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

Print, Scan Copy at Home or Home Office

December 2008 By Grant Clauser

multipage

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.