Review: Brother MFC-7840W multifunction device

For an office workhorse device, the Brother MFC-7840W is surprisingly small. Despite packing in a scanner, copier and fax facility (as well as the monochrome laser printer), it takes up little more space than a standard laser printer.

Installation was painless, largely thanks to the excellent manual that takes you through the whole process in fairly plain English. The printer can be connected directly to a computer using a USB cable, or to a network using the wired or wireless network connections.

Being gluttons for punishment we jumped straight in to the wireless option, but making a connection was surprisingly simple. Even entering the network key is explained in the manual, and it connected to our network first time. The MFL-Pro Suite software likewise worked well, picking up the printer on the network straight away.

Taking just 25 seconds to print the first of our test pages from a cold start, it achieved a very impressive 12.5ppm in total. Photo printing was similarly quick at about 30 seconds for a full-page print, but while text quality was impressive (sharp even at small sizes), photos were not great. There was no visible banding, but entirely visible dots even on the highest quality settings hampered photo quality. Copying and scanning were similarly quick, with good-quality copies and the ability to scan straight to an email once the driver is installed. The printer doesn’t have a duplex unit, so double-sided printing must be done manually using the supplied software.

Street pricing for standard toner (1,500 pages) costs about £30 (2p per page), while the high-yield version costs just £40 and is good for 2,600 pages (1.5p per page). Minor gripes aside, this is an excellent choice for home office use.

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