Oh Brother! (Brother MFC-215C)

Member Name: bonsibabe

Product:	Brother MFC-215C
Date:	13/02/07 (1011 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does everything except make me a cup of tea

Disadvantages: None I can think of yet !

Well, our printers (a lexmark and a canon) both decided to die on us shortly after we had moved house and hubby and I had to go shopping to get a new one. Coincidentally, we were also shopping for a new PC for me as hubby has his laptop and my PC was at the stage that if it went any slower then it would be going in reverse!

As many of you know I live in Germany at the moment and so computers and the like are generally purchased from local shops. We wanted one that would have instructions and software in English (my german is atrocious!) and generally we wanted a 3 in one machine (my scanner died a death long ago).

We also wanted a printer that would not be too expensive to buy cartridges for (being the canny scots that we are), as our last 2 printers cost an absolute fortune to refill. We both do a lot of printing (hubby for work and I just print a lot in general,mainly photographs) and wanted a printer that would be able to handle the amount of work that we both do.

After having a look, we spoke to the very helpful sales assistant who showed us the various printers which have software and instructions in English. The majority of these were just plain printers and cost the equivalent of £100 or more. Now, I'm no skinflint by any means but to me I wanted more for my money. And then I spotted this little baby.....

Priced at 130 Euros (about £87) this was by far one of the cheaper models in store, and we had the added bonus of a 4-in-one. It was quickly snaffled off the shelf and loaded into the car to the taken home and played with (after paying the nice man in the shop of course!).

On opening the box, the printer is exactly the same as the one shown in the photo above (except the buttons are in german!). The software was duly inserted into the computer, English language selected, and set to run, which was easy enough for even me to do! Once duly installed, the printer was ready to go. One point I should note was that there was no usb cable with the one we bought, although we have so many it made no difference (and the shop gave us one for free).

Once all plugged in and ready to go, we decided to have a go at printing and copying.

The print quality was really good, a photo printed on photo paper came out looking fantastic and without loads of lines throughout (which had been the case with our old printers).

For copying, it works in the same way as a photocopier would - lift the lid, place item face down, close lid and press button. Again superb quality copies came out and really quickly too.

To scan, it is similar to copying, although you do have to open up the software. But even I managed it (and I am fairly illiterate when it comes to things like scanners!). We decided to scan a photo of our youngest daughter and it came out lovely on the scanned image. It was also very quick.

Now to the tricky bit - faxing. As you all know, I am not the best person in the world to ask about technical stuff, but even I managed to send me dad a fax in scotland without an ounce of trouble. All we had to do was plug the phone cable in (this is supplied with the machine) and place the image face down in the printer. We then dialled the number and hey presto - it went! So we can now fax from home! Saves time and effort as we would normally have to traipse into hubby's work and speak nicely to someone in order to use their fax machine but now we can do it ourselves.

Another function on the faxing is that the machine can fax from file so it does not actually need a hard copy in order to get a good faax. I have not done this but my hubby did and he said that it was quite easy and the recipient got a good copy.

So it does everything it says on the box. But what about ink and the cost of replenishing the ink supply? I thought that because this is a Brother 4 in 1 machine that it would be really expensive but I have been proved wrong. The printer comes with 4 separate catridges - black, blue, red and yellow. The cost over here to replace them is 10 Euros each which works out at around £7 a cartridge. So thats 40 Euros or £27/28 to replace all 4 in one go. And thats for generic Brother cartridges - there are compatible ones out there which I am sure are cheaper. Compared with our old Lexmark (£25 for one cartidge, £50+ to replace all the ink), this works out very economical as we do a lot of printing. (Thankfully in Germany they do recycle paper and so my paper bin is usually full anyway!).

We have had this printer about 2 weeks and to say that we have done a lot of printing is an understatement! We have done loads of printing and the cartridges are still going strong. I have to say that I am really impressed with the speed and quality of this printer, in all of its functions. It's quick, quiet and the quality is excellent.

And so we come to the $64000 question - Do I recommend this product to you my fellow readers?

And the answer is ............. YES!

I would recommend this in a heartbeat to anyone who does a lot of printing and wants good quality prints, and doesn't want to have 3 or 4 separate machines sitting around taking up loads of space.

I know that should I ever start up my own business then this little baby will be the one machine that I would have in my office. In a way it is part of our home office already.

My hubby is really picky about what products he would recommend to others and when I asked his opinion, he told me that he would have no hesitation in recommending this machine to anyone who asked. To me, that is a high recommendation!

I know that this isn't the greatest of reviews but as you all know, I'm not really technically minded and so it's written with the techno-illiterate like me in mind.

Thank you for reading. Di x

Summary: A great multi-purpose printer etc for the home and the office

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