Brother MFC-990CW Printer Review

First released in February of 2009 the Brother MFC-990CW is a solid choice for homes looking for a good AIO printer. It does not churn out pages as quickly as you'd expect with its multitude of other features, but the print quality itself is fairly good even when compared to other Brother printers. The MFC-990CW will print a maximum of 33 pages per minute for black and white jobs and 27 pages per minute for color jobs.

It is not an extremely large printer, measuring 7.1" x 18.4" x 14.8" (H x W x D ). One nice feature apparent right off the bat is the large 4.2" LCD touch screen that is capable of sitting at various angles where you can preview your photos before printing. The MFC-990CW comes with a variety of memory card slots (xD, Memory Stick, SD, and Compact Flash) and a PictBridge port for direct printing of photos. This AIO will scan at a maximum optical resolution of 2400 x 1200 dpi. You can connect it to your PC or Mac via a typical USB 2.0 connection, Ethernet, or wirelessly. Because of Brother's printer design (and the fact that it does not come with a USB cord out of the box), the easy wireless setup may be an option worth exploring.

The MFC-990CW also comes with a few features far from common in an AIO, a cordless handset and digital answering machine. In terms of ink, the MFC-990CW uses four separate cartridges: black (LC61BK), cyan (LC61C), magenta (LC61M), and yellow (LC61Y). It should be noted that the cartridges you get out of the box are "starters" and do not last as long as a normal cartridge would. The ADF is almost not anything to rave about since it holds a mere 15 pages, especially considering the capabilities of its rivals. Overall, for the price and features, this machine will leave the average person fairly happy. Cnet.com felt that this is the best printer manufactured by Brother that they have reviewed.

Buy the Brother MFC-990CW printer at Amazon.com.