Brother sells a single pack with cyan, magenta and yellow inks in it for about $49.
The MFC-5890CN has individual ink tanks so you can replace individual ones as needed, but you don't need to buy all the inks separately. If you'll be doing a lot of photo printing, you'll run out of ink fairly quickly. One slightly confusing aspect of the printer driver is that if you want to print a 6x4in photo, you have to select the 'photo' option from the paper size list. A full-bleed 6x4in photo took 1min 44sec in our tests, while a bordered A4 photo took 4min 8sec and a bordered A3 print took 7min 18sec. Our only quibble is that black was slightly tinged with green this was noticeable on predominately black photos. This was especially the case with 6x4in photos, but even A3 photos looked great. The Epson paper produced slightly brighter results, but photos using the Kodak paper were still impressive. We used Kodak and Epson paper for our tests. Photo print quality was better than we expected, and we were even able to print photos on glossy paper from other vendors without any problems. Text is slightly feathered around the edges and looks a little grey rather than black, but it's still acceptable for office documents and school assignments. During our tests, the printer managed a speed close to 2.5 pages per minute, which isn't fast when compared to units such as Canon's PIXMA MP550 multifunction printer (over 6ppm), and it's also slower than Epson's Stylus Photo T50 photo-oriented printer (3.5ppm). While it's printing, the MFC-5890CN is not especially noisy, but if you're in a quiet environment you'll also hear the print tubes wheezing, which can be annoying, especially if you're printing long documents. This can be tedious if you regularly switch from A4 paper, to photo paper or A3.īrother MFC-5890CN: Print quality and speed Paper can't be quickly fed into the MFC-5890CN - like a laser printer, you have to remove the cassette to add paper to it. You can spend this time putting paper into the cassette. It takes a few minutes before you can use the printer.
When you place the cartridges into the printer, you have to manoeuvre them awkwardly until they lock into place - there is no clear guide rail for them.Īs soon as you install the cartridges, the printer cleans the print head automatically.
On the plus side, the caps make a very cool hydraulic-like sound once they are removed.
The cartridge caps are hard to remove and we felt like we were going to break something. These reside in the front of the machine and are a little difficult to install the first time you use the printer. This makes the print head lighter and results in less vibration while the unit is printing.įour cartridges are consumed by the printer: black, yellow, cyan and magenta. Instead, they reside on the front of the printer and capillary tubes transfer the ink to the print head. Inkjet technology is used for printing and unlike most mid-range printers, the ink cartridges are not situated directly on the print head. The placement of these ports means that some of the cable's length has to be sacrificed.
You can also use the Ethernet port next to the USB port to connect the printer to your router and share it across your network (the supplied software CD makes this easy to do). You have to lift the top half of the printer to get to it and you must snake the USB cable along the pre-defined path. The USB cable connection is not on the outside of the printer. Photo prints can be a little hard to get to due to their size, as they sit deeper inside the printer once they exit. Printed A4 sheets and 6x4in photo prints rest within the confines of the printer and you have to fish them out. When the paper exits the printer (via a curved paper path), it rests on top of the cassette - up to 50 sheets of output can be held there. A paper cassette at the front is used to hold up to 150 sheets of A4 paper. Consequently you can place the MFC-5890CN closer to the wall than other printers. That's because it doesn’t have 'wings' and there aren't any cables protruding out of the rear. We like the placement of the memory card readers on the front of the machine: there is a separate slot for CF cards, and a combination slot for SD, Memory Stick and xD cards.ĭespite being an A3 printer, the MFC-5890CN doesn't look big. The buttons are well spaced, clearly labelled and easy to press. There is a hinged 3in LCD screen on which you can browse the menu system and view photos from memory cards. It costs $299 and has very easy to use controls on its front panel.
The MFC-5890CN is a mid-range model that's suitable for home or small office use.