Brother’s latest three-in-one mono laser printer is the Brother DCP-7055W. As well as printing, it can also scan and copy.
Read more reviews of mono laser printers.
It’s not just the initial purchase price that’s small – it’s relatively compact and lightweight. Measuring a trim 405 x 399 x 268mm and with a weight of just 9.8kg it's not going strain much muscle.
However, while the main body of the machine feels resolutely sturdy, the cover is disappointingly flimsy. That’s not ideal when you're scanning or copying books or bound documents.
Paper is fed from a 250-sheet standard paper tray in the base, or a single-sheet feeder at the front - the basic trademarks of the recent set of Brother mono laser printers.
As the accent throughout is on simplicity, the typical Brother control layout has been stripped down to essentials. Thus you have a set of buttons for the three main modes (note that there’s no fax included) and menu arrows to scroll through the setup options on the two-line, 16-character LCD.
It really is time Brother dropped these displays as they are never easy to read in low light. But such cutbacks are to be expected when you only pay £150 for a laser printing MFP.
On the other hand, having both USB and Wi-Fi connectivity ensures that the Brother DCP-7055W will be compatible with the essential traveller's kit - notebook, tablet and smartphone (the latter via Brother’s iPrint&Scan app for iOS and Android). Note that there’s no ethernet for use with regular wired networks.
As you might expect from printers at this low budget, there's no auto-duplex facility; but we found we could print documents at 600dpi resolution at a rate of 18ppm. That’s quite close enough to the claimed 20ppm.
Scanned photos produced good quality authentic colours. Black text documents appeared firm and consistent but as with most Brother mono laser printers, copies were considerably darker than the originals, with evidence of banding.
The Brother DCP-7055W is clearly intended for low-volume printing as the recommended duty cycle is a modest 250-1600 pages/month.
The standard 1000-page toner cartridge costs £39.59 (or around 4p per page) which is more expensive than its more economical siblings. In fact, you’d be paying almost four times the price per page of a printer more aligned for business use, such as the Brother HL-5380DN.
Comments
Maxfalconer said: Dont buy this printer- the toner consumption is outrageous Had a DCP-7050 previously and the toner consumption on this new replacement model is approx x10 that of the old model Avoid like the plague