Computer Active (UK)

Brother MFC-L5750DW Print for relative peanuts

Does everything, except colour

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Brother’s printer model names look at first glance like somebody has dropped a box of Scrabble tiles, but there is method in their madness. MFC means this is a multi-function contraptio­n; L stands for laser; and DW means it features duplex (printing both sides) and Wi-fi. USB and Ethernet connection­s are also included.

This is a black-and-white A4 printer aimed at home users and small offices that need quick, crisp document printing. It comes with enough toner for 2,000 pages (given the usual assumption that an A4 page consists of an average amount of text). You can replace this with Brother’s 3,000-page TN-3430 cartridge for around £65, but it would make more financial sense to spend around £100 on the TN-3480, which prints 8,000 pages, giving a very reasonable running cost of a penny and a quarter per page. The cheapest we found it was on Ebuyer ( www.snipca.com/25787).

The scanner works in colour, and its 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) can also do both sides of the paper. The maximum resolution is 600dpi – more than enough for most documents – but if you open the lid and put originals on the glass yourself, you can select 1200dpi to get more detail. It wouldn’t be what you’d choose to digitise your photo collection, but for everyday scanning and photocopyi­ng it’s fine.

Printing is at 600 or 1200dpi, and strangely we found both settings were as fast as each other, matching Brother’s claim of 40 pages per minute (ppm) in our test. Unlike some rivals, it only took a few seconds to warm up. As you’d expect, photos looked poor, but text and business graphs were sharp and clean. Scanning a 10-page one-sided document took 35 seconds. All the usual devices, operating systems and cloud services are supported, with Brother apps for checking on the printer’s status and scanning direct to phones and tablets. Also, unusually for a laser, its big colour touchscree­n makes choosing options easy.

VERDICT: It’s not the smallest or cheapest of printers, but you get a full range of features and fast, crisp output at an affordable running cost

★★★★☆

ALTERNATIV­E: HP Officejet Pro 8720 £139 It’s only half as fast, but this discounted inkjet MFP offers similar running costs and adds colour

Crisp, quick prints, colour scans and easy control with low running costs

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