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At just £62, Brother’s DCP-365CN MFP is a conspicuously inexpensive MFP. Still, it can do everything you’re likely to need from a home MFP, from high resolution photo printing to running off a quick photocopy. We were also pleased to find that it has a 10/100 wired Ethernet port, so it can be connected to a network. Although we’ve seen several relatively inexpensive MFPs with wireless networking capabilities, a wired network connection is often more stable and always easier to configure.
The printer uses four individual ink cartridges inserted behind a panel at the front, from where ink is pumped to the print head inside the device. During our initial setup we had to wait around four minutes while the ink reservoir was charged, but then it took at least that long to get through the time-consuming software installation. The DCP-365CN comes with Nuance’s ScanSoft PaperPort 11SE, a heavily cut down version of the PaperPort document management, which helps you organise PDF document scans. Brother has also included a specific Windows 7 driver disk.
Unfortunately, the MFP didn’t perform too well in our evaluation of print speeds and costs. Its draft prints are a quick 11.3ppm, but their text is a very pale grey – good enough if you want to check the spelling on your work, but we wouldn’t send it to anyone else. Standard mono text printed at a glacial 3.1ppm. Surprisingly, the DCP-365CN’s mixed-colour print speed of 2.1ppm is faster than many budget devices, making it one of the better MFP choices under £100 if you do a fair bit of colour printing.
Photo prints also emerged with painful slowness. While they looked smooth and sharp, pale areas suffered from a marked red tint and borderless 6x4in prints from some programs, such as Adobe Reader, were printed with a 1mm border.
Although the DCP-365CN has a memory card reader, printing photos from it isn’t very practical if you have a large number of files to choose from, as you have to print a contact sheet before you can enter the number of the photo you wish to print. If you plan on doing a lot of direct printing, then we strongly recommend buying a device with a full-colour screen, capable of previewing your snaps, such as Epson’s similarly priced Stylus SX215.
The scanner interface is easy to use, if not exactly overburdened with features. Scan speeds were on the quick side – we had to wait just 33 seconds for 6x4in scan at 600dpi, although it took almost three times as long at 1,200dpi. We liked the level of detail visible on even low-resolution text scans, and photo scans were vivid and richly colour. However, they also suffered from harsh and very conspicuous dithering on areas of subtle shading.
Ultimately, the DCP-365CN is unremarkable, except for its price. With slow print speeds and relatively high costs, Canon’s Pixma MX340 has more features and better print quality for not much more money.
