Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I purchased the Brother MFC-685CW before there were any reviews for it. It was a toss up between the cheaper Brother MFC-665CW and the more expensive Brother MFC-885CW. I went to the Brother website to do a side by side comparison of the 3 printers and I found that the Brother MFC-685CW and the Brother MFC-885CW were almost identical in every way so I decided to get the MFC-685 because the price was right. Though I was wary because like I said there were no reviews for it. I must tell you, I don't regret getting this printer at all. It was a lot smaller than the gigantic Canon Pixma MP530 printer I was replacing. Getting rid of the old printer and getting this one in its place really freed up a lot of space on my desk. Because of it's size, I'm able to position the printer anyway I want now. Though it's a bit heavy, that's not a problem because I don't have to pick it up too often. The other reviewer said the printer is intended to be left on all the time. No it's not. I turn mine off whenever I turn my computer off or when I don't need it. There's no problem and all my settings are always the same no matter how many times I turn the product on or off. He also said that this model is around 3 years old. Amazon and his info is wrong because this model came out last year. But I do agree with most of his other points though ;o).
Now for the important stuff, the features. I think this printer is great. There's a bit of a learning curve to figure out some of the features and somethings you may have to refer to the manual in order to use them until you familiarize yourself with the printer. I made sure I used all of the functions of this printer and everything works well. The Brother MFC-685CW has a lot of positives but this product is not perfect so of course it has some negatives.
Positives:
- One of the smallest All-in-Ones that I've ever seen
- All the controls are in the front. You don't have to get up out of your chair to do anything. Everything is at your fingertips. No reaching around the side, back or inside of the printer to do anything. My favorite fingertip feature, being able to change the ink from the front without have to lift up the lid and reach inside the interior of the printer. To change the ink all you have to do is open the cap in the front, pop the ink in and that's it.
- It's wireless. I've got my laptop hooked up to this printer wirelessly and it prints out flawlessly just as if it were connected to the printer directly. The setup was pretty easy. Everything took about 10 minutes or so.
- I like that there's a speaker phone so that you don't have to pick up the receiver when sending or receiving a fax.
- The corded handset and it's base can be removed from the printer entirely, making the printer's width even smaller. The printer comes with
an extra cap that you can place on the spot where the handset and the base were removed so that it looks like they were never there. Very cool.
- It takes most types of media cards so if you don't want to hook up your camera via USB cable and you would rather take out your media card and view and print your pictures that way, you can.
- The printer has a color screen, which is especially useful when you put in your media card and you want to view or make any adjustments to your photos before you print them.
- You can preview your fax before sending or receiving it.
- Prints documents almost immediately. No long thinking or waiting time.
- You can use LC51 compatible inks. You don't have to use Brother's. The ink monitor recognizes them as the official inks.
- Printing with the black ink could be a tad bit sharper but it's still nice. This also all depends on the type of paper you use and the print settings. I've printed photos and they come out quite nice on this printer. The heavier the paper you print on, the better your prints. I would recommend 24lbs(standard inkjet paper weight) or higher. Though printing on 20lbs. is decent.
- The speed depending also on the print settings is pretty fast. The speed on "Normal" printing could be a little faster. I have my printer
set to "Normal Fast", I have "Slow Drying Paper" checked, and I also adjusted the "Color Enhancement" settings, in order to get nice prints
from this setting. If you don't do this, the prints at the "Normal Fast" setting aren't that great. Set at "Normal Fast", my prints come out in a flash.
- Ink monitor is placed in the taskbar of your computer so that you can always check your ink status.
Negatives:
- No duplex printing. No worries if you, like me, don't use this feature too often.
- A little weird and cumbersome putting in 4x6 photo paper. It's not a matter of opening or taking out the tray and putting in the photo paper. It involves a lot of maneuvering and adjusting when in reality it should not be so complicated.
- Printing photos is slow and the photo quality is not all that great. Photos appear dull and dark and not vivid at all. I've tried various settings from using the default factory setting to manually adjusting the settings, still no luck. Unless my printer is defective, this what I'm experiencing.
- The ink monitor is not 100% accurate and not that smart. I found that sometimes when I take out any one of the inks cartridges, even if it's half full, put it back in and it asks you on the printer screen if you just put in a new cartridge and you said that you did, it will register the cartridge as being new ink. This is very bad because I never know when I'm going to run out of ink because the monitor is incorrect. Capping off this fact is that Brother cartridges are all enclosed and not clear so you can't even look at the cartridge to know how much ink you really have unlike say, a Canon ink cartridge. Canon cartridges are clear so you can tell you're out of ink without the help of an ink monitor.
All in all, I really like the Brother MFC-685CW and I'm glad I decided to purchase it. It's attractive looking, pretty easy to use and very compact for an All in One. I've always used the Brother faxes but was a little wary about getting a printer from them but I've been very please so far. I was a Canon printer lover but after my previous Canon flaked out on me, I decided to give Brother a try and I'm glad I did.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Brother MFC-685cw Color Inkjet Multi-Function Center with Wireless Network Interface
This All-in-One offers a unique, low-profile design, without sacrificing a 10-page ADF. It combines a convenient front-loading paper tray with a wide flip-up 3.3 Color LCD, wired (Ethernet) and wireless (802.11b/g) network as well as an USB Direct Interface. The MFC685cw includes Color Inkjet Printing (up to 30ppm Black, 25ppm Color) resolutions up to 6000 x 1200 dpi, borderless printing including photos, Color Copying, Color Scanning, Color Faxing, PC Faxing, PhotoCapture Center to print high quality color pictures from most digital camera media cards. Also includes Message Center, handset and a full-duplex speakerphone.
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