Brother MFC-490cw Color Inkjet Multi-Function Printer | 
 enlarge | Brand: Brother
Category: CE
List Price: $179.00
Buy New: $112.95
You Save: $66.05 (37%)
New (16)
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Media: Electronics
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 23.1
Dimensions (in): 10 x 18.3 x 18.1
nv:Print Method: Inkjet
Resolution: Up to 6000 x 1200 dpi
Maximum Duty Cycle: 2,500 Pages Per Month
Print Speed: Up to 27 PPM (Color)
Print Speed: Up to 33 PPM (Black)
Dimensions: 15.4"W x 14.8"D x 7.1"H
Special Features: Copying Capability
Special Features: Scanning Capability
Special Features: Fax Capability
Connectivity: Ethernet
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity: PictBridge
Connectivity: 802.11b/g Wireless
Standard Paper Input: 100 Sheets
Optional Paper Input: 50 Sheets
MPN: MFC-490cw
Model: MFC-490cw
UPC: 012502620495
EAN: 0012502620495
ASIN: B001FBIWHQ
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Flexible wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection | | • | Wide 3.3" color LCD provides easy help menus and photo enhancement | | • | Unattended fax, copy or scan; up to 15-page auto document feeder | | • | Direct photo printing from media card slots, USB direct/PictBridge Interface | | • | Fast speed printing up to 33ppm black and 27ppm color |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This compact and stylish color inkjet all-in-one comes with up to 15-page auto document feeder for convenient unattended fax, copy or scan. It also offers the flexibility to share with multiple users using wireless (802.11b/g) or wired (Ethernet) network connection. The user-friendly widescreen 3.3" color LCD display provides help menus and photo enhancement. Also, easily print photos on demand from the media card slots, USB direct or PictBridge interface. Print rich, vibrant photos on demand at up to 6000 x 1200 dpi. Fast print speeds at up to 33ppm black and 27ppm color and includes a Hi-Speed Super G3 33.6Kbps fax modem. Plus, with the 4-separate ink cartridges, only replace the cartridge that needs to be replaced. Other features include standard paper tray for up to 100-sheets and convenient photo bypass tray for up to 20-sheets 4"x6" glossy paper. Direct Photo Printing. Print photos directly from your digital camera's media cards, PictBridge-enabled camera, or USB Flash Memory.? Send and Recieve Faxes. Hi-Speed Super G3 33.6K bps fax modem allows black and white or color faxing with or without a PC. Flatbed Copying and Scanning. Easily copy and scan books, thick or odd shapped documents. 4-Cartridge System. Only replace the cartridge that needs to be replaced. Energy Star Certified
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
Great Wireless All-In-One Printer January 7, 2009
This printer is great. Easy to setup: run installation cd on your computer to setup up software onto your computer and to setup wirelessly just follow the on-screen wizard located on the lcd screen of the printer. When setting up the printer wirelessly if you have MAC Filtering security on your home network you may have to print out a configuration page to get the MAC address and enter the MAC address into your router settings, otherwise you should be able to allow network access to your printer through your network settings and be on your way. The printer prints very fast in black & white or color. Scanning and Copying features are simple and images come out great.
 Great Value on an Excellent All-in-One January 6, 2009
I helped my sister pick out this printer for her early Christmas present to herself. She liked it so much, she ordered one for me and, no surprise, I like it as much as she does. For me, it is replacing a $300 HP that went south after just two years. I've used it for about six weeks and I like almost everything about this Brother printer. It looks great, appears to be of high quality and performs each of its four functions flawlessly. My only complaint is that it does not seem to print photographs as well as my old HP. The photo prints always have a dark background and so far, I've been unable to cure this. In all other respects, however, it's great and since I don't print that many photos, this is not a significant problem. I would recommend this all-in-one machine to anyone who is a moderate user of the four functions and wants just one, small, attractive, quality machine that does it all - and does it for an amazing price. Buy it; you won't regret it.
Superb Printer January 4, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Been using this printer since christmas, was easy to set up and so far works great. Sends and receives faxes no problem, print is also good, too soon to talk about ink usage, but still going strong with the cartridges that came with the unit. Only drawback I see so far is that Brother should have put in an envelope by-pass, there isn't one so you have to take out all the paper, put in your envelope and print it, then re-load all the paper, PITA. How could the designers miss this one. Other than that, I would recommend this printer.
Good value; easy set up; quiet; great wireless integration January 2, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was skeptical of Brother printers, but after having a miserable experience with HP trying to get a 6380 to work (two broken units delivered; two units returned; 4 hours on phone with tech support), I broadened my search and found consistently good reviews of this printer. I live in a mixed household (Windows and Mac), which also eliminated many competitors. Finding it on sale tipped the scales.
Out of the box, the printer is compact, has a low profile, and is a bit sleeker looking than the competitors. Overall workmanship is solid.
Only exception is the paper tray which feels a bit flimsy, but nothing that would deter me. There is also no easy way to feed envelopes or letterhead without pulling out the papertray -- and to run envelopes, you need to remove regular paper since the bypass tray is only for photo paper.
Fax machine is a nice feature to have and, thankfully, it does not come with a phone handset attachment which would just take up space for no reason.
Per the manual, the printer can NOT handle both wireless and USB or network connection at the same time. Not a problem for me at all as the unit will only be used via wireless.
It is energy star rated and defaults to putting itself to sleep after a period of non-use. Startup out of sleep is very fast when you send a wireless document. I tend to unplug my power strip when I won't be using the computer for a while and was afraid that the settings would wipe, but when I plugged it back in the printer sprang back to life with all wireless configurations intact.
Set up was pretty simple. Following the quick start instructions went fine. Found my wireless router, connected, printed test page, no problem. Installed drivers/software on Windows XP, and it looks to be a lot less heavy than HP's full software. Only wrinkle in installation is that it asked me several times to connect/verify the wireless connection (each piece of software plus the hardware basically asked me the same thing a few times... I probably didn't need to enter it so many times, but it wasn't difficult so I decided to be safe). No problems with Mac install either. Very simple.
Overall, the set up was easy and quick. Brother could learn a bit from HP in terms of integrating the documentation and the printer set up a little bit better, but that's a minor issue. It was easy and the thing worked right away.
Automatic document feeder on top of the machine is a great feature to have in a printer at this level, and it works well.
The wireless integration is well done. I was able to print wirelessly immediately, and, quite a pleasant surprise to find that the "scan" feature actually worked as advertised.
Scanning was as simple as dropping a document into the feeder, hitting scan, selecting which of my two wireless PCs I wanted to receive the doc, and then hitting start. Seamlessly scanned and dropped the PDF onto my hard drive.
Ditto for requesting an OCR of the paper document. OCR quality is pretty amazing. I haven't had experience with desktop/consumer OCR in a few years, so maybe they are all of similar quality now, but I was pleasantly surprised. No formatting came over, but I was able to take a memo sitting on my desk and scan/OCR it in a few seconds. The text dropped into a plain text file and had no errors in text recognition or punctuation.
Print speed appears to be slower than the box claims. I haven't tested it, but it feels slower than a lower quality HP deskjet it replaced. Could be a function of the wireless throughput. I'm not terribly concerned since this is for a low-volume home setup. Print quality is good, not fantastic (I will play with settings and see if I can't improve that). Photo prints onto plain paper are not as clear as HP.
I am also very happy with the low noise level. The printer is quiet (much more so than my prior HP inkjet) and it doesn't rattle and shake and rumble like my prior HP inkjet.
If you're having trouble getting the photo paper bypass to work, I had to resort to the manual. You need to physically move the bypass tray forward and lock it into place -- there is no software setting or configuration switch in the print properties. (You can select paper type and all the normal options there, but not the bypass.) Then when done, you pull the paper tray out and physically move the bypass tray back into standby position. At first I was annoyed, but given the frequency of printing via the bypass, I don't care. And I figure not having two paper paths probably means less chance of paper jams.
The model higher than this one is essentially the exact same unit but with a phone handset and a built in digital answering machine. I didn't think that was worth an extra $50, but if you need an answering machine it might be worth it to save footprint.
So far so good. I highly recommend this printer. For the price, features, ease of set up, size, and quiet, it is a very good deal.
I had tried the HP 6380 which had (to me) slightly better print quality, but lacked the automatic document feeder fax and the very well integrated wireless software. I also was unable to get multiple of them to work -- fatal errors on hardware, plus bad customer support, so I gave up and went to this unit... glad I did. I saved money and got a printer better suited for me.
I will update this review in a few weeks if I have any issues with reliability.
Brother takes care of me.... December 27, 2008
This is my second Brother printer. I am a home user. My brother had several other brands of printers over the years, except Brother, so I got the grand tour of printers, LOL. They all had problems, so before I bought my first Brother printer I did a little research and got the MFC 210c. I used it for nearly 5 years before it died on me, but since I didn't pay but 89.00 for it brand new at OM, I'd say I got my money's worth from it. It was a great printer. Both color and black and white printing. I never had a problem with it until it suddenly died. I don't have a problem with the speed of a printer, but I'd say it was a fairly fast printer. The images were always sharp and clear and the color saturation was always good.
This new model is very similar to the older model in that it has a small footprint, it's not tall and clunky. I like the auto cleaning so I don't have to worry about the printer heads drying out. The only thing I don't care for on this one is having to take the entire paper tray out to put paper in. It's easy to do, but it's an extra step when I'm busy. The tray pulls out easily, and slips back in easily. I just scratched my head over that one. Why change the paper feed design, and add an extra step? I haven't tried the paper feed gadget on the top yet.
It's a fairly quite machine, much quieter than the Lexmark I borrowed until this one arrived. The Lexmark clattered and chattered, until I thought there was something wrong with it, it also gobbled ink like a bottomless pit.
This model has a very nice, brightly illuminated color LCD display that tilts up, and it's big enough to read, YAY! This is a great improvement over the small monochrome LCD displays of the older models.
The various function buttons are placed logically, and they're of a nice size, and far enough apart that even someone with big fingers won't press two at the time. The cord is just the right length, not to short, and not too long.
You don't get a USB cable in the box with the printer. I'm sure most people have one around if they've had a computer for a while. If not then buy a USB cable before this printer arrives so you won't be frustrated when you open the box, and begin set up.
The set up was quick,simple,and easy, even with my CD/DVD burner on the fritz. I was able to go to the Bother website and download the installation package with no problems whatsoever. It took less than twenty minutes from opening the box to printing a test page, and that included downloading the set up software from the Brother website.
The instruction book is clear. The menus on the printer itself are easily accessed, and the set up for time, date and etc, are easy to follow with no muss or fuss. I don't use the fax function, so I haven't hooked that up and tried it yet.
The scanner, and copier, are easy to use. I can scan and copy from my computer screen to a file, or an email. The control center on the computer is easy to use. I like the Brother Creative Center. It takes you to the Brother site, and they have free templates for a lot of different things, like calendars and what have you. You can even use your own photos to make the calendars and cards. That's very easy and convenient, no extra software to download:)
The ink cartridges are easier to install on this model than on the MFC 210C. Just open the ink cartridge compartment door,located on the front of the printer, pull the old cartridge out, and slide the new cartridge into the matching color slot. No more lifting the scanner bed to replace cartridges. It also has four ink cartridges to save you money; black, yellow, cyan and magenta. You only need to replace the ink cartridges that are empty. I just wish it took the same cartridge as the MFC 210C, as I have about ten cartridges left from that one;>
The first test page was perfect. I've already printed out receipts from online bill paying, and purchases. I've printed recipes with pics:) I've printed emails, and text files. All in all it looks like this printer is going to be just as good a printer as the last one was. It seems to be as frugal on ink usage also.
I haven't tried to set it up on my wireless network yet, so I can't give you a decent report on that function. But during set up, the very first screen gives you that option before it continues on with the entire set up. Either LAN, Home Network, or wireless.
I also haven't used the photo printer yet, so I can't give you a report on that either. Hopefully there are others leaving reviews that can say something about those functions I haven't tried out yet.
I guess that's it, I'm trying to think of anything I've left out. I guess I can come back and edit this later if I think of anything else.
All in all, for the price I paid, which was 79.00 here on Amazon, it's an excellent printer. This model was priced lower than other models, and much lower than anywhere else I could find online or in a B&M store, so I bought this one. It works very well for what I need it to do, which is print, scan, and copy mostly. And so far, it does an excellent job on all those tasks.
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