PC Mag recently reviewed the Brother MFC-5460cn and they weren’t overly impressed by it. It’s a relatively new printer that’s only been on the market for a couple of months, and so far it doesn’t seem like it has made much of an impact. Typically, Brother printers are never really top sellers just because of the amount of competition and their lack of availability. If you go into a store, you will usually find two or three Brother printers (at most) while you will probably find 10 different HP printers.

The MFC-5460cn is rated by Brother at up to 30 ppm for black and 25 ppm for color. It has a print resolution up to 6000 x 1200 dpi, which is pretty decent for an all-in-one machine, and it also has a 35-page automatic document feeder. It has built-in networking for scanning and sending faxes and also for shared printing. It uses a four-ink system with the Brother LC-51 ink cartridges. Finally, it has a 33.6Kbps modem. When the heck are fax modems ever going to reach 56Kbps? It’s been about 10 years since 33.6 was considered a good modem speed, yet even the newest fax-capable printers these days average their blazing speed 33.6 modems. What am I missing here?
Anyways, the main reason that PC Mag didn’t like this printer was its lack of speed. Their test showed that the MFC-5460cn was basically the same speed as its predecessor and much slower than the Lexmark X7350. Yikes…slower than a Lexmark? Not good. The other con was that the setup was confusing and it took a long time - something that people may or may not care about. The 5460cn is more geared towards a small office than just a casual user and you probably need to use it for business to appreciate all its features. It’s not going to blow you away with print quality or speed, so you have to like it for other reasons. Brother all-in-one printers are usually pretty solid (if unspectacular) and it looks like this one is no different.

Buy this printer