Brother DCP-585CW

Brother's DCP-585CW may look similar to its cheaper sibling, the DCP-165C, but it makes key improvements in several areas. Aside from a sleeker black finish, the addition of a 3.3in LCD works wonders for usability. All the main options are right there on the simple home screen, so you can choose your copy quality, size, paper type and the rest without having to wade through menus, and there's a print progress indicator visible throughout.

With a choice of USB, Ethernet and 802.11bg wireless connections it's as well-equipped as the best home all-in-ones, and we had no problems at all setting up network printing both from the driver and on the device itself.

There are also card slots for direct photo printing and the DCP-585CW accepts a high-yield black cartridge, which makes for an impressively low 6.2p cost per A4 colour page. Only standard inks come in the box though, and they install from the front panel as simply as we've come to expect from Brother devices.

Where the DCP-585CW really falls down, however, is in its performance. Beneath the polish and extra features, it's essentially the same printer as the cheaper DCP-165C and that means print quality was just as mixed in our tests. Text wasn't quite as thick and black as some, and there was a speckled finish in solid areas of colour that gave an off-focus look to graphics. Photos were much better, with accurate colours and plenty of detail, but they lacked the vibrancy of the better home devices.

As with the DCP-165C, draft prints flew out at 15.4ppm but they were pale and illegible, and normal mono prints slowed the rate to just 3.1ppm. Inexplicably, a 6 x 4in photo took 1min 33secs, compared to its sibling's near-three-minute time. This is the only notable difference in performance, but speed can't be held up as one of the DCP-585CW's main strengths.

There are other foibles that annoyed us slightly, such as having to push the photo tray so far into the device that prints can barely be seen as they come out, but overall we liked the design and features of the Brother. It comes at an affordable price too, so it's a shame that quality and speed weren't better.

Author: David Bayon