Brother MFC-490cw Color Inkjet Multi-Function Printer | 
 enlarge | Brand: Brother
Category: CE
List Price: $179.00
Buy New: $112.95
You Save: $66.05 (37%)
New (16)
Rating:  11 reviews
Media: Electronics
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 23.1
Dimensions (in): 10 x 18.3 x 18.1
nv:Print Method: Inkjet
Resolution: Up to 6000 x 1200 dpi
Maximum Duty Cycle: 2,500 Pages Per Month
Print Speed: Up to 27 PPM (Color)
Print Speed: Up to 33 PPM (Black)
Dimensions: 15.4"W x 14.8"D x 7.1"H
Special Features: Copying Capability
Special Features: Scanning Capability
Special Features: Fax Capability
Connectivity: Ethernet
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity: PictBridge
Connectivity: 802.11b/g Wireless
Standard Paper Input: 100 Sheets
Optional Paper Input: 50 Sheets
MPN: MFC-490cw
Model: MFC-490cw
UPC: 012502620495
EAN: 0012502620495
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | Flexible wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection | | • | Wide 3.3" color LCD provides easy help menus and photo enhancement | | • | Unattended fax, copy or scan; up to 15-page auto document feeder | | • | Direct photo printing from media card slots, USB direct/PictBridge Interface | | • | Fast speed printing up to 33ppm black and 27ppm color |
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This compact and stylish color inkjet all-in-one comes with up to 15-page auto document feeder for convenient unattended fax, copy or scan. It also offers the flexibility to share with multiple users using wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection. The user-friendly widescreen 3.3" color LCD display provides help menus and photo enhancement. Also, easily print photos on demand from the media card slots, USB direct or PictBridge interface. Print rich, vibrant photos on demand at up to 6000 x 1200 dpi. Fast print speeds at up to 33ppm black and 27ppm color and includes a Hi-Speed Super G3 33.6Kbps fax modem. Plus, with the 4-separate ink cartridges, only replace the cartridge that needs to be replaced. Other features include standard paper tray for up to 100-sheets and convenient photo bypass tray for up to 20-sheets 4"x6" glossy paper. Direct Photo Printing. Print photos directly from your digital camera's media cards, PictBridge-enabled camera, or USB Flash Memory.? Send and Recieve Faxes. Hi-Speed Super G3 33.6K bps fax modem allows black and white or color faxing with or without a PC. Flatbed Copying and Scanning. Easily copy and scan books, thick or odd shapped documents. 4-Cartridge System. Only replace the cartridge that needs to be replaced. Energy Star Certified
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
I'm impressed! January 9, 2009
Ordinarily one of my least favorite things to do is to set up office equipment like printers or fax machines. I was prepared to hunker down for the evening and install this multi function printer on a wireless network with three PC's and two Mac's. Four of the computers are connected to Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router by ethernet and the other wireless. The set-up of the printer was a snap. It probably took about 40 minutes from taking the printer out of the box to printing a test picture on the last computer and most of that time was taking the plastic packing material off the printer and waiting while the software and drivers installed on the computers. It was painless. No foul words, no bad temper or snarling.
After plugging in the printer and connecting the phone line for the fax, I installed the ink cartridges and set up the fax info on the little LED screen. It was simple, just followed the directions in the quick start guide. (They even supplied pictures) Then I followed the prompts on that little LCD screen to connect to my wireless network. It saw it right away, asked for passwords, etc. and, POOF! the printer was connected to my network. Then I just put the CD that came with the printer into each of the computers, one at a time (They have installers for both the Mac and PC on the same CD) and POOF! again. They were all hooked up and I could print pictures. It was that easy. Now I can print from all of the computers and there's no wires running from the printer to any of the computers or to the router. It almost seems like magic!
I can remember times when connecting just one printer to a computer was a major "plug and pray" ordeal. This was completely painless and I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination.
The photos I've printed so far look great. I sent a fax to my office, but will have to wait til tomorrow to make sure it went through. It looks like it did. The scanner works just fine. Another little thing that's cool about this machine is the LCD window. I took a picture of it and posted it on this product page.
Two thumbs up for this printer!
Great Wireless All-In-One Printer January 7, 2009
This printer is great. Easy to setup: run installation cd on your computer to setup up software onto your computer and to setup wirelessly just follow the on-screen wizard located on the lcd screen of the printer. When setting up the printer wirelessly if you have MAC Filtering security on your home network you may have to print out a configuration page to get the MAC address and enter the MAC address into your router settings, otherwise you should be able to allow network access to your printer through your network settings and be on your way. The printer prints very fast in black & white or color. Scanning and Copying features are simple and images come out great.
 Great Value on an Excellent All-in-One January 6, 2009
I helped my sister pick out this printer for her early Christmas present to herself. She liked it so much, she ordered one for me and, no surprise, I like it as much as she does. For me, it is replacing a $300 HP that went south after just two years. I've used it for about six weeks and I like almost everything about this Brother printer. It looks great, appears to be of high quality and performs each of its four functions flawlessly. My only complaint is that it does not seem to print photographs as well as my old HP. The photo prints always have a dark background and so far, I've been unable to cure this. In all other respects, however, it's great and since I don't print that many photos, this is not a significant problem. I would recommend this all-in-one machine to anyone who is a moderate user of the four functions and wants just one, small, attractive, quality machine that does it all - and does it for an amazing price. Buy it; you won't regret it.
Superb Printer January 4, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Been using this printer since christmas, was easy to set up and so far works great. Sends and receives faxes no problem, print is also good, too soon to talk about ink usage, but still going strong with the cartridges that came with the unit. Only drawback I see so far is that Brother should have put in an envelope by-pass, there isn't one so you have to take out all the paper, put in your envelope and print it, then re-load all the paper, PITA. How could the designers miss this one. Other than that, I would recommend this printer.
Good value; easy set up; quiet; great wireless integration January 2, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was skeptical of Brother printers, but after having a miserable experience with HP trying to get a 6380 to work (two broken units delivered; two units returned; 4 hours on phone with tech support), I broadened my search and found consistently good reviews of this printer. I live in a mixed household (Windows and Mac), which also eliminated many competitors. Finding it on sale tipped the scales.
Out of the box, the printer is compact, has a low profile, and is a bit sleeker looking than the competitors. Overall workmanship is solid.
Only exception is the paper tray which feels a bit flimsy, but nothing that would deter me. There is also no easy way to feed envelopes or letterhead without pulling out the papertray -- and to run envelopes, you need to remove regular paper since the bypass tray is only for photo paper.
Fax machine is a nice feature to have and, thankfully, it does not come with a phone handset attachment which would just take up space for no reason.
Per the manual, the printer can NOT handle both wireless and USB or network connection at the same time. Not a problem for me at all as the unit will only be used via wireless.
It is energy star rated and defaults to putting itself to sleep after a period of non-use. Startup out of sleep is very fast when you send a wireless document. I tend to unplug my power strip when I won't be using the computer for a while and was afraid that the settings would wipe, but when I plugged it back in the printer sprang back to life with all wireless configurations intact.
Set up was pretty simple. Following the quick start instructions went fine. Found my wireless router, connected, printed test page, no problem. Installed drivers/software on Windows XP, and it looks to be a lot less heavy than HP's full software. Only wrinkle in installation is that it asked me several times to connect/verify the wireless connection (each piece of software plus the hardware basically asked me the same thing a few times... I probably didn't need to enter it so many times, but it wasn't difficult so I decided to be safe). No problems with Mac install either. Very simple.
Overall, the set up was easy and quick. Brother could learn a bit from HP in terms of integrating the documentation and the printer set up a little bit better, but that's a minor issue. It was easy and the thing worked right away.
Automatic document feeder on top of the machine is a great feature to have in a printer at this level, and it works well.
The wireless integration is well done. I was able to print wirelessly immediately, and, quite a pleasant surprise to find that the "scan" feature actually worked as advertised.
Scanning was as simple as dropping a document into the feeder, hitting scan, selecting which of my two wireless PCs I wanted to receive the doc, and then hitting start. Seamlessly scanned and dropped the PDF onto my hard drive.
Ditto for requesting an OCR of the paper document. OCR quality is pretty amazing. I haven't had experience with desktop/consumer OCR in a few years, so maybe they are all of similar quality now, but I was pleasantly surprised. No formatting came over, but I was able to take a memo sitting on my desk and scan/OCR it in a few seconds. The text dropped into a plain text file and had no errors in text recognition or punctuation.
Print speed appears to be slower than the box claims. I haven't tested it, but it feels slower than a lower quality HP deskjet it replaced. Could be a function of the wireless throughput. I'm not terribly concerned since this is for a low-volume home setup. Print quality is good, not fantastic (I will play with settings and see if I can't improve that). Photo prints onto plain paper are not as clear as HP.
I am also very happy with the low noise level. The printer is quiet (much more so than my prior HP inkjet) and it doesn't rattle and shake and rumble like my prior HP inkjet.
If you're having trouble getting the photo paper bypass to work, I had to resort to the manual. You need to physically move the bypass tray forward and lock it into place -- there is no software setting or configuration switch in the print properties. (You can select paper type and all the normal options there, but not the bypass.) Then when done, you pull the paper tray out and physically move the bypass tray back into standby position. At first I was annoyed, but given the frequency of printing via the bypass, I don't care. And I figure not having two paper paths probably means less chance of paper jams.
The model higher than this one is essentially the exact same unit but with a phone handset and a built in digital answering machine. I didn't think that was worth an extra $50, but if you need an answering machine it might be worth it to save footprint.
So far so good. I highly recommend this printer. For the price, features, ease of set up, size, and quiet, it is a very good deal.
I had tried the HP 6380 which had (to me) slightly better print quality, but lacked the automatic document feeder fax and the very well integrated wireless software. I also was unable to get multiple of them to work -- fatal errors on hardware, plus bad customer support, so I gave up and went to this unit... glad I did. I saved money and got a printer better suited for me.
I will update this review in a few weeks if I have any issues with reliability.
|
|
|
