The impressive Brother A3 colour Inkjet gets our vote.
Published June 1, 2009 at 6:58 pm · Filed under Fax / MFP
As a typical business user with an occasional
need to print in A3 I was intrigued by the
launch of Brother’s A3 colour inkjet MFP late
last year…and surprised that no one had
introduced one at that price point before.
Although the great majority of office
documents are output in A4, there is still
the occasional need to print in A3 - not
a problem in corporate offices that have
standardised on A3 workgroup devices, but a
real challenge in SOHO (small office, home
office) environments that may not have the
space or budget for an A3 colour laser MFP.
Brother’s decision to design and build an A3
colour inkjet MFP looks inspired. Being based
on inkjet technology, the Brother MF6490CW
is much cheaper to buy than a colour laser
MFP, enabling remote workers to enjoy the
same print capabilities that employees in
larger organisations take for granted.
True, running costs will be higher than on
a laser device. But the volume of A3 pages
produced by a typical small business or
home worker is so low that this won’t be
a problem, especially if Brother’s A3 MFP
is used in tandem with an A4 mono laser
printer. And crucially, Brother’s offering is a
lot more cost-effective than the alternatives,
such as copy shops.
One week before I took delivery of the
Brother MF6490CW, I was asked at short
notice to make a presentation for which I
needed three A3 colour prints. There wasn’t
time to go to the office so I popped into a
well known national office supplies store
that was advertising A3 colour prints from
as little as £1.32 a copy.
This sounded like good value, until I
found out about all the hidden extras.
These included a £5 surcharge for supplying
the images on a USB stick (how else was I
meant to I deliver them?) and £3 for the
first copy, with only the second and third
prints charged at the advertised rate. In
the blink of an eye, £1.32 per copy had
turned into £3.54 per copy, but having no
alternative I paid the bill of £10.62.
Add in the petrol used to drive to and
from the store and the true cost of those
three prints was more like £15 (excluding
the cost of my time). Very poor value
indeed, especially when compared with the
cost of printing the material in-house on a
Brother MF6490CW.
The £200 MFP comes with enough ink to
produce at least 250 A3 colour prints, which
works out at about 80p per print including
the hardware. A full set of replacement
inks costing approximately £40 (source:
Printbase.co.uk) would provide in the region
of 400 A3 prints at a cost per print of as
little as 10p (dependent on ink coverage).
This is significantly cheaper than the store’s
advertised rate of £1.12p per print, even
before you take into account the additional
charges and travelling costs.
Once I had installed Brother’s MFP, I was
able to use it for additional applications
saving others the expense of using print
shops. After hearing me wax lyrical about the
Brother MFP6490cw, my sister-in-law-to-be
challenged me to print 100 plus wedding
invitations. Despite the invitations’ odd size
(DL) and vertical text, the MFP got through
them in less than 30 minutes, with offset
standard print quality.
The Brother MFP6490cw is a very
capable photo printer for oversize and
undersize documents, but it offers much
more than just printing. Other functions
include A3 colour copy and A3-to-A3
fax, both very useful for the design and
architectural community, and A3 colour
scanning - all operated via an easy-to-use
colour LCD screen.
Being A3, the Brother MFP6490cw is
bigger than most office printers but finding
room for it was easy thanks to the built-in
wireless network card. As long as it’s near a
plug (and your PC/laptop is WiFi-enabled)
you can place the MFP anywhere in your
home or office and use it to print, copy, scan
and fax.
The Brother MFP is a ground-breaking
machine for the SOHO environment: its A3
functionality has levelled the playing field
for smaller businesses and remote workers;
it’s priced very competitively; and it offers
almost everything a SOHO/COHO needs to
produce and distribute high quality colour
documents. The Brother MFC6490CW is one
test machine I will be loath to surrender.
http://www.brother.co.uk/
