Multi-function devices (MFD) that can connect directly to a network, sport a fax function and an Auto Document Feeder (ADF) are usually found in offices, however, at £150, the Brother MFC-5460CN is worth consideration for the home.

Starting from the top, it has a 50-sheet ADF and a flatbed scanner directly below. Lift up the whole top section to reveal USB and network sockets.

Four colour ink cartridges live under a cover at the right-hand end of the front panel. The main paper tray, which slides out from the front, takes up to 100 A4 sheets, feeding paper back out to another tray on top. Directly above the paper tray are memory card slots for all the major types.

The Brother MFC-5460CN is about the same size as small desktop photocopier. A small two-line screen displays status information and printing instructions. To the right are three buttons to start and stop scanning and for copying documents. There’s a phone keypad for entering fax numbers and function buttons at the far left; all very intuitive.

However, its most main problem is print quality. It puts too much black ink onto plain paper, so text can look fuzzy, while colour is under-inked, giving a slightly mottled effect as paper fibres show through. Putting black text over colour can produce a nasty bleeding of black ink, too.

Where the MFC-5460CN does impress is with photo printing. Here colours aren’t over-emphasised and colour gradations, as in areas of sky, are smooth, with no signs of banding. If high quality photo paper is used, detail is good.

Print speed isn’t impressive. Our tests churned out 2.7 A4 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 2.2ppm for text and graphics.

Where Brother gets its figures of 30ppm and 25ppm from, we just don’t know – even in draft mode we were nowhere close to achieving that kind of speed.

Also consider
Canon Pixma MP600R
Splash out a few extra quid and bag yourself a fantastic all-in-one printing device

Lexmark X3480
Another take on the budget all-in-one printer from Lexmark, but is it a big improvement?

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