Brother MFC-9125CN Review: Brisk, Affordable Color Laser MFP With Mediocre Color Output - karlsonopli1944

At a Glimpse

Expert's Rating

Pros

Reasonably priced toner
Average or ameliorate speed
Yellowish, grainy color quality

Cons

No automatic duplexing

Our Finding of fact

Compared to other low-cost models, the MFC-9125CN stands out for having moderately commodity speed and toner costs–just vividness quality is mediocre.

The $400 (as of May 22, 2012) Pal MFC-9125CN stands out among other low-cost color laser multifunction printers for having decent speed and toner costs. Though this MFP is unremarkable other than, it's a legitimate option for a minute office quest an sixpenny print/transcript/rake/fax machine.

The MFC-9125CN's engine uses an LED array or else of the more traditional laser, and the MFP comes with 64MB of RAM, expandable to 576MB total. While its monthly obligation cycle is a midrange 25,000 pages, the more realistic print volume (per Brother) is 300 to1500 pages per month–a low to moderate figure for a modest office.

Installation was easy via either ethernet or USB association. (If you'ray sounding for wireless in this Price range, the Canyon ImageClass MF8080Cw, the Dell 1355cnw, and the HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw complete have IT; but the Canon is very retard, and the Dingle and the HP have pricey toner.) Brother bundles Scansoft PaperPort 11SE with OCR for Windows users, and Presto PageManager 9 for Mack users. The see panel has a straightforward layout, with a two-line, monochrome LCD for navigating computer menu items.

The MFC-9125CN should cover a small office's wallpaper-handling needs. It comes with a single 250-sheet stimulant tray (no appurtenance options open) and a 100-bed sheet end product tray. In that location is no machine-controlled duplexing–a common deficiency in this whole's price range–but non-automatic duplexing help is useable through the driver. A 35-page automatic text file feeder (ADF) allows scanning of multipage documents; Brother likewise supplies a letter/A4-size scanner platen.

The MFC-9125CN's midrange speeds were middling or fitter in comparison to the norm speeds posted by different machines we've tested. It printed simple documents, consisting for the most part of black text with a few small, grayscale nontextual matter, at a grade of 12.2 pages per minute on the Microcomputer and 12.5 ppm on the Mac. Photos printed a little quicker than average, at 2.7 ppm for snapshot-size up photos on the Microcomputer, and 1.3 ppm for a full-page photo on the Mackintosh. A PDF file in printed at 7.9 ppm compared to a category average of 4.8 ppm. Scans and copies were besides pretty fast.

Print quality was typical of output from a low-end colorize laser: We had no complaints about school tex pages, but we found the MFP's color quality somewhat unsatisfying. Colors tended to look xanthous and gritty, whether the object was a simple color block off or a piece of yield. Fleshtones looked especially deliberate. Areas of shadow got dark too quickly, giving images an unduly muddy look. Scans of photographs suffered from similar problems, but scans and copies of text and simpler graphics were pretty good overall.

Cheap colouring lasers tend to have high schoo-cost toner, but the MFC-9125CN's consumables are reasonably priced. The example ships with starter-size cyan, magenta, yellow, and black supplies that final stage for 1000 pages apiece. (The separate drum lasts 15,000 pages.) The renewal disastrous costs $75 and lasts for 2200 pages (3.4 cents per pageboy). Each color costs $70 and lasts for 1400 pages (5 cents per color, per page)–a bit more than expensive than average. A page using all four colors costs 18.4 cents.

The magazine bays are not keyed to ensure that you cast the correct color in the correct true laurel, and the printer will use whichever color you install as the color it thinks IT is. For this reason, a misplaced cartridge can farm odd-looking images. We receive observed and tried this on other Brother printers. The good news is that we've been able to counte the cartridges to their TRUE places and print correctly without further omissible.

Entirely color laser/Light-emitting diode multifunction printers priced below $500 deliver some defect; that's how they make do to be so affordable. The Brother MFC-9125CN's grainy image quality and lack of automatonlike duplexing are typical (though disappointing) drawbacks, but it shows fortunate against its competition in speed and toner costs.