I don’t review products for a living and I don’t get anything for posting reviews for products that I love or hate. That said, I wanted to take a moment to say a little bit about my multifunction printer, the Brother MFC-495CW. Sure, it scans, faxes (yeah, I still do that occasionally), and copies. But it does one thing that no other printer I’ve ever had before it did.
Throughout my computing career, I’ve had probably half a dozen inkjet printers. Each one made better prints than the one before it. But each one, no matter how much it cost me, made two good prints – the first two. After that, I wouldn’t have any printing needs, so I’d let the printer sit for a month or so. That, of course, would make the ink dry out. So to be able to print again, I’d start the process of cleaning the ink heads and recalibrating the printer. Doing so burns a ton of ink. I’d print my several pages, half-decent ones, because the heads never quite recovered. Then I wouldn’t need to print anything for a while. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But the Brother MFC-495CW is different. I keep it completely powered down (mostly because I don’t want it to ring when I get a phone call, but also to save energy). Every now and again, I hear the printer wake itself up and presumably clean the heads. In the six or eight months I’ve owned the printer, I haven’t made a single bad printout. And I haven’t had to go through the process of cleaning and recalibrating once.
I bought it so I could scan and fax, but I was pleasantly surprised by its ability to keep itself looking good from occasional print to occasional print. Way to go, Brother.
**Updated 10/28/2011
Apparently I spoke too soon. Just eight months after singing its praises, my Brother MFC-495CW has printed its last (and not until after I spent $28 on another black ink cartridge because the old one was empty). Over the course of about three days, the printing faded, like it was trying to hang on. But it didn’t. On one hand, I should be happy that I got a year and a half of use out of it. On the other hand, I’m kinda upset that I’ve got nearly $200 invested in the printer, including now useless ink, and now I have to spend that much to replace it. Farewell, Brother. We hardly knew ye.