Brother MFC-3820CN

B rother's MFC-3820CN serves up fax capability together with print and scan functions in an inexpensive inkjet package. In conventional all-in-one style, the unit houses a four-ink printer, with a flatbed scanner on top. A 20-sheet ADF (automatic document feeder) provides convenient (but modest) faxing and copying. Paper loads into a tray at the rear and printouts are deposited in a small tray at the front. The large button pad is well proportioned and uncrowded, but the single-line LCD status window makes the menus fiddly to navigate.

The pad can also be used for controlling photo printouts without intervention from a PC, and to this end Brother provides four digital camera card slots. These are designed specifically for the four most common card formats rather than all of them: you'll need an adaptor for the CompactFlash slot in order to read the new xD-Picture Card format, for example. After inserting a card, you can immediately print off an index sheet, then choose which shots to print and at what size and quality.

Unusually for an inkjet, the MFC-3820CN comes with an Ethernet interface that accepts DHCP instructions, allowing it to be added to a network instantly. Yet in other respects, the product feels unsophisticated. The PC scan controls, routed through WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) in Windows XP, are very basic, while the scanner boasts an optical sampling rate of a mere 600dpi. Most frustrating was print speed: a 20-page, black-only Excel print job took over six minutes to complete, while an A4 photo took more than two minutes on plain paper and nearly 11 minutes on glossy stock.

Print quality is average compared with the inkjet leaders Epson, HP and Canon. Scan quality is poor too, suffering from striping and achieving a low score in our tests. Only buy this machine if you're desperate for the fax and ADF.

Author: Alistair Dabbs