Brother MFC-590

Combining the roles of printer, scanner and fax, Brother's new MFC-590 is designed to save desk space, and, hopefully, a few quid as well.

In theory, an all-in-one machine like this should work out cheaper than buying the components, but Brother has missed this particular trick. The MFC-590's asking price isn't bad, but you could buy a fine printer, reasonable scanner and serviceable fax machine for less.

At least the machine's printing mechanics employ four separate ink tanks - one black, and three colour - which is a much better system than the combined tanks. If one of the colours runs dry, you can replace it individually.

As a printer, the MFC-590 boasts an impressive maximum resolution of 2400x1200 and in our tests it produced good results. However, you wouldn't want to sit around waiting for high-resolution colour printouts - the machine took more than nine minutes to plough through our colour-photo output test.

In the key area of plain, black text printing it managed an average 3.13 pages per minute (ppm), though the figure dropped to 2.87ppm when dealing with mixed colour and text documents. In short, it's okay, but there are much faster inkjets available for less money.

The scanner sits on top and does a competent job at 1200x1200 resolution. As with many multi-function devices (MFDs), the MFC-590 offers only average scanning and printing capabilities. This has always been excused by the fact that MFDs are bought primarily to save space, rather than for high-class performance. However, Brother now shares the MFD market with Lexmark, Sharp and HP, and some of the models we've seen from its competitors deliver superior printing and scanning at better prices.

The MFC-590 could also do better at space saving. If both paper trays were on the front it could be positioned flush against the wall, but the paper-feed tray is at the rear and the flimsy paper-out tray on the front.

SPECIFICATIONS

• 2400x1200 resolution inkjet printer
• 1200x1200 resolution scanner
• Fax machine
• Four ink tanks
• USB connection

Contact

Brother: 0161 931 2354 www.brother.co.uk

See also:

Samsung SCX-1100

All-in-one printer, scanner and copier.  31 May 2002

Canon S300 and D646U bundle

A sleek and well-priced scanner and printer bundle.  07 Feb 2002

Hewlett Packard OfficeJet K80

Space-saving, quality output from this combined fax, printer and scanner.  20 Mar 2001

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