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56 of 58 found the following review helpful:
 No regrets... Jan 19, 2008
By Vee
I purchased the Brother MFC-685CW before there were any reviews for it. It was a toss up between the cheaper Brother MFC-665CW and the more expensive Brother MFC-885CW. I went to the Brother website to do a side by side comparison of the 3 printers and I found that the Brother MFC-685CW and the Brother MFC-885CW were almost identical in every way so I decided to get the MFC-685 because the price was right. Though I was wary because like I said there were no reviews for it. I must tell you, I don't regret getting this printer at all. It was a lot smaller than the gigantic Canon Pixma MP530 printer I was replacing. Getting rid of the old printer and getting this one in its place really freed up a lot of space on my desk. Because of it's size, I'm able to position the printer anyway I want now. Though it's a bit heavy, that's not a problem because I don't have to pick it up too often. The other reviewer said the printer is intended to be left on all the time. No it's not. I turn mine off whenever I turn my computer off or when I don't need it. There's no problem and all my settings are always the same no matter how many times I turn the product on or off. He also said that this model is around 3 years old. Amazon and his info is wrong because this model came out last year. But I do agree with most of his other points though ;o).
Now for the important stuff, the features. I think this printer is great. There's a bit of a learning curve to figure out some of the features and somethings you may have to refer to the manual in order to use them until you familiarize yourself with the printer. I made sure I used all of the functions of this printer and everything works well. The Brother MFC-685CW has a lot of positives but this product is not perfect so of course it has some negatives.
Positives:
- One of the smallest All-in-Ones that I've ever seen
- All the controls are in the front. You don't have to get up out of your chair to do anything. Everything is at your fingertips. No reaching around the side, back or inside of the printer to do anything. My favorite fingertip feature, being able to change the ink from the front without have to lift up the lid and reach inside the interior of the printer. To change the ink all you have to do is open the cap in the front, pop the ink in and that's it.
- It's wireless. I've got my laptop hooked up to this printer wirelessly and it prints out flawlessly just as if it were connected to the printer directly. The setup was pretty easy. Everything took about 10 minutes or so.
- I like that there's a speaker phone so that you don't have to pick up the receiver when sending or receiving a fax.
- The corded handset and it's base can be removed from the printer entirely, making the printer's width even smaller. The printer comes with
an extra cap that you can place on the spot where the handset and the base were removed so that it looks like they were never there. Very cool.
- It takes most types of media cards so if you don't want to hook up your camera via USB cable and you would rather take out your media card and view and print your pictures that way, you can.
- The printer has a color screen, which is especially useful when you put in your media card and you want to view or make any adjustments to your photos before you print them.
- You can preview your fax before sending or receiving it.
- Prints documents almost immediately. No long thinking or waiting time.
- You can use LC51 compatible inks. You don't have to use Brother's. The ink monitor recognizes them as the official inks.
- Printing with the black ink could be a tad bit sharper but it's still nice. This also all depends on the type of paper you use and the print settings. I've printed photos and they come out quite nice on this printer. The heavier the paper you print on, the better your prints. I would recommend 24lbs(standard inkjet paper weight) or higher. Though printing on 20lbs. is decent.
- The speed depending also on the print settings is pretty fast. The speed on "Normal" printing could be a little faster. I have my printer
set to "Normal Fast", I have "Slow Drying Paper" checked, and I also adjusted the "Color Enhancement" settings, in order to get nice prints
from this setting. If you don't do this, the prints at the "Normal Fast" setting aren't that great. Set at "Normal Fast", my prints come out in a flash.
- Ink monitor is placed in the taskbar of your computer so that you can always check your ink status.
Negatives:
- No duplex printing. No worries if you, like me, don't use this feature too often.
- A little weird and cumbersome putting in 4x6 photo paper. It's not a matter of opening or taking out the tray and putting in the photo paper. It involves a lot of maneuvering and adjusting when in reality it should not be so complicated.
- Printing photos is slow and the photo quality is not all that great. Photos appear dull and dark and not vivid at all. I've tried various settings from using the default factory setting to manually adjusting the settings, still no luck. Unless my printer is defective, this what I'm experiencing.
- The ink monitor is not 100% accurate and not that smart. I found that sometimes when I take out any one of the inks cartridges, even if it's half full, put it back in and it asks you on the printer screen if you just put in a new cartridge and you said that you did, it will register the cartridge as being new ink. This is very bad because I never know when I'm going to run out of ink because the monitor is incorrect. Capping off this fact is that Brother cartridges are all enclosed and not clear so you can't even look at the cartridge to know how much ink you really have unlike say, a Canon ink cartridge. Canon cartridges are clear so you can tell you're out of ink without the help of an ink monitor.
All in all, I really like the Brother MFC-685CW and I'm glad I decided to purchase it. It's attractive looking, pretty easy to use and very compact for an All in One. I've always used the Brother faxes but was a little wary about getting a printer from them but I've been very please so far. I was a Canon printer lover but after my previous Canon flaked out on me, I decided to give Brother a try and I'm glad I did.
25 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 Highly reccommend! Jan 17, 2008
By Larson
I don't know what the previous reviewer was referring to as the Brother MFC 685cw is the newest of the printers and only came out October, 2007.
I have waited and waited to see reviews on this machine before I bought it. I did alot of research first but decided to take the plunge! I was very surprised at how heavy the printer is as no other printer weighs as much as this but, I guess because all the features they have packed in, it is heavy. It still has a small footprint and low profile. I took it out of box and put in ink cartridges and set up paper cartridge
I am fairly technical so as I went to connect to two wireless laptops. I found the insructions cumbersome and too lengthy. I gave up fairly early, thank goodness and called 1-877-BROTHER. It was Christmas eve morning. A gentleman asked about my registration and as soon as he took my information he transferred me to a delightful woman in Memphis, Tennessee. She had my printer hooked up flawlessly to two wireless laptops in 20 minutes. I had to find my WEP password so she could get in. It would have taken her less time if she weren't working with me. I couldn't believe how easy it was and I wanted to make sure that it was right. They have both worked perfectly.
PROS I love the fact that I can at any time, print something out. It prints beautifully and quickly.
I also love the paper cartridge like a copy machine as opposed to as Lexmark, which I have always loved in the past, where they are flapping out the back and getting dusty. Also this machine is 6,000 dpi instead of 4,800 for the Lexmark creating vivid colors.
The display is beautiful and easy to use.
I scanned a written document and wasn't sure how to put it in a word document so I called 1-877-BROTHER and they told me to go into tools and configure for Word. Great support. I had a Brother fax for 15 years and I finally did something to it so I got dark lines on it but I knew Brother products were great.
Also, I read in my research that it is best to buy Brother ink cartridges since the heads are on the printer and the generic ink can ruin the print heads. But I have found the black for 16.88 and color for 11.88. But I'm sure on the internet you can find them for less. Also paid $138.00 for printer, Yes the MFC 685. Also ordered the MFC 465 for my sister for 99. I don't need phone or answering mach but like it for the fax speaker.
There is a cartidge inside for 4x6 pictures
that is easy to use.
Stand alone fax and picture printer!
I got a new camera for Christmas so looking forward to printing pictures.
Well I hope this helped. Enjoy
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
 Good network printer (slow), bad ans.machine Mar 02, 2008
By M. Wagner
If you need a good inexpensive inkjet printer with a network interface its not a bad choice. The printer is good quality but slow. HP printers are much faster but had issues with their software. the Brother software used to get the printer setup on my network was flawless. The answering machine function sound quality is good, but has many quirks. If the ans machine picks up and you pick up a handset after it, you can't shut off the ans machine recording your voice! Just Dumb. The remote pickup function menu structure is incomprehensible and I'm tech savvy! Don't plan on using the answering machine. The phone in it is useable although the case of the handset is sensitive to vibration that you will hear in the sidetone.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Bad print cartridge system Jan 15, 2009
By citygal
I like everything about this printer EXCEPT that when you run out of colored ink, you cannot print---even if you have a full black ink cartridge. It's Brother's way of forcing people to buy more of their ink cartridges (although the Brother representative who spoke to me about the problem gave me some bull about how the machine would be damaged if it printed from only the black ink cartridge).
Anyway, I solve the problem by putting some electrical tape over the middle part of each cartridge that is registering as out of ink. That middle part is where the machine reads the ink level. The black electrical tape fools the machine into thinking that the cartridge is full (the machine registers the darkness). Anyway, that solved my problem. Who feels like shelling out $25 bucks for colored cartridges when I don't even print in color?
UPDATE 5/14/11: Just wanted to point out that this printer is still going strong. I would highly recommend any Brother product as they have great customer service. I've phoned Brother several times since I bought this printer, and they've always helped me despite the fact that my warranty has long expired. I'm pleased with the product and the service.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Quirky...But Good Jun 17, 2008
By Lee McCoy
"thereal"
Overall it is good, if you plug it in via USB. Its a little slow to start printing. Getting it setup for wireless, which I have yet to accomplish, is a pain in the butt, and most people say just to call in without even trying it yourself. I tried, and they hung up on me and never called back. The WORST thing is though, every time the power goes out it erases the answering machine message and defaults to just receive fax with no message. i do not think I would purchase this again for these two reasons.
after using for a while.... nearly impossible to send a fax if you have an external phone hooked up. answering machine is cumbersome and unreliable at best. document feeder has issues with more than one page, although after multiple attempts it may work. wireless is useless, I can't get it to work on anything except plugged directly into my computer. the only thing that seems to work is the scanner and media drive. I would NOT recommend this for a home/office or office of any size.
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