Most small offices could make good use, at least occasionally, of an all-in-one (AIO) that prints and scans tabloid size (11 by 17 inches). There's only one reason why almost all stay with models limited to letter and legal size: price. Tabloid-size models cost a lot more. At least, they did until now. The Brother MFC-6490CW ($300 street), the first printer in Brother's new Professional Series, offers features and quality at a low price and receives our Editors' Choice.

Given the price, perhaps the most amazing thing about the MFC-6490CW is that it doesn't skimp on features. It prints, scans, and faxes over a network; it works as a standalone fax machine and copier; and it can attach a scanned document to an e-mail message either by using the e-mail program on a PC, or by sending the message directly by way of an in-house e-mail server or an ISP.

Other important office-centric features include a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle up to tabloid-size documents; a tabloid-size flatbed; and both an Ethernet connector and Wi-Fi support. Two paper drawers, one for 150 sheets and the other for 250, offer ample capacity as well as the flexibility to keep two different kinds or sizes of paper loaded at once.

For home offices, where the AIO might have to do double duty as a home printer, it also offers photocentric features. It can print directly from PictBridge cameras, memory cards, and USB keys, and it lets you preview photos on a color LCD or print an index sheet if you prefer.

That Brother has managed to shoehorn tabloid-size printing and scanning into an AIO that's not much bigger than its letter- and legal-size competition is an amazing feat. The MFC-6490CW's case is a surprisingly compact 12.7 by 21.3 by 19.2 inches (HWD). It's not the smallest AIO by any means, but it's probably the smallest that prints and scans at tabloid size. It's also reasonably lightweight, at 34.4 pounds, making it one of the few—if not the only—tabloid-size AIOs that can be moved around easily by just one person.

Setting up the MFC-6490CW is standard fare, with little more involved than loading paper, snapping in the four ink cartridges, and running the automated installation program from the disc. I ran my tests using Windows XP and an Ethernet connection, but the AIO also comes with drivers for Windows 2000, Vista, Vista 64, XP 64, and Mac OS 10.2.4 or later.

If there's a catch to go with all of the MFC-6490CW's great features, it's the speed. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com), the AIO took a total of 19 minutes 10 seconds. I would call that well within the tolerable range, but it's slow for the price by today's standards. As a point of reference, the Editors' Choice HP Officejet Pro L7590 All-in-One Printer, a similarly priced letter- and legal-size AIO, took just 9:14. The somewhat-more-expensive Canon Pixma MX7600 All-in-One Printer took 12:58. When printing photos, the MFC-6490CW's speed was once again slow, averaging 3:49 for each 4-by-6 and 8:50 for each 8-b-10.

The MFC-6490CW's output quality is dead-on typical for an inkjet. On our text tests, more than half the fonts passed the twin thresholds of easy readability and well-formed characters at 6 points, with some passing at smaller sizes. One heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed 20 points, however, and fonts with thick strokes were a little grayish rather that dark black. Consider the text quality good enough for most business needs but short of the top quality you'd probably want for making the best possible impression in something like a résumé or most desktop-publishing output.

Graphics on plain paper were good enough for any business use up to and including output like PowerPoint handouts. I saw some banding on one test page printed in default mode, but no banding at all in high-quality mode. The colors were also a little dulled down, a little less eye-catching, compared with the output from most other printers. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider the graphics good enough for documents going to an important client or customer.

Photo quality was about what you would expect from a local drugstore: true photo quality, but at the low end of the range. I saw a minor tint in a monochrome photo, for example, and a slight tint in what should be white clouds in a color photo. The output is certainly suitable for snapshots, and, in most cases, for photos destined for an album or even a frame.

Certainly the most compelling argument for the MFC-6490CW is its tabloid-size capability for both printing and scanning at that price level. If you're sure you'll never need either capability, you're better off with a letter- and legal-size AIO like the HP Officejet Pro L7590 or the Canon Pixma MX7600. But if you need either or both features even occasionally, the MFC-6490CW is far and away the budget-price AIO to get, and the new Editors' Choice for low-cost tabloid-size AIOs.

Check out the Brother MFC-6490CW's test scores.

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