Brother DCP-J925DW review

Brother's DCP-J925DW is an extremely squat MFD that isn't particularly attractive, despite an attempt to liven it up with some shiny patterned plastic around the scanner lid. It's aimed at home workers and small businesses so it includes an ADF and a printer that can make double-sided prints. This model uses a different range of ink cartridges to Brother's entry-level models. High-capacity versions are available that give it reasonable running costs, but at around 6.9p for a page of mixed text and graphics it's not the cheapest around – HP's Officejet 6600 undercuts it by almost 2p per page.

While the DCP-J925DW isn't particularly tricky to set up, there are a couple of oddities. There's no fax. The packaging around the ink cartridges seems excessive, leaving us with a larger than usual pile of plastic after they'd been installed. Entering a wireless password involves an odd mobile phone keypad-style alphanumeric system on the touchscreen; we're not sure why there isn't just a full on-screen keyboard.

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This MFD has a decent scanner, which is fast and sounds great, making pleasing, high-quality whirrs as it works. It produced acceptable results, but we noticed that darker shades tended to be muddied together, losing detail. We also found that despite being simple and easy to use, the software scan interface has some limitations. It can't automatically detect the scan area on a preview image, for example. Instead you must either choose it manually or tick 'Auto crop' and forego a preview of the final scan. The latter option didn't work when we tried it with a 6x4in photo loaded; the entire scan area was captured.

Brother's print driver is one of the best, but this printer isn't. It meandered along when printing black text, and the results had a slightly 'hairy' outline that immediately gave away their inkjet origin. Colour graphics lacked vibrancy on plain paper, and while photos were good enough for occasional use they were out classed by competitors such as the Officejet 6600. Working together the scanner and printer turned out fast copies, but colours in the results were a little dull.

While this isn't a bad MFD it's outclassed by several competitors; substantially so by Epson's Stylus Office BX635FWD which is also cheaper and therefore better value.