Brother MFC-9970CDW review
Kat Orphanides examines a multifunction printer that does everything but make the tea.
Brother’s MFC-9970CDW is designed as a flexible and highly functional office workhorse, with integrated duplex printing and scanning, a fax machine, touchscreen and network printing management interface. Measuring a surprisingly compact 530x490x526mm, the MFC-9970CDW has a 250-sheet paper tray, along with a 50-sheet multipurpose tray capable of handling envelope and paper weights of up to 163gsm.
It can connect your network wirelessly or to a single PC via USB, but most offices will be using a standard wired Ethernet connection. The second USB port on the front allows you to quickly scan and print directly to and from a thumb drive. You’ll want to position this MFP a fair distance away from anyone’s desk, though, because it makes a tremendous racket when printing, loud even against the constant background hum of our testing lab.
We were immediately impressed by the touchscreen menu system, which is clearly designed and large enough to use easily without accidentally hitting the wrong icon. Thanks to the touchscreen, you can immediately connect the printer to your wireless network. A WLAN Setup Wizard in its Network menu automatically scans for local network SSIDs and lets you choose from those it finds. The display is a bit narrow for a full on-screen keyboard, so you’re instead given a mobile-phone style keypad that lets you cycle through groups of letters.
There’s plenty of flexibility when it comes to which features you install on the PCs connected to it, too. The supplied driver CD allows you to install a full driver and utility package, including the PaperPort SE document management suite, all the drivers and software except PaperPort, or just the printer driver - handy if members of your office network don’t require any network scanning ability and just want to get printing with a bare minimum of fuss and installation time. You can also use Brother’s Network Deployment Wizard to roll out drivers to your entire network, saving the effort of individually setting up each PC.
Maximum print resolution
600x600dpi
Maximum optical scan resolution (output bit depth)
1,200x2,400dpi (48-bit)
QUOTED SPEEDS
Quoted speed, mono A4 28ppm
Quoted speed, colour A4 28ppm
TESTED PRINT SPEEDS
First mono page from sleep 38s
First colour page from sleep 38s
Letter - time to first page 14s
25-page mono document - total time 1m 5s (23.1ppm)
24-page mixed colour document - total time 2m 21s (10.2ppm)
Two 10x8" photos - total time 1m 10s
Six 6x4" photos - total time 1m 26s
TESTED SCAN SPEEDS
Full scan area preview 10s
A4 document at 150dpi/300dpi 13s/19s
6x4" print at 600dpi/1,200dpi 22s/1m 6s
Single 35mm negative at 2,400dpi N/A
TESTED COPY SPEEDS
Single A4 page, mono, default quality 12s
Single A4 page, colour, default quality 13s
10 A4 pages (many to many), mono, default quality 34s
PHYSICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
Standard interfaces USB, 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet, 802.11b/g wireless, USB Host
Optional interfaces None
Dimensions (HxWxD) 530x490x526mm
Weight 29.0kg
Noise 69dB(A)
Maximum duty cycle (pages per month) 60,000 pages
Power consumption standby 2W
Power consumption idle 8W
Power consumption active 900W
PAPER HANDLING
Maximum paper size Up to A4+
Maximum paper weight 163gsm
Standard paper inputs (capacity) 1 (250)
Output tray capacity 150 sheets
Duplex Yes
Automatic Document Feeder capacity 50
COPY FEATURES
Maximum number of copies 99
Copier zoom range 25-400%
FAX FEATURES
Fax modem 33.6Kbit/s
Maximum mono fax resolution Not disclosed
Maximum memory capacity (mono pages) 500
GENERAL
Technology Single-pass colour laser
Language(s) PCL6, BR-Script3
Supported operating systems Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.4.11+
Memory 256MB
Upgrades: 500-sheet paper tray, memory
BUYING INFORMATION
Price inc VAT £823
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page (black part) 0.9p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page (colour part) 5.7p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page 6.6p
Capacity of supplied black toner (pages) 2,500 pages
Capacity of supplied colour toners (pages) 1,500 pages
Capacity of supplied drum/s (pages) 25,000 colour or mono pages
Estimated total ownership cost - three years' light use (2,400 mono & 1,200 colour pages) £823
Estimated total ownership cost - three years' medium use (18,000 mono & 9,000 colour pages) £1752
Estimated total ownership cost - three years' heavy use (72,000 mono & 36,000 colour pages) £2914
Warranty duration and terms One year onsite
