Brother MFC-9320cw

Small-business users shopping for a multifunction printer may be tempted by the very low prices (some as low as $100) on all-in-one (AIO) inkjet printers, but sometimes a laser print engine is a better choice. If you care more about text quality than photo quality, a laser-class printer could be an attractive alternative. The consumables are usually less expensive, and the pages generally print faster—especially pages with mixed text and graphics. And your printed pages will have the kind of clean, professional appearance we associate with business documents, as opposed to something that's printed at home. If that sounds intriguing, consider the $499 Brother MFC-9320cw.

This model is the flagship in Brother's new high-performance line of moderately priced AIO printers targeted to small businesses and home-based offices.

The MFC-9320cw uses LEDs rather than lasers to produce its pages. That's a technical distinction, but it functions just like a laser printer, so we'll refer to it as a "laser-class" printer. Targeted for offices that don't necessarily need a high-duty-cycle printer, the MFC-9320cw offers just about every feature you would associate with an AIO inkjet. The biggest benefit over an inkjet is printed text that's true laser-quality rather than near laser-quality. The biggest trade-off is not being able to print images onto photo paper, or even having them look their best on plain paper. If that's not an acceptable trade-off, you may be better off limiting your search to inkjet-based printers.

Laser-class printers tend to be larger and heavier than inkjet printers, and the MFC-9320cw is no exception, though it's reasonably compact for an AIO laser printer. We knew we were in for a physical challenge when we noticed the sticker on the MFC-9230cw that warns that two people should lift it rather than just one. For the record, the MFC-9230cw tips the scales at 50.5 pounds. It also measures a hefty 15.8x16.9x19.3 inches. Since Brother didn't have to be overly concerned with keeping the weight and size down, the high-impact plastic is somewhat thicker (and presumably stronger) than with most under-$500 printers. And in keeping with the likely office environment, the MFC-9320cw plays it safe with institutional beige and gray styling.

If you prefer a large, high-resolution LCD screen for your AIO, you'll be disappointed with the MFC-9320cw. The narrow 2-inch LCD supports only two lines of text, with just 16 characters per line. Even worse, the text characters are formed out of low-resolution blocks. As a result, the "S" and "5" are hard to distinguish, as are the "1" and "l" (context helps). The LCD harkens back to an earlier era when text-based displays were the only option. Fortunately, many of the key functions can be controlled using a generous array of buttons, including dedicated Fax, Scan, and Copy mode buttons; a Direct button for printing directly from a USB flash drive or PictBridge-compatible camera; and an Enlarge/Reduce button for adjusting the copy size. The various buttons are clearly labeled and logically positioned.

The MFC-9320cw uses three color toner cartridges, one black toner cartridge, and one drum unit. The supplied color toner cartridges aren't full capacity. They're rated at 1,000 pages versus 1,400 pages for the replacement cartridges, which list for $69.99 each. The $74.99 black toner replacement cartridge is rated at 2,200 pages. While drum unit is expensive at $149.99, it's rated for 15,000 pages, so you shouldn't have to replace it anytime soon. The toner cartridges are color-coded, though it is possible to put them in the wrong slots.

The paper-output tray is configured so the paper doesn't stick out very far after it's ejected from the printer. That works well in keeping the paper from spilling onto the floor. Unfortunately, that design also makes it difficult to grab the sheets after they're printed. The space is so tight for reaching under the sheets that we sometimes pinched the pages as we tried to get a firm grip, which crinkled the paper slightly. It's not a critical flaw, as we learned to take a little extra time to carefully scoop out the pages, but the design doesn’t favor grab-and-run printing. Also, the paper output tray holds only 100 sheets. That could be problem if you routinely print large runs of documents such as newsletters, brochures, or sales flyers for your customers or clients.

The paper-intake tray can handle 250 sheets of 20-pound-rated paper. The manual-feed slot increases the weight rating to 43 pounds. Neither input option can handle photo paper. The built-in automatic document feeder has a 35-page capacity.

Setup was relatively straightforward. Brother includes a Quick Setup guide with useful illustrations that step you through the process of unpacking and configuring the product. The only snags we encountered were related to configuring the printer for our Wi-Fi network. The guide doesn't show the various encryption options supported, so we had to use the tiny LCD to preview each menu option to find the WPA-PSK entry that fit our network. Typing in the network name and password was also time-consuming, as we had to press the number keys on the dial pad multiple times—similar to a cell-phone keypad—to input the necessary letters and numbers.

Printing presented no significant problems. We never had a page misprint, a jam in the printer, or a page misfeed. It did take 1 minute and 19 seconds for the unit to warm up, and it can be somewhat loud while printing (Brother rates it an attention-getting 53dBA when operating and a moderate 30dBA when in standby). That's not excessive for a laser-class printer, and it's actually quieter than many higher-duty-cycle models. And as you would expect from the weight, the MFC-9320cw remains rock-steady as it prints. There's little danger that this printer will shake itself off a flat surface.

We were able to copy and scan documents fairly quickly, despite the small text-only LCD. The dedicated copy- and scan-mode buttons, combined with separate start buttons for color and black documents, let you skip the LCD menus entirely when using the default settings. The printer supports the usual options for copies and scans. You can input multiple copies (up to 99), enlarge or reduce a copied document, or send a scanned document directly to your e-mail program.

The MFC-9320cw's print speeds were generally faster than other laser-class printers we've evaluated. Those speeds also tended to be significantly faster than the inkjet AIO printers we've evaluated. With our 10-page mixed-text-and-graphics document in Fine quality mode, the first page printed in 10.7 seconds, about 5 seconds faster than both the Xerox Phaser 6128MFP and the Lexmark X543dn. The full 10 pages completed in 47.1 seconds with the MFC-9320cw, about 10 seconds faster than the 6128MFP and X543dn.

Copy and scan speeds were more middle-of-the-pack compared with other laser-class printers. The MFC-9320cw took 17.6 seconds to copy an 8.5x11-inch page, a few seconds faster than the Xerox Phaser 6128MFP, but almost 10 seconds slower than the Lexmark X543dn. Scans of an 8.5x11-inch photo took 21.3 seconds for the MFC-9320cw, a few seconds slower than the Xerox Phaser 6128MFP, but 25 seconds faster than the Lexmark X543dn.

The quality of the printed text was excellent for a native 600dpi (600x2,400dpi interpolated) laser-class printer. Each character was fully formed with essentially no stray dots or lines. The color text in our test document was fully saturated, which can be an issue with some inkjet printers. If you're thinking about a laser printer because you want near-publication-quality text printing, the MFC-9320cw holds up well in that regard, even against some native 1,200dpi laser printers.

Photo-print quality was more problematic. Laser-class printers have to dither photos to offer a realistic range of colors. They can't fully compete with inkjets when functioning as a photo printer. That said, the MFC-9320cw did a credible job printing our test photos with realistic colors and a fairly pleasing contrast range. Think of the dithered photos you might see in a book, as opposed to the photos you might find in a glossy magazine, and you'll have an idea of what the MFC-9320cw is capable of producing in terms of printing graphics.

Brother rates the duty cycle for this model at a maximum of 25,000 pages per month, which should be more than enough for a typical small business or home office. A more important number, however, is the recommended duty cycle, which Brother rates as 300 to 1,500 pages per month. Based on the ISO standards for calculating page yields from consumables, the MFC-9320cw should cost roughly 4.4 cents for a page of black text and 16 cents for a page that mixes text and color graphics. That's more expensive than other multifunction laser-class printers we've evaluated, though these numbers are based on the list prices for the toner cartridges and drum unit. If you can purchase the consumables at a substantial discount, you would be able to lower your page costs considerably.

The Brother MFC-9320cw offers solid performance, excellent quality printed text, and a good mix of business-oriented features. While it's no bargain—either for the purchase price or the price of the consumables—it could be a good choice overall for an office with moderate output needs.
Price (at time of review): $499 (mfr. est.)