The Brother MFC-685cw ($200 street) won't brew your coffee, but this all-in-one (AIO) can handle virtually any other office task you need. Some years ago, Brother observed that even a home office or small office with light printing needs can make good use of other features that came only on high-priced, heavy-duty AIOs. The result has been a slew of feature-packed personal AIOs meant for light-duty printing. The MFC-685cw is one of Brother's latest—and most feature-rich—incarnations of that design concept.

According to Brother, the MFC-685cw is essentially a superset of the also-new-generation MFC-465cn, adding Wi-Fi; a larger, 3.3-inch color LCD for previewing photos; and a phone handset and answering machine. All comments in this review about any other feature should apply to both models.

The MFC-685cw's feature list is long. It prints, scans, and works as a standalone copier and fax machine. It also prints directly from memory cards, PictBridge cameras, and USB keys. Connection choices include both a wired network connection and Wi-Fi, and it can fax from and scan to a PC over a network. Finally, in what's a particularly welcome touch, it includes a 10-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for easy scanning, faxing, and copying of multipage documents.

As with previous-generation models from Brother—including, for example, the MFC-440cn that the MFC-465cn replaces—paper handling is on the skimpy side, with a 100-page input capacity plus a separate 20-page tray for 4-by-6 photo paper.

This low capacity is a big part of what limits the MFC-685cw to light-duty printing. My rule of thumb is to avoid having to add paper more than once a week. Doing that with this AIO would translate to printing no more than 20 pages per day on average, including incoming faxes and copies. On the other hand, the extra photo tray helps make the MFC-685cw fit well into the dual role of home and home office printer, since you can switch to printing photos without having to swap out the regular paper.

Finding a spot for the MFC-685cw is easy, thanks to the small size (7.1 by 18.4 by 14.6 inches, HWD). Setting up on a wired network is standard fare. Simply set the AIO in place, install the four ink cartridges, load paper, plug in a network cable, and run the automated installation routine. (I tested it using Windows XP, but the package includes a Vista driver as well.)

The best I can say for its speed is that the MFC-685cw is faster than Brother's last generation of printers. I timed it at a total of 21 minutes 51 seconds on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com). That's almost 6 minutes faster than the Brother MFC-440cn, but it's nowhere near the 12:18 for the similarly priced Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MP610 Photo All-In-One. Photo speed was also notably slow, averaging 4:07 for each 4-by-6 and 9:23 for each 8-by-10, compared with the MP610's 0:54 and 1:40, respectively.

Output quality is a mixed bag. Both graphics and photo quality are a match for most ink jets, but text is sub-par. All of the standard fonts on our text test were easily readable, with well-formed characters at 10 points, but only half passed both tests at 8 points, and none qualified at smaller point sizes. Consider the output suitable for most schoolwork or basic business needs, but not for anything that needs small fonts.

Graphics quality, on the other hand, is easily good enough for most business needs, including items like PowerPoint handouts for important clients. For graphics output, however, you may need to invest in a heavier-weight paper, as full-page graphics on my tests caused the multipurpose paper we use to curl. I noticed a tendency for colors to shift toward green; this was most obvious with grays and blues. Fortunately, minor color shifts are usually tolerable in graphics.

Photos on plain paper also showed a distinctly green color shift, but the colors were still within the realm of what I'd call newspaper quality—that is, close enough for casual applications, like printing Web pages with photos. Colors were much better on Brother's Premium Glossy photo paper, well within reasonable bounds. More generally, the output on photo paper qualifies as true photo quality and is roughly a match for what you'd expect from drugstore photos.

The photos are also reasonably scratch-resistant and waterproof, although if the paper gets too wet, it curls as it dries. Thus in real-world use, you can pass the photos around for people to look at without worrying about their being ruined. Just don't get the photos thoroughly soaked, as I do on my tests.

Clearly, the paper capacity and relatively slow speed limit the MFC-685cw to light-duty printing. But if that's all you need, the MFC-685cw offers a full complement of office machines—printer, scanner, fax machine, copier, answering machine, and even a phone handset—shoehorned into one compact package.

Check out the Brother MFC-685cw's test scores.

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