 "Brother MFC-665CW")
The MFC-665CW truly defines the term ‘all-in-one’. Besides the mandatory printer/scanner/copier capability that the category demands, it’s also a fully functional fax machine. If that’s not good enough, it also has support for all kinds of memory cards, PictBridge printing, network printing capability and support for wireless printing. Yep, the ‘Bro’ has it all covered.
But to start from the top, the MFC-665CW is an all-in-one solution aimed at the SOHO segment, where the printing requirements vary from quick documents to high quality brochure and presentation printing. Along with faxing capabilities it also incorporates a standard telephone receiver, so users can have practically all their office requirements met by a single machine. Oh, and there’s also speaker phone built right in.
As daunting as a machine like this may sound, the Brother MFC-665CW is pretty compact when you consider its capabilities. At 468 x 370 x 180 mm it does take up some amount of your desk space, but it lies low thanks to its small height.
The interface is absolutely complete, with independent buttons to perform every function you desire, saving you the task of memorizing a series of button presses to perform anything out of the ordinary. There’s a 2.5 inch display with tilt function that gives you continuous information about the activity you’re performing on the machine.
The 802.11b/g wireless printing capability would really help cut the cable clutter around the office. I suspect this would be one of the biggest selling points of the MFC-665CW.
I personally find the overall design and build of the MFC-665CW just about perfect. Sure, a smaller footprint would be great, but considering the space used for the flatbed scanner and the comprehensive button layout, the space is justified.
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As a printer the MFC-665CW supports a maximum resolution of 1200 x 6000 dpi in B&W and color. We performed a series of tests to evaluate the printing quality in terms of print clarity, color quality and speed.
Starting with color, the MFC-665CW makes an excellent option for SOHO printing, mainly because the results appear quite vibrant, which is perfect for high quality prints of brochures, office documentation and even photographs. Professional photographers and printers may not, however, appreciate the slightly reddish blacks you get.
As for the detail levels in our tests, the prints were not too hot. While it got the skin textures and small details correct, the real minute parts like traces on a motherboard were not accurately reproduced. There was no visible print grain, however. Test printing showed rough edges on most fonts, which may not be noticeable, but does affect the overall print quality.
The printing speed on the MFC-665CW would range from average to slow. A highest quality full A4-sized page photo print took an average of 10 minutes, which isn’t too bad, but definitely not as fast as some of the other printers we’ve seen. Our speed test (where we print 20 pages of text in normal quality settings on plain paper) took 5.07 minutes, which is about average; faster printers perform this test in under 3.3 minutes.
As a scanner the MFC-665CW performed well overall, with good color translation in general photographs. But as soon as you try to scan anything out of the ordinary… that’s when the problem occurs. Scanning textures was a bit of a problem, since the scanner wasn’t very good at focusing on anything placed even slightly above the scanner bed. It treated special colors really well, with adequate amount of color accuracy.
At its price point of Rs 15,700, its feature list leaves little to be desired (what about Bluetooth printing?). The MFC-665CW will ensure that your printer is easily accessible to everyone at home/small office, as all the required connectivity options are there. But if you’re particularly looking for the best deal in speed or the highest quality photo prints, you may want to consider the alternatives.
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