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My Overall Rating : ★★★★☆

Brother MFC-490CW Color Inkjet Wireless All-in-One Printer Review

We don’t usually have much to say about the design of most Brother printers, but the MFC-490CW actually makes an effort to stand out. The chassis is small and maneuverable at 15.4 inches wide by 10 inches deep by 18.1 inches tall. After installing the parts, the MFC-490CW is still much less obtrusive than the 5890CN; you shouldn’t have a problem fitting this into your workspace without clutter.

The control panel and the autodocument feeder are trimmed in a glossy, black finish that looks extra professional next to the matte, gray side paneling. The control panel in the center of the small multifunction pad has the mushy rubber buttons that we complained about on the MFC-5890CN, but the directional pad on this one gets the shiny, silver, plastic treatment that actually makes it easier to maneuver around the menus on the large 3.3-inch color LCD screen. The screen also swivels up and down at incremental notches to give you a variety of viewing angles.

Just to the left of the display, you’ll see a complete numerical keypad, the on/off button, as well as redial and hook buttons for the standalone fax functions. Three function buttons for fax, scan, and copy sit just to the right of the LCD, with a fourth button labeled “photo capture” that opens a folder to display images on digital memory cards that you insert into the media reader about halfway down the front face of the printer. Acceptable formats include Compact Flash, SD, Memory Stick, and xD slots, and there’s a PictBridge USB port as well to connect a digital camera directly.

The large drawer that pulls from the bottom of the device holds blank sheets of paper, and the top doubles as a landing on which finished prints come to rest. The glaring issue here is that the drawer sits flush in the printer and doesn’t extend far enough out of the device, making it difficult to grab outbound prints from the output cavern. Brother forces you to squeeze your hand into this awkward, covered cave to retrieve smaller prints, so potential buyers with larger-than-average mitts should take this into consideration.

Like many of the other Brother printers, we still have complaints about the internal cable guide on the MFC-490CW; while the power port is easy to access on the left side of the rear panel, the USB and Ethernet ports sit inside the printer. For some reason, Brother forces you to open up the machine, prop up the lid with a plastic arm (similar to the arm on the hood of a car engine), snake the USB cable (not included in the box) through a small, plastic guide, and plug it directly into the internal components. Not only is this hassle unique to Brother, you also wind up losing more than a foot of cable slack as a result of the extensive internal looping. It feels counterintuitive to lift up the lid and expose the print head to serve no other purpose other than to plug in the USB cord. Thankfully, you can connect the printer to a desktop without wires at all using the built-in 802.11b/g wireless print server and the simple instructions on the driver.

The MFC-490CW uses a four-cartridge system with individual tanks for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow that load into the front bay. Brother offers standard- and high-yield cartridges on its Web site. However, we’ll use the high-capacity price points and page yields for a cost-per-page analysis: color cartridges cost $17 for 750 pages and a black cartridge that’ll last approximately 900 pages costs $32, according to Brother, which factors out to 2.2 cents per page of color and 3.5 cents for black. Those prices are just shy of the average cost to print on a $150 printer, but the Canon Pixma MX330 offers better print quality for the same price.

The drivers on the MFC-490CW installation disc give you the option to adjust the printer’s quality settings from normal to fine, fast, or fast normal. In addition, you get a box to check natural versus vivid photo prints, and a unique “True2life” color enhancement tool with customizable changes to color density, white balance, contrast, brightness, and other settings. Finally, the driver also installs a status monitor that pops up during job processing to monitor ink cartridge levels and quality control, but it doesn’t indicate the status of the spooling or the job progress.

Brother also gives you the option to install a third-party imaging application called “Paperport” by ScanSoft. This program lets you edit photos in a file-browsing setup similar to Apple’s iPhoto, with basic photo-editing solutions for auto-enhancement, blemish erasing, and red-eye elimination. We played around with the software for awhile and enjoyed its simplicity compared with iPhoto. Don’t expect editing quality on par with Adobe suites, however. Paperport is geared more for light users and amateur photographers with limited time and editing resources.

Let’s take a look at all of the Brother MFC-490CW features/specification:

  • Flexible wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection
  • Wide 3.3″ color LCD provides easy help menus and photo enhancement
  • Unattended fax, copy or scan; up to 15-page auto document feeder
  • Direct photo printing from media card slots, USB direct/PictBridge Interface
  • Fast speed printing up to 33ppm black and 27ppm color

If you want to buy Brother MFC-490CW, you can get it cheap online through Amazon.com here. They offer special discount price and reliable shipping service.

Let me show you what current owners have to say about it:

“…Just bought the Brother MFC-490cw to replace my dead Lexmark X83. Simply stated, this is an awesome all-in-one printer! Setup was quick and easy. The printer found my wireless router in seconds. Loaded the proper drivers in the various laptops and BAM! we were printing without wires!

The print quality for both text and color images is very good. the 3.3″ color screen is a very nice feature. Having true CMYK print cartridges (meaning 4 different cartridges) means you only have to replace the color that is empty. It also has slots for memory cards and flash drives so that you can fax/scan straight to those when you don’t have a PC handy. All things considered, I couldn’t be happier with this printer. At $79.99 it was a steal of a deal!! Wi-Fi printing, the only way to print!!!!

Update: We’ve used this printer quite a bit since we purchased it, both for my daughter’s many high school homework, reports, photos, etc., and for my writing and editing work. This printer is AMAZING. It takes every wireless job with ease and speed. It prints edge to edge if needed, and it’s use of the CMYK print cartridges is excellent. I really can’t believe I was able to get such a great all-in-one machine for under 80 bucks!! If you haven’t looked closely at this printer, you should. I’ve seen $200+ printers that weren’t nearly this good. IT ROCKS…”

If you want more info on this Brother MFC-490CW, I suggest you take a look at the Brother MFC-490CW reviews on Amazon here. A lot of consumer positive response to this Brother MFC-490CW here.

Here is why Brother MFC-490CW is worth buying:

Brother MFC-490CW Color Inkjet Wireless All-in-One Printer : Pro

  • Triple-interface connectivity includes USB, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet LAN; inexpensive; small and stylish.

Brother MFC-490CW Color Inkjet Wireless All-in-One Printer : Con

  • Taxing print head produces slow-moving prints; suffers the same mechanical errors affecting other Brother printers; photo quality can use improvement.

Conclusion

This all-in-one bundles plenty of features into an attractive and affordable package.

This Brother MFC-490CW can be ordered directly from Amazon.com today. CLICK HERE for the best price and get your Brother MFC-490CW today! They are 100% secure site so you can be rest assured that your details are protected when ordering.

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