Thread: Brother MFC-6890CDW review

Brother's MFC-6890CDW is a huge layout ink-jet multifunction machine embattled at small- as well as medium-sized businesses. You can print, scan, as well as fax over USB, wired Ethernet, or wirelessly over Wi-Fi. The MFC-6890CDW has a 50-sheet usual document feeder for photocopying as well as scanning, memory card slots, a PictBridge USB port, moreover can automatically print two-pronged, and letter sized documents. Unluckily, this large, feature-packed printer was only a standard performer with a few frustrating problems.

Set up

As the MFC-6890CDW can print as well as scan documents as big as 11-by-17 inches, it's large as well as massive. There are two input trays; the top tray embrace up to 100 sheets with the base tray can handle up to 250. Numerous trays make it simple to carry on the printer overloaded with paper or stocked with dissimilar types of paper, say plain paper in one tray as well as higher-quality presentation paper in the further. Loading paper into the fragile paper trays was a bit of a great effort, but, with the cheap-feeling paper guides hard to alter.

One time the trays were overloaded, paper misfeeds were quite common, with moreover the printer feeding many sheets at once, or reporting that the paper tray was vacant even though it was just low. Adding more paper seemed to help out, while multiple-sheet misfeeds still occurred infrequently.

Connecting directly to the printer over USB 2.0 was easy, as was connecting the printer to the office network via Ethernet. Wireless setup from the printer's onboard controls was a confront, but. The MFC-6890CDW's fixed controls are less than perceptive and I was not capable to effectively type in the password. I had better luck once I set up a smaller network by means of an AirPort base station not attached to the Internet as well as used the installation CD to go throughout the setup again.

The MCF-6890CDW can contain any high or normal ability ink tanks. High capacity inks will give up, according to Brother's calculations, about 750 pages each for cyan, magenta as well as yellow with 900 pages for the high capability black cartridge.

Performance

Photos in print on Brother's BP71 tabloid-sized smooth photo paper were excessively dark with heavy ink, mainly when selecting that particular paper type in the printer's software driver. By means of the BP17 paper with a plain paper setting in the drive formed superior photographic prints, if a little under-saturated. Photos looked best when using a high quality, third party glossy photo paper, but the prints were motionless a bit dark as well as very red.

Our text test page, printed on plain paper, was of extremely excellent quality for an ink-jet. Not fairly laser sharp, but very readable even at small point sizes. The printer also did well with our Graphics along with superior Lines test page, with soft bended lines, neutral grayscale photos, as well as comparatively little banding in our color blends.

The MFC-6890CDW was a little slower than several of the ink-jet printers we've tested, as well as somewhat a bit slower than the small office color laser printers we've just reviewed. Printing a one-page monochrome file took about 21 seconds, while a 10-page file took 2 minutes, 22 seconds. Printing our letter-sized Photoshop color photo took almost 4 minutes. Scan times were quicker, but they were only 24-bit color, not 48-bit as lots of photo-centric MFPs are able of capturing.