There has to be almost as many new printers appearing on the market on a monthly basis as digital cameras. All of this is good news for the consumer who wants plenty of choice when finding just the right product to suit his or her needs, but problematical for the manufacturer when trying to make its latest machines stand out from the crowd.

The DCP-J715W is part of the latest range of Brother's all-in-one inkjets, the majority of which are responding to market demands by having Wi-Fi as standard. Intended for home and small business use, it's a sleek, compact model measuring 390 x 375 x 80mm and, as it only weighs 7.5kg, you can virtually tuck it comfortably under one arm.

Styled throughout in no-nonsense jet black, the DCP-J715W comes with a 15-sheet Automatic Document Feeder on the top, a 100-sheet input tray at the bottom (with a 20-sheet photo tray resting directly above), plus output space for 50 sheets of A4. In addition there are front slots for SD cards and Memory Sticks and a USB port for flash cards and PictBridge enabled cameras.

Three connection options are offered - via wireless setup, USB cable or LAN cable - and the menu commands are all fed through the easy to read 3.3-inch colour LCD. The control buttons are clearly labelled and a doddle to operate, and the four inkjet cartridges slide effortlessly into the housings behind the front cover. All looking fine so far, but how good is the machine's performance?

The straight answer is: disappointing. Claimed print speeds have a habit of being exaggerated on press releases but these are way off the mark. For instance, the fastest black text A4 document we could manage at the lowest draft setting was 16ppm (against the declared 35ppm), with just 4ppm in Normal mode and a paltry 1.5ppm in Fine mode. Colour documents at the fastest setting managed 15ppm, a long way from the trumpeted 28ppm.

While text quality on the whole was good without being exceptional, the same wasn't true of photographs. A 10 x 15cm borderless portrait at 'Photo' quality printed via the PC took 1 minute 15 seconds and was noticeably darker than the original, and the same was true of an SD card printout, only it took longer at 1 minute 30 seconds. At the 'Highest' quality (i.e. 1200 x 600dpi) and with 'Vivid' enabled we had to wait 3 minutes for completion and the colours were duller and darker than the source. A4 size photos took 4 minutes and produced more authentic colours (albeit with a slight yellow tinge) and although A4 copies were much swifter at 1 minute 20 seconds, the resulting colours were all washed out.

Verdict
The Brother DCP-J715W is a classic case of style over substance: it looks beautiful, it has easy to use controls, wireless connectivity and memory card access, but its printed results are slow and below par.

Company: Brother

Contact: 08444 999444

Tags: pictbridge universal serial bus automatic document feeder secure digital liquid crystal display wi-fi memorystick multifunction printer