The multifunction device has been a success story of the last five years, with all the major printer manufacturers adding them to their ranges. Brother has a long history of producing all kinds of office equipment, so multifunction units - which combine scanning, photocopying, faxing and photo handling with colour print - are a natural for the company.

The MFC-820CW includes all the key functions and adds a couple of extras, like an Auto-Sheet Feed (ASF) on the scanner and a 63mm colour LCD display to preview your photos before you print them. The machine follows HP's design in taking paper from an internal cartridge, feeding it round through 180 degrees and ejecting it onto an output tray at the front. This is an improvement over previous designs, as it reduces the footprint of the machine and helps keep dust off the paper.

Setting the machine up involves hinging the scanner section up from the right until a bonnet-strut style support clicks into place. You can then insert the four independent ink cartridges which plug in at front right, and then feed through cables for the supported USB 2 and Ethernet connections, which plug in deep inside the machine. There's also an 802.11g wireless link for cable-free connection.

Front panel controls are well laid out and the LCD display is intelligently used for both menu navigation and photo preview. All the common memory card types are supported, except for MicroDrive. Support software includes OCR and basic photo editing.

Print quality is generally reasonable, though not quite up to the output from market leaders. There's slightly more ink feathering into the nap on plain paper prints, though photos come through clean and with very little dithering or banding.

Print speed is pretty slow, though, with a five page text print taking just under one minute 40 seconds and mixed text and colour taking just a second under three minutes. A 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) photo print takes over three and a half minutes in photo mode and a staggering eight and three quarters in 'best' mode. Since there's little difference in quality, we'd recommend sticking to photo mode.

All these times were measured using the USB 2 connection; they are slower still if you use the device via a wireless link. Wireless connection is pretty easy to establish, though, as long as you're using Windows XP. Photocopies taken from either the flatbed scanner or the ASF are of good quality, with only slight lightening of colour tones, but again print speeds aren't particularly quick.

You certainly get a lot of useful functionality in a very neat device with the MFC-820CW. Having fax, an ASF and photo preview and print all in the same small box is very convenient. Output quality is good enough, but what holds the machine back in comparison with its main rivals is its sluggish print speed, particularly over a wireless link.