PC World (US online)
18/04/09
Brother's MFC-9450CDN colour laser multifunction printer juggles speed, features, output quality, and design well enough to be a worthy choice for most small offices or small workgroups. The only people it is likely to disappoint are those who need sophisticated colour imaging.
Brother's MFC-9450CDN offers speed, features, and economy along with tolerable shortcomings. It's well worth considering for a small office that doesn't need high-quality colour graphics.
The MFC-9450CDN performed capably in our speed tests. Brother claims that the unit can print both black-and-white text and colour images as fast as 21 pages per minute — and it came close to that mark for text (20.4 ppm), with perfect-looking output. But its colour graphics performance was much slower 4.9 ppm, and print quality was underwhelming: On plain paper, our test photos looked washed-out and blurry; and on special paper with optimised settings, the colours still had a yellow cast and exhibited moiré patterns. Scans and copies were sometimes a bit too dark but overall they looked good.
The level of colour quality will be adequate for many office users; but if you're more exacting, you should consider the Xerox Phaser 6128MFP, which handled photos better and costs slightly less than brother's colour laser MFP. The MFC-9450CDN has a lot to offer, though we also noticed a few quirks. Among its pluses are an automatic duplexer and a USB/PictBridge port. Augmenting the unit's 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for scan and copy input, you get a 250-sheet main input tray and a 50-sheet multipurpose tray. An optional 500-sheet paper tray lists for $250. On the control panel, buttons for fax, scan, and copy functions are not grouped — but everything is clearly labelled, so the arrangement is more annoying than confusing.
At this writing, the MFC-9450CDN's toner cartridges are tolerably priced. The high yield cartridges for MFC-9450CDN consist of a 5,000-page black toner cartridge for $171.95 (3.4 cents per page), and three 4000-page colour cartridges for $250.95 each (6.2 cents per colour per page), which works out to a somewhat high four-colour page cost of 22 cents. Standard yield toners can also be bought for a lower cost, but are not as cost effective.
Replacing the toner, though, is no ice cream sundae in the shade: Even with clear instructions, I had to manhandle the cartridge tray release lever to open it. Also, since the bays are not keyed, you might insert the wrong cartridge in the wrong bay — and print bizarrely coloured images. We can't believe that Brother hasn't idiot-proofed this area, though the company says that it has had no complaints and assures us that switching colours won't damage the printer.
Brother's MFC-9450CDN offers speed, features, and economy along with tolerable shortcomings. It's well worth considering for a small office that doesn't need high-quality colour graphics.
1
Stay away from this product. The color printing performance is terrible. Light brown prints as pink. Green hardly prints at all. Colors are washed out. The print drum gets scored easily and then gives repeated dots on every page you print.
Avoid this bad product.
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