Review: Brother MFC-5890cn and Lexmark X6650 Multi Function Printers

Print, Scan Copy at Home or Home Office

December 2008 By Grant Clauser

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More people are working from home, students are doing more complex class assignments and families in general like the idea of consolidating their home office equipment. Nobody wants their den or spare bedroom to look like an Office Depot setup. These two multi-function printers combine all the essential tasks your need into simple compact units. These are not entry-level systems, but they do offer a good value for the price. Both include print, scan, copy, fax and network functions.

Brother MFC-5890cn

$199

www.brother-usa.com

My first college typewriter was a Brother, so it’s nice to see the brand keep up with the times. The MFC-5890cn looks like a small office device, and mostly works with the straight-forward dependability of heavy-duty office equipment. Setup was a breeze, and thankfully this model doesn’t load up my PC with a ton of unnecessary software—just a simple driver, plus network setup if you use it. In fact, the productivity suite included is 100-percent Web-based for the Brother. That’s a plus if you prefer to use MS Office or some similar suite for creating all your project templates. Photo cards, calendars and other print crafts can be designed using Brother’s online tools.

A front tilting color LCD screen gives you access to menu functions and doubles as a view screen for photos when you insert a USB thumb drive or camera card. This is convenient you’re in a hurry to print some pictures and don’t want to start up the computer. When printing photos from the camera card you can select size, quality, and even do a little editing, though judging image improvements on the small, low-resolution screen is taking a risk.

Another plus for the Brother is its use of five ink cartridges (one for each color plus black). That can save you a lot of money by replacing only the color that is empty rather than waste a whole tri-color cartridge.

I also like the 150-sheet paper tray, as it makes the unit more compact, and hides the paper. I found the paper tray prone to occasional feed errors though. The 50-sheet document feeder on top worked well when I placed a stack of papers in and set it to copy—no jams there. It also accepts ledger-size (11” x 17”) sheets, which you rarely find in home printers.

Printing was a bit on the slow side, but that’s not unexpected in an under-$200 model. Full-color, full-page photos took about four minutes at best quality. Text was much faster, though still not lightning fast.

What I like best about this printer is its ease of use and lack of feature clutter. There are no complicated menus, software or button selections to keep you from getting your tasks done. Scanning and copying both work easily. Place your document in either the flatbed surface or in the automatic feeder. Prints of my daughter’s scanned artwork looked good, but showed a bit more magenta than the original.

The Brother is networkable, but only via Ethernet. For most family uses, running Ethernet cable to multiple computers is more trouble than they’re willing to go through. For a single location though, or small business, this unit is ideal. This would be an economical unit for a small home-based business.

Lexmark X6650

$130

www.lexmark.com

The Lexmark X6650 does all of the same basic functions as the Brother, but adds built-in Wi-Fi making this ideal for families who want to share a printer with multiple computers. Like the Brother, setup went very simply. A setup CD walks you through every step from unpacking to networking.

The Lexmark doesn’t include a color screen for viewing photos when printing directly from camera cards, but there are the same camera card and USB slot options as the Brother, plus it’s PictBridge enabled so you can print directly from your camera with a USB cable. Bluetooth printing from cell phones would have been a nice. The OLED screen on the unit offers menu options such as selecting DPI and quality for scans.

Like the Brother, this printer is no speed demon, especially with photos. The same full-page color photo at top setting took 4:40 minutes. Images and graphics looked good, but plain text pages were a little light—more dark gray than black. The top-mounted paper feeder holds 100 standard sheets while the copy feeder can handle 25 pages. I like the top-loading paper feeder because it allows you to easily switch between paper types without opening a tray.

Scans and copies went just as planned. The scanner lid seemed a little wobbly, but expect some build-sacrifices for $130. Copies of my daughter’s drawing looked good, but like the Brother, showed a little too much magenta. The Lexmark uses two print cartridges: one for black and one for colors. High-yield cartridges are available, but you’ll still end up wasting color ink when you run out of yellow while magenta and cyan are still going strong.

The best thing about this Lexmark is its Wi-Fi feature. Setting it up on my home network was simple. Once you’ve got it established on one PC you can take the setup CD to other computers to repeat the network connection. I connected it to three computers and was able to print easily from each as well as scan documents to each PC.

Aside from the Wi-Fi feature, the thing most marking this as a good family device is the productivity software. It includes basic photo editing/fixing, creative projects, Web printing options (you can opt to install the browser tool bar or not) and optical character recognition. The software is very family-user friendly, so grade-school kids could be designing calendars and greeting cards in no time.