In an age where full PC integration is an almost must-have feature for a fax machine, the Brother MFC-4800 delivers with total control over your faxes right from the desktop. This five in one unit offers seamless integration with your Mac or PC allowing you to scan, fax, or print via built in USB and parallel ports, though surprisingly it cannot perform a color scan, as it is exclusively a monochrome machine.
As is expected from Brother products these days the MFC-4800 comes with a patented Quick Setup Guide that will have your printer up and running in no time with a whole slew of compatible operating systems including Mac OS 8.5 through 9.1, and most Windows systems, but don’t expect to operate on a network, as the MFC-4800 lacks an Ethernet or wireless port.
Networking aside, the MFC-4800 is an extremely versatile machine designed for multifunctionality. This unit’s hardware comes equipped with a little something for everyone and can fax, scan, print, copy, or even make a phone call. Brother has squeezed in a wide assortment of functions for the owner who doesn’t want to own an entire office full of redundant machines when an all in one unit can suffice. If your print and copy demands are low, consider saving yourself some coin with this machine.
The print and copy speeds are decent, utilizing the MFC-4800’s laser technology, it can produce about 10 pages per minute, which isn’t bad considering the price range and overall wide selection of implemented hardware. The resolution is also decent, capping off at 600 X 600 dots per inch, furthering this printers standing as a machine designed for quantity, not necessarily quality in any one particular area. It does offer a well stocked 200 sheet capacity paper tray, which can also be loaded with up to ten envelopes along with a variety of other forms of media. There is also a 20 sheet automatic document feeder which will mechanically load your larger faxes and copies through the machine and can even be used to scan multiple pages in a row.
When a machine is capable of so many individual functions, it goes to assume that it must come equipped with a lot of buttons which can make things confusing at times, but the MFC-4800 does a very clever job at managing the control layout, grouping buttons together based on function and labeling them accordingly. It offers simplified one touch controls for many of the features including not just scan and copy, but also scan directly to e mail, and other comprehensive dedicated controls such as enlarge or reduce to factors of 50 to 200 percent, demonstrating that Brother had the consumer in mind upon the conception of the hardware.
The scanning itself comes out at decent quality, maxing out at a fairly low quality 150 dots per inch. Though black and white graphics can be translated onto your PC, at the available scan quality the Brother MFC-4800 really should only be considered for text scanning, securing the unit’s position as a machine designed for the user who has to have it all, at the price of diminished performance.
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