Brother MFC-5840CN

Okay, so you're thinking of buying a printer? Let's make something clear right from the outset- Brother doesn't make photo printers (for that you want Epson or Canon), but realistically, most people don't print photos from home as it's cheaper to have them done elsewhere. Offices wouldn't dream of sending inkjet prints to customers either, preferring crisp output from a laser. So what's left? Just your average home printing; a few pieces of homework from the kids, maybe the odd personalised birthday card or club newsletter, and of course letters to the bank manager. That's where Brother have focused their attention on this model - good general purpose output, fast print speeds and low running costs, and in my experience they hit the mark.

True, if you ask it to do photos, you'll be waiting a while for results that are mediocre at best (think early HPs), and text quality isn't good enough for sending to clients, but everything in between should be fine. The four separate ink tanks are large and don't have any chips to stop you refilling them, you can print from two different paper trays and there's (pointless as it's no good for photos) memory card slots you can print from too. As a printer alone, there's a few advantages there the competition don't offer...

Of course, you aren't considering this model because you just want a printer though! The built-in scanner is fast, certainly at lower resolutions, and the document feeder is more reliable than some I've experienced. It'll make short work of scanning your bank statements, etc.

I haven't really used the fax function, however it seems to be well featured and you can choose which paper tray the output goes to, set up for working in tandem with an answering machine, and of course, send and receive faxes in full colour if the other end supports it. The supplied software even includes PC faxing so you don't need to visit the machine to send and receive, just use it's hardware.

Those features alone make this device an interesting proposition, but then we come to the real clincher: everything you've just read can be shared on your home network because this device has an ethernet port as well as USB. That's right, from the scanner to the memory card slots - all are accessible to all your machines (most AIO only share the printer) and as it plugs into your network directly, you don't need to leave a PC on to access it. Perhaps Brother are ahead of their time, but with the growing popularity of home networks, and the low cost of this device, it's a bargain as long you know where it's capabilites are.

Personally found it difficult to set up. Always giving connection problems. Does not seem to be very user friendly in my opinion.

Other make printers on same network operate fine. Would never buy a multi function machine again from Brother.

Using this for a Home Small office printer, I use this everyday and I am more than satisfied, the network facility is worth having and at the price this machine is now available its hard to find better value, the document feeder is good to its word I have put in more than the suggested amount, I use paperport that comes with it and it makes storing files on the pc easy.

As far as I am aware Brother get slated on many sites for their tech support or lack of it I was very impressed when I dealt with them they helped me set up the scanner for networking and were rapid in their response.