Brother DCP-375CW

At around £85, the DCP-375CW isn't expensive for a combined printer/scanner, and it’s already a step ahead of the crowd because of its wireless connection.

Wireless is becoming more of a must-have feature as increasing numbers of people install wireless routers on their networks.

The DCP-375CW looks much like other Brother all-in-ones – a bit less sleek than some of its competitors. This model is all in black, with a gently curved top covering the Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scanner. Controls sit in front of the scanner and are based around a two-line text screen. That means that although the user can plug in a memory card (there are SD, XD and memory card slots at the front) and print from it, there is no facility for previewing photos it except by first printing a costly sheet of thumbnails.

The single paper tray can take up to 100 sheets of plain paper or 30 photo blanks, but not at the same time. To swap formats the tray has to be removed. Both USB and network sockets are provided, but following Brother's usual practice, it’s necessary to hinge the scanner up and thread the cables around inside the machine. The mains connection is at the side, not the back.

Setup involved plugging in the four separate ink cartridges behind a fold-down door at the right of the front panel and, if you’re using the wireless connection, running the software. This was straightforward but longwinded: we had to enter our network’s security key character by character using a single button on the printer. Brother does supply a copy of the good Paperport software for document management.

Print speeds were low, only about a tenth of those quoted in the specifications, when using the normal print mode. We got under three pages per minute (ppm) for A4 prints and it took up to three minutes for a 15x10cm photo.

Print quality was fair for black text, but colour documents on plain paper looked insipid – even more so in photocopies. Photo prints were fair, though it loses some detail in darker areas of images.

Using the lowest prices we found for ink, page costs are around 5p for black and 12p for colour pages, which is relatively high. Overall, there are better printers, even at this modest price.