Brother's all in one can spare you a dime

BROTHER'S newest all-in-one device offers monochrome laser printing, faxing, copying and sheetfed scanning. It's far from being a fully-inclusive document management solution for paper-intensive offices, but it's a compact and solid fax-based offering for any typical working environment, whether in an office or at home. The MFC-7225N's build quality is also exemplary, so it should serve as a loyal workhorse for a number of years. Just don't expect too much in terms of print, copy and scan quality.

Pros: Compact, robust design; easy to use; good fax functionality
Cons: Basic specs; middling print, copy and scan quality; tad noisy

The MFC-7225N is a thoughtfully designed compact all-in-one, and with its network facility as standard it will bring easy-to-use technology to your company's communication needs. It offers four core functions, including a monochrome laser printer, computer-independent fax, monochrome sheetfed scanner (200x400ppi) and black-and-white copier (up to 200x 300dpi, 20cpm). Indeed, the printer should serve the needs of all but the most demanding of businesses, as long as print quality isn't a priority.

In addition to its above average build quality, the biggest appeal of the MFC-7225N is its small footprint (374x374x262mm, 7.25kg). It's also reasonable in terms of specifications, although its print, copy and scan performance is middling and won't cater for the needs of those working with detailed graphics - the MFC-7225N is destined to work with basic office documents, such as letters and envelopes.

Setting up the MFC-7225N is quick and easy because you only have to insert the toner cartridge (TN-2000) and attach the scanner's 20-sheet Automatic Document Feed (ADF). The drum unit (DR-2000) comes pre-installed, but there's no USB or parallel cabling supplied. Having said that, most customers are likely to install the printer straight onto a network.

The bundled software drivers and utilities installed problem-free on our Windows XP Professional-based test system, and we had no problems configuring the printer on our test TCP/IP network. Incidentally, the MFC-7225N works on systems running Windows 98 or later, Windows NT 4.0, or Mac OS 9.1 or better. Unfortunately, Linux-based systems still aren't supported by Brother, but there is an optional clip-on gadget (NC-2200w) which turns the device into a wireless-ready printer.

Configuring the MFC-7225N on a network adds further installation time, although Brother's bundled BRAdmin Professional configuration utility helps you to setup and manage the printer on a network using a series of easy-to-follow wizards. BRAdmin Professional can also be used to manage devices from other manufacturers that support SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). Although not included with the MFC-7225N as standard, Brother offers Web BRAdmin, a Web server-based application for managing printers on larger networks. You'll also need to have Microsoft's Internet Information Server and Sun's Java client software installed on your system.

The MFC-7225N's print process is based on monochrome laser technology that can output up to an optimal resolution of 2400x600dpi using either PCL6 or BR-Script3 (PostScript 3) print emulations. There's no automatic duplex option, so to print on both sides of paper requires manual interference, and a paper-input tray capacity of just 250 A4 sheets and output tray capacity of 150 sheets (face down) are far from accommodating for high-throughput environments. There's no optional paper input tray, either.

Paper types supported include plain paper, recycled paper, transparencies and envelopes (manual feed included). Paper sizes supported are also relatively practical, including A4, letter, legal, B5 (ISO), B5 (JIS), executive, A5, A6, and B6 (ISO). Unfortunately, the printer's main paper tray can only handle paper weights up to 90gsm, which rules out card stock and thicker paper types. There is, however, a manual feed slot that lets you load envelopes and special print media one at a time.

The MFC-7225N is not really about cutting-edge features, though - it's built for practical business use. You should forget about the product if you want to make high-resolution copies, scans or prints, and its paper handling is rudimentary at best. Where it makes up for these shortcomings is with its ease of use and practicality. For instance, the built-in control panel is intuitive and the on-screen menu is simple but straightforward operate. The LCD monitor is nice and bright too, and the quiet-when-pressed rubber keys put many competitors' naff plastic buttons to shame.

Even using the device's more advanced functions is a snap, including speed dialling (200 numbers can be stored), fax broadcasting (sends the same fax message to up to 260 separate locations including manual 50 locations), and batch transmissions (stores documents for the same location in the machines memory for transmission in a single call).

We also liked the dedicated automatic redial key (redialls if the recipient fax is busy), fax forwarding function (sends a fax received in memory to another pre-programmed fax number), as well as the ability to perform two different operations on the machine at the same time. Switching between fax, scan and copy functions is a doddle, thanks to the way the unit's menu system changes to copy-specific features. Each button also illuminates green when activated so you know what mode you're in.

Copy and print quality was fair in our tests, but the original document was easily distinguishable to the copy. Text reproduction was adequate in prints, with black areas appearing relatively solid and crisp, although copied text was washed-out compared to the original. Photo quality prints were less impressive, suffering from vertical banding and loss of detail - just like its copies. Photos had too much contrast too, which couldn't be rectified using the unit's contrast options.

Scan performance up to A4 size was adequate for general business documents and text files, but was not good enough for graphics use. More impressive is that network scanning is supported and you can scan directly to a file using the bundled OCR software (ScanSoft's OmniPage), or scan directly to e-mail, OCR or an image. µ

* COPY kindly supplied by our editorial partner, BIOS