Brother MFC-990CW all-in-one printer

With a fax and an answerphone too

At the top of the front panel are two memory card slots which between them can take most of the current types – though Microdrive isn't mentioned – and there's also a PictBridge socket, which doubles as a walk-up USB slot for Flash drives.

The manual photo tray is fiddly

Below the card slots is the paper tray arrangement, where a slightly flimsy, 100-sheet A4 paper tray has a photo tray, capable of holding up to 20 photo blanks, built into its lid. To print photos you have to pull out the paper tray, slide the photo tray forward by hand and reinsert the tray combo. Other all-in-ones at the £200 price point can do this automatically, whenever you select photo print, so it's a shame Brother hasn't managed it, too.

As well as USB and Ethernet sockets inside the machine – lift the scanner section and reeve the cables round inside – the MFC-990CW supports Wi-Fi, as you can see by the longer than normal aerial at the back of its right side. It would be neater to build the Wi-Fi aerial inside or hide it at the back.

Setup is straightforward, as the machine can be linked to a wireless network of choice from the front panel. Other software in the support bundle includes Brother’s own MFL-Pro suite, which is the same as supplied with many other of its all-in-ones.

The print mechanism is also common to many cheaper Brother models and setting it up is simply a question of flipping down a front-panel cover and sliding in four ink cartridges – it could hardly be easier.

USB and network sockets are to be found inside - so it's easier to use Wi-Fi

Print speeds are fantastic. In fact, they’re such a work of fantasy you wonder if anybody can believe this machine is capable of 33ppm printing black pages and 27ppm printing colour. Even printing single lines of text in draft mode and excluding processing time, you’d be hard pressed to get there.