, where an array of buttons are neatly laid out by function. This makes using the fax and copying functions a simple task on the device itself, and working through the menus is very easy thanks to the four major function buttons. Options are well categorised and you won't be left disorientated, while the wide 3.3in screen also helps as it doesn't

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feel cramped.

The scanner function integrates well with an attached Mac, offering options to scan directly to an email attachment, a file an image and to perform OCR. Each of these automatically opens the assigned application on your Mac. The Twain driver offers only mono and colour photos as document types, but switching from the ADF to the glass flatbed and a little further digging reveals more options under manual image adjustment. Here, you can individually tweak the brightness of dark, midtone and light areas, along with the typical sliders for tint, hue and saturation.

Noise levels were also generally low, with the gentle chugging back and forth of the print mechanism accompanied by a faint whine that will blend into the background of an office. The printer was at its loudest when we fed it paper.

Text on an A3 DTP spread printed at best quality was sharp and legible even down to six points. Our 5% mono office document printed at under 5ppm at normal quality, increasing to 12ppm at draft. Both were perfectly readable, though draft was easier to distinguish by the rougher edges on curved characters. This stood out most on the bold text of a table, though we'd be happy to read a lengthy document at either quality.

The highest photo quality on Brother's recommended BP71 paper retained plenty of detail in the highlights and midtones, though it was harder to pick out on shadows. Skintones were a little on the rosy side too, but dominant vivid colours were pleasing. 6 x 4in photos took 3 minutes each at this setting. The Photo setting took a lengthy 17 minutes to print an A3 photo, which was 2 minutes slower than Brother's quoted time, though a faster Fine option takes less than half as long.

It's easy to fit ink cartridges into a dedicated compartment at the front of the printer. Brother uses separate CMYK cartridges that are easily replaceable in standard and high yield versions. A black high yield cartridge doubles the A4 printing capacity to 900 pages on a typical 5% printed area, while lowering the cost per page from 3.1p to a pleasing 2.1p per page. The savings are even more pronounced when printing colour, which falls from 2.3p to 1.4p per colour.

Brother's ISO ratings are for A4 pages, and it expects the A3 functions to appeal to those with only an occasional demand for this page size. The small offices at which it's targeted are unlikely to be too concerned by minor issues with shadows in photos. We recommend the high yield cartridges over the standard ones though, as an extra £5 for a black one cuts the cost per page by almost a third, while there are additional savings on each individual colour.