I was recently given the opportunity to test and review a printer from Brother. It is the Brother 790cw model and is a

printer

scanner

copier and

fax machine

all in one machine. The printer was shipped to me and the first thing I noticed was that it was a lot heavier than I expected. I guess it has to be heavy since it has all of those components all rolled into one machine.

What I Liked:

Copier works without software installation.

Ink was easy to install.

What I Did Not Like:

Came without printer cable.

Cover part is not easy to close but construction feels flimsy.

Photograph paper difficult to use.

General impressions

The machine came in a basically ready to use state. The only parts that needed assembling were the phone line which consisted of plugging in the handset provided. I was not able to use the fax option since I do not have a home telephone line.

brotherprinterThe machine can scan and copy without the software being installed so this was a real blessing for me. I was able to copy a document in color and all of the colors (except one neon green) came out looking like the original.

I ran into problems trying to use the glossy photograph paper to copy a photograph. The directions for using photograph paper are not very clear in the user guide and I spent about five minutes trying to pull a part towards me when the directions really meant for you to push it away from you.

You need to feed the photograph paper into a tray that you pull out above the regular paper tray and for some reason the machine was not able to grab the paper correctly. It either decided to print a tiny strip of the image on the glossy paper and the rest of the image on regular paper or it would simply ignore the glossy paper.

The machine comes with a touch screen that is very intuitive and I was able to play with the settings and adjust them to what I wanted very easily.

I regret that I was not able to set up the printer options because that required being connected to the network and I do not have a telephone line. The printer can also use a USB cable to connect but I did not have a USB cable with a connection that fit the size required and the machine did not come with that cable. I was reluctant to go out to purchase a cable just for that purpose so I did not install the printer options.

I think the machine is a good one for someone who needs all of the various features of printer/scanner/fax and I was pleased with the options I was able to access, except the ‘print a photograph’ option.