Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-210C Color Inkjet Multifunction Printer

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(47)

 

 

I got this today and I'm returning it tomorrow. The printer part is fine, but I do a lot of scanning and I am dumbfounded by what I discovered with this aspect of the machine. First off, when scanning you don't get a preview, you have no option of controlling the size of the scan, or the HSL or any other color/brightness control, nor can you control the dpi. You push the scan button and it scans the whole bed. If your object is smaller than the bed size, too bad. If you want something at 72 dpi (which is all any monitor can "see" so all you use for the web), too bad. If the colors aren't good, too bad. If there's a glare off of something you're scanning, too bad. No options are available. The files end up being large as they're the size of the bed and at 300dpi (the default).
When I first tried scanning and didn't get a preview window or any controls, I picked up the manual to figure out what was going wrong. Guess what? no mention of scanning in the 200 page book. When I looked "scanning" up in the index, it told me to look on the cd. When I looked on the cd, nothing. I went to Brother's site and downloaded a manual from there--only to read that you don't get any options on any part of scanning!

I wanted to buy a All-in-One printer for my personal home use. I have done extensive reaserch for an All-in-One mono laser printers, in no time I realized that toner and drum prices are exorbitant and gave up that idea and started looking for All-in-One inkjet printer. I was very inclined to buy HP Photo Smart 2610 printer because of HP's reputation for quality. At BJ's, I compared the size and price of MFC-210 and HP2610, what a difference.... HP2610 is double in size and triple in price. I went with MFC-210C and have been using print, copy, fax for last one week and so far no complaints.

Pros:
1. Ultra Compact
2. Inexpensive (printer as well as ink catridges)
3. Reasonably fast print, copy and scan (20 pages per minute)
4. Dirvers for most of the windows O/S
5. Easy set up
6. Individual ink catridges(1 black and 3 color)
7. Fax and Copy without a PC
8. Directly reads digital memory cards for picture printing

Cons:
1. No automatic feeder for FAX and speed is only 14.4 Kbps - if you don't do lot of faxing then speed should not matter.
2. Print Quality is not as good as HP - for home use I can live with that quality.
3. No USB cable - I had to buy 3 Pk USB cables for $7.95 at BJ's
4. User manual talks (75%) on how to send and receive fax - I think Brother is still in FAX era.
5. No networking - it is too much to ask from a $63.00 printer

For a machine at this price I was not expecting anything good, but I was wrong. All the features (Scan/Fax/Print/Copy/Photo reader) works better than I expected. The software for PC and Mac has very good quality too. I will buy Brother's all-in-one product again in the future. It is a good machine for light use. I use it at least three times a week for fax and for daily printing and photocopy.

Just like what they said on the box, it is for home and home office use. It does not have auto paper feeder. It support overseas fax mode (which is good when fax via VoIP service such as AT&T Callvantage), but this cannot be as the default setting, so you need to set it up for every transmission.

The image scaling function works fine just like regular commercial photocopy machine.

*** The comments below is written after I use it for almost two years ***
This machine lasts more than one year so it passes the warranty, and then the printer functionality died after 18 months. During the 18 months of use, I constantly buy ink catridge for it because:
(1) The MFC-210C will purge the ink catridge almost every day to keep printer head flowing. You lose ink without printing anything.
(2) Among all four ink catridges, as long as one of them is low, the whole printer refuse to print. I can't seem to find an option to print it in reduced quality, which is a good feature for all HP printers.

Because of the two ink reasons above, plus the printer head machanical failure, I decided to go back and get an HP printer after my happy two years with MFC-210C printer. Again, I like this printer because I get it for all nice features for only $79. Even now the printer/fax output is gone, I can still use it as a scanner.

Wow! Well designed and thought-out, this device does a great job copying, faxing, scanning and printing. Everything it's *supposed* to do works very well. The LCD display *is* a tad hard to read, but a few minutes in the manual and you won't need to look at it much, anyway. Brother out-did themselves with this product.

What I like most:
Individual ink carts: no more buying a new cart when you only need yellow, or blue -- just replace whichever color you need. This is something you'd find on a high-priced pro model, not a low-end consumer like this.

"Safe' plug: the printer cable is fed underneath the hood of the scanner unit, a very elegant and safe way to keep wires from getting bent or yanked out.

Very fast and quiet operation.

ASTOUNDING color copy quality. I've never seen pictures copied on a multi look this good on PLAIN PAPER. I've yet to try photo paper in this thing...

What I don't like: just one thing, and that's the scanner driver. It lacks some of the common controls and adjustments I prefer, but Brother should be releasing a beefed up controller fairly soon.

If you need a low cost, high quality and no-nonsense copier, fax, printer, scanner and picture card reader, you cannot beat the Brother MFC-210c.

I recently purchased the Brother MFC-210 and I love it! It was easy to hook-up and I had no problems with installing the hardware or the software! So far I have used the printer, scanner, copier and photo capture functions. The all work great!
The only thing that I can think of that is a problem is the amount of noise it makes. But I am not complaining. It is just something I have to get used to.(...)If you are looking for an inexpensive all-in-one, I say, look no further!

I got this with a great price...the price is why I kept it.
1)As a copier, excellent.
2)As a FAX, excellent.
3)As a scanner, excellent.
4)For SMALL print jobs, a few sheets, excellent (Text).
5)For color photos, useless.
6)For large (text) print jobs, useless.

#5 and #6 have the same problem, after a while (halfway through a large print job or a photo) the printer goes "not ready" and never becomes ready again. It will not print out a complete photo with glossy paper in normal or above mode. For a large text print job, the printing fades for a line or two, then the printer quits.

I have two other printers, a general purpose printer and a photo printer. That is why I kept the Brother MFC210C...I have other printers for photos and larger print jobs. As above, the other features are great, so I kept it. It was the price of a scanner alone.

If you want just ONE printer, this is not for you.
If you do get one, be sure you can return it for refund in case you have similar problems.

I have had a wonderful experience with this 6 in one printer. For what this machine does and how little it cost and the compact size, I will recommend it over and over again. It prints beautiful pictures, totally over and beyond what I expected. The picture resolution is excellent. It does not print anything faded till it runs out like other printers do. The job is always perfect. It is true that it does not print anything in black ink once any of the other colors finish and that is a little annoying but the ink does not cost that much and it does say so in the printing preferences if you care to look. A pack of the 3 colored ones costs $29.99 in office max (they also come separate) and the black ink is not expensive either. The ink does not finish any faster than the other ink jet printers I have used and the print quality is better. I have had this from November of 2004 and did not replace the black ink for 6 months and the colored for even longer. For home use it's great, almost pefect. I would give it 95%!!!

This printer prompted me to write my first Amazon review. As other reviewers have also pointed out, the printer uses ink continuously even if no printing occurs through its "cleaning" process. Furthermore, even if you only require b&w printing, all four colors must read full. I receive only a few faxes and print 20-30 pages a year. After one year and less than 50 pages, all ink has "evaporated." That works out to nearly $2 per page and replacement ink prices mean that it would continue to be about $2 per page for the life of the printer. However, I'm kicking the habit and throwing it out.

Brother's crack cocaine marketing strategy hooks you with a cheap printer that is designed to drink ink and then sells you ink fixes to keep you going.

Don't buy 210c! Don't buy Brother! Say no to crack!

I am surprised at all the negative feedback. I don't have any problems with ink runing out and all these additional expenses. At Inkjet123.com I bought 10 cartiges for $28.07 (3black and 2 of each color), all brand new and work great.
I have had this printer for over 1 and 1/2 years and have found it to be very reliable (printing,fax,pictures,etc.). This printer replaced a $276.00 Lexmark (junk). The price is right and the printer works like a charm.
Very satisfied with the product.

Fine for text and light color printing, very affordable for an all in one. Print quality for text is ok, speed is ok (for text)...

BUT...

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a good printer, it's pretty marginal. Colors were very washed out. Photo printing was awful (and I wasn't expecting much for the price). Color printing had noticable banding (lines) on even the best setting with very good paper. Build quality is cheap, feels like it will break every time you put paper into it (paper tray is SUPER flimsy). Scanning quality was slow and sub-par (again, I didn't expect it to be great for the price). Printing is rather noisy, but not the worst.. The media readers work, but the photo printing is nasty, defeats the purpose.

So if you do light printing for the home/office and need fax capability, this guy is cheap and looks appealing. If you do a lot of color or photo printing, keep looking.

And just for the record - I've seen people complain about the lack of a USB cable, I've yet to encounter a printer that came with one so this is not a big deal.