Brother MFC-9320CW All-in-One Color LED Printer

This color LED printer has built-in wireless which helps justify its $500 cost. In terms of performance, it's adequate if unsurprising, with good output and decent print speeds even across a network and an interface that allows easy configuration. The starter cartridges (there are four) are rated for 1,000 pages, so the total cost of ownership will be lower than with an inkjet printer; so if you need to print in color, and you don't need something that will be shared by 10 employees, this printer is worth the extra money. But if your color printing needs are minimum or geared to photos, look somewhere else.

A color LED printer all-in-one that's affordable to the average printer buyer is becoming increasingly common, and Brother is doing a great job at, if not leading the way, at least competing on strong ground with Samsung. This printer, the MFC-9320CW, isn't as cheap or esthetically pleasing as some laser printers from other companies, but then again it's a color printer that offers a wide array of functions that make it a good deal. And the print quality from this LED printer is indistinguishable the output of a laser printer.

The 9302CW has 802.11b/g wireless capability built in. Networking was pretty easy to set up, but the tiny black-on-yellow LCD screen (and the loud, irritating beep whenever a button is pushed) made the task a bit more irritating than absolutely necessary. That said, the printer connected to my protected wireless network on the first try.

Print speeds across a wireless network often suffer compared to a direct connection, but I didn't run into that problem with the 9320. A four-page PDF took 39 seconds to print, but 29 seconds of that was spent in warm up and in printing the first page. Once warmed up, the printer put out a four-page Word document in only 23 seconds, with the first page out in 14 seconds--that's about three seconds per page once it gets going, which is not too bad for a network printing job. Output quality is very good, "laser-like" as Brother insists. Pages came out somewhat curled when using cheap copy paper, so for important jobs invest extra in paper for laser printers.

The 9320 offers a fax, scanner, and copier, but it doesn't offer automatic duplexing (you can do it manually, which was a bit of a pain to do; but then again, no all-in-ones in this price range have built-in duplexers, at least at this point); though honestly, I'd prefer a built-in duplexer to a fax machine anytime. I can't remember the last time I really had to send a fax instead of simply attaching a document to an e-mail--a function that this printer does with remarkable quickness and, even better, with no configuration (I use Outlook).

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