Brother MFC-495CW All-in-One Printer

The Brother MFC-495CW all-in-one printer is a decent color all-in-one printer that I've seen online for around $100, making it a great value. It's not particularly fast, especially across a wireless network, but print quality--especially photos--was top notch. Plus, it has built-in wireless, which makes it handy as well. All in all, a decent entry-level all in one.

The Brother MFC-495CW all-in-one printer is at the low end of Brother's line of all-in-one printers, but you get a good deal for your money (as low as $99 at PC Richard last I checked. For documents, print quality was acceptable if not fantastic. Colorful graphs and charts looked good, with true colors; and the ink (Brother uses its proprietary Innobella ink with four cartridges) doesn't soak into cheap paper, leaving it limp. As always, this Brother printer excelled with photos, with rich colors, sharp details, and instantly dry.

Across a wireless network, don't expect any fantastic speeds, however. A three-page colorful Word document took 1:08 to print, with the first page out in 30 seconds (about 19 seconds a page after that, which is respectable). A four-page PDF took 1:43 to print. There is a setting under the Advanced options that allows you to alter the printer's data-transfer mode from Recommended to Improved Print Speed. This cut 20 seconds off the print time, and there was no noticeable impact on the printed document.

Though the MFC-495CW is touted as an all-in-one printer (it has a scanner and fax built in), like so many other Brother all-in-ones it really shone when printing photos. It printed a colorful 4x6 photo in 1:37--almost exactly as fast as most other Brother all-in-one printers I've tested--which is not particularly fast. Of course, it's about the same as other (more expensive) Brother printers such as the MFC-6890cdw.

The tilting 3.3-inch LCD screen is limited to showing menu items and provides only basic support for, say, editing photos. Lots of support for memory cards and PictBridge (and, of course, USB and network printing as well as wireless). It has a separate tray for photos, which is a handy feature; but you'll still have to remove the paper tray to switch between photos and regular paper printing. The printer doesn't offer any duplexing, manual or otherwise. Finally, the drivers for Windows 7 weren't included on the CD and had to be downloaded from Brother's Web site. Not a terrible process but be prepared to spend some extra time if you have Win 7.

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