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Brother MFDs and printers have traditionally had a no-nonsense office look with dull colors that may only suit the office environment. But things have started to look different for the past few months -- in a bid to make them more presentable, Brother has redesigned its products. The Brother DCP-350C is one such inkjet MFD in this new lineup. Let's find out if it's just the looks that have changed or if it performs as good.

Bundle

Brother DCP-350C
4 cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black)
4" x 6" photo paper pack
Two power cables with different plugs
Software and driver CD
User manual
Quick setup guide

Brother provides two power cables with different plug types so that you are not in a fix if you are stuck up with plug-holes of any one of these types. Also, they provide a pack of 4" x 6" photo paper for you to get started with printing photographs.

Design

The DCP-350C is an MFD that combines the functions of a printer, scanner, and copier. It has a white, gray, and silvery gray color body, which gives it a sophisticated look. It is just 15 cm tall and does not occupy much space.

The input and output trays consist of a single cassette-like structure with the cassette holding the input papers with face down, while the output paper gets accumulated on top, which is the output tray. The output tray has a special bypass tray section to hold up to 20 sheets of 4" x 6" paper.

Like all Brother products, in the DCP-350C, too, the USB cable has to be weaved into the interior of the device through a canal. This has to be done by opening the MFD like the bonnet of a car.

On the right, you can see a flap that opens to expose the cartridge bay. This is very convenient, as you do not have to stick your hand inside the device to install the cartridges. As you can see, there are four separate cartridges; thus, you save a lot of money because you only have to replace the cartridge which gets empty, which is not the case when using tri-color cartridges.

The control panel is situated on the right of the swivel LCD and consists of multiple keys. This is very easy to use and lets you access different functions such as Photo Capture, Scanning, Mono and Color Copy, as well as different MFD settings by means of the Menu button. The Ink Management button shows the ink-level in each cartridge.

In addition to the PictBridge Direct Printing support, the MFD can read a number of memory card formats such as CF, SD, MS, xD, etc.

There is a swivel color 2" LCD at the center of the device at the front. You can adjust its angle to suit your viewing. The LCD shows you various functions and settings available in the MFD. It also shows the contents of the memory card when you use the MFD to print in the PC-less mode. You can view and edit images present on memory cards before printing. Scanning to e-mail, image, OCR, file, card or USB memory stick is supported in this mode too.

A panel situated at the back of the MFD comes off and lets you clear paper jams.

The scanner is of flat-bed type and is situated at the top as usual. The lid seems sturdy and is adjustable, letting you scan thicker objects like books. Overall, the build quality is good, including that of the trays.

This printer supports a color print resolution of up to 6000 x 1200 dpi and can print borderless prints. The claimed droplet size of 1.5 picoliters should help it produce nice photo prints. The scanner resolution is 19,200 dpi (interpolated) and WIA interface is supported along with the older TWAIN.

Bundled along with this MFD is the ScanSoft PaperPort -- a good document management and OCR software, which is a definite bonus because it saves you the cost of having to buy another such software. The ControlCenter3 is a control panel that puts all the functions of this MFD at a single point at your disposal.

Performance

The installation is fairly straightforward; however, you have to keep one thing in mind -- never connect the MFD to the PC and turn it on before you install the drivers. If you fail to follow the above, you may end up with installation problems and the MFD will not be accessible.

We put the MFD through a variety of tests, to test its printer as well as scanner components.

Font size printing test: We printed a page containing all the letters in font sizes ranging from large to very small. The printer had no problem in printing all the font sizes and they looked crisp.

Text print speed: We printed a page of black text in draft and normal quality to find the speed as well as quality of the print. The page took 14.1 seconds in fast mode and 27 seconds in normal, which is not so fast. The continuous printing speed in the fast mode in the first minute was 13.3 ppm and reached a maximum of 15.8 later; in the normal mode, the ppm in the first minute and subsequently were 2.7 and 3.1, respectively. The speeds in normal mode were average, while the normal mode speeds were slow. While the normal mode print quality was fine, the fast mode quality had a lot of fringing and the edges were not well-defined.

The document we used as our Presentation Document

Presentation document print speed: The presentation document consisted of a page of multi-colored graphs, text, charts, patterns, and photos. The document took just 15.6 seconds in the fast mode, while it took 40.4 seconds for best quality -- again slow speeds. The continuous printing speed in the fast mode was 7.53 ppm in the first minute, and it reached a little over 8.8 thereafter, while these speeds in the normal mode were 1.5 and 2 minutes, respectively. The quality was decent in the normal mode, but the same cannot be said about the fast mode because the colors were washed out and there was a fair amount of fringing. Thus, the fast mode was pretty much useless.

The test photo we printed
Photo print: Since this MFD has photo printing features, we printed a test photograph collage as well. It finished the job in 6 minutes 15 seconds, which leans on the slower side. The color reproduction was good, with the intricate details neatly produced; however, some amount of graininess was evident all over.

The scanner test: The scanner exhibited good performance. It could capture all the details; the color and grey shades were faithfully captured as well. It took 17.8 seconds for a preview scan -- a decent performance. Mono scans at 200 dpi for A4-size paper took just 14.2 seconds which is fast. The color scanning at 600 dpi which took just 48.6 seconds is one of the fastest we have seen so far.

The copier test: To find how well the printer and scanner components worked in tandem, we ran the printer through our copier test. A black copy took 30.2 seconds, while a color copy took 43.3. The ppm for mono copies was 2.9, while that for color was 2.3. Therefore, this is one of the faster copiers we have tested thus far in color copying, though it is comparatively slower in mono. The copy quality is good in the normal mode.

However, we had a few problems with photo paper handling -- such as the MFD was not able to lift a photo paper of 150 gsm, and we had to use a lower gsm paper for the photo print.

Final Verdict

The Brother DCP-350C is a multifunctional solution for printing, scanning, and copying for SoHo segment. Although it lacks a Fax feature, you can still connect it to the PC for PC-Fax functionality. It supports photo printing and this can be seen by the presence of the PictBridge port as well as various memory card slots. The UI is pretty simple to use and the swivel color LCD shows you the various options and status of the device as well as lets you preview images from the memory card before printing them. The print quality is pretty decent in the normal mode, but the fast mode is not usable at all because of the excessive fringing and the washed out colors (in the color printing). The color print quality is decent, though there is some amount of graininess.

The various color cartridges each cost Rs. 520 and can print 400 pages; thus, their cost per page is Rs. 1.3. The black cartridge, on the other hand, is unreasonably high priced (Rs. 900) and can print 500 pages, thereby yielding a cost per page of Rs.1.8. This is quite an economical cost of printing for an inkjet printer. The Brother DCP-350C costs Rs. 6,990 and comes with 1 year onsite warranty. With 83 service centers around the country, you should not have problems getting this MFD serviced. Because of its rather lackluster performance and a bit high price, we do not recommend this MFD.