Brother MFC-J6510DW A3 inkjet printer-scanner

Brother's MFC-J6510DW is big. Like most multi-function devices it can print, copy and scan, but unlike many it can do all of that using A3 size paper, not just A4. That means it has a much larger footprint – the space it takes on the desk or floor – than most printers, at 54x49cm. It's less than a foot tall, however.

A flap at the top folds over to reveal the document feeder into which you can place up to 35 sheets for copying or scanning, and a full flatbed scanner section is accessed by lifting the document feeder panel up. Both can take A3 documents or smaller. At the front of the device there is a 250-sheet paper tray that will again take A3 or A4 sheets. This is covered, to avoid dust, and paper feeds out above this. A flap folds out to catch it, though this adds to the device's footprint, and to insert A3 sheets the whole tray extends outwards. It can print double-sided.

It can be pushed flush against a wall because the power and phone sockets – it can be used for faxing too – are on the left-hand side. It took us a while to find the sockets for connecting it to a computer, which turned out to be inside, accessed by lifting up the scanner section. It can connect to a single computer over USB, or multiple ones using a wired or wireless network.

Setting it up was fairly simple – on turning it on the small colour screen at the front explained how to insert the four ink cartridges and it then told us it was going to take four minutes to start, which it did. We inserted paper when prompted and it produced a test page.

The Brother software on the computer took a little longer (around 15 minutes) to install, but it was largely automated and included good step-by-step processes for connecting the device using each of the three methods.

Speeds were fair: it produced 8.5 A4 pages per minute (ppm) of black text in normal mode, which was quite readable. A ‘fast' mode produced 12ppm with lighter, readable but blotchy text. In ‘best' mode text took a long 50 seconds a page, and was decent, but not up to laser-printer quality. It took about 30 seconds to finish working after the end of each print job.

A3 pages were of course slower: it took 30 seconds to print the first page of black text, with subsequent ones taking 20 seconds. Graphics – colour charts and graphs – looked good and took around a minute per page in normal mode. A full-colour A3 photo in ‘best' mode took a long nine minutes but looked very impressive. It's not up to the standards of a dedicated A3 photo printer but it was surprisingly good from a ‘business' device. Copy quality was good, and scans were quick.

There are slots for Memory Stick and SD memory cards at the front, along with a USB socket for direct printing from a camera. Costs per A4 page work out at around of 2p for black text and 6p for full colour, both of which are quite good.