Scanner and Copier

This scanner provides good image quality. The colors tend slightly towards red, but are sharp and overall pretty accurate. But it is rather slow on the initial preview, taking 12.75 seconds. A full scan of a 300 dpi 4x6 print only takes 11.1 seconds however: that's fast. Canon takes 14 seconds and Epson 20 seconds.

When it comes to the copier, a black and white copy takes 24.7 seconds and a color copy takes less than 40 seconds to print.

All Brother printers have nearly the same architecture, with minor differences in the casing and advanced options. The 385C is a mid-range model with a color LCD screen and separate cartridges. The specifications list high speeds and resolution, with one surprise: the finest ink drop size is listed at 1.5 picoliters, while Canon's comparable model can handle 0.5 picoliters. The Brother will have lower printed photo resolution. Another problem: Brother offers two cartridge capacities, standard and XL (XL is a better value here). But the 385C doesn’t take the XL size. So, you're forced in to pricier ink.

Good Design

The DCP-385C comes in a white and gray case, with a small area for controls and buttons. The angled color LCD screen is at the front of the printer (3.3-inches diagonal), as well as all the buttons. These are very simple. The printer is compact, light and doesn’t take up too much of your desk. Another point: no need to open the scanner/copier compartment to change the cartridges; the cartridges are at the front right.

Office printing: slow and innaccurate colors

Brother promises 30 pages per minute. The DCP-385C almost comes through in black and white draft mode, but we might as well tell you up front: this mode will only be of any use to verify page layout since the characters are not very precise and the black is washed out. In standard mode, for text, the black is not dark enough and the ink drops are visible.

In standard mode, the printer is too slow: 4.4 ppm in color and 4.5 ppm in black and white on our test documents. Brother didn’t want to modify the performance of the printer, as the 330-C (an older model) already offers these speeds.

On graphs, tinted areas are nice and even, but character clarity is average, and colors are less accurate; we get darker tones than expected. The printer is more than usable and fine for everyday printing. Nevertheless, note that the competition offers better results at a comparable price.

Photo: slow but good color reproduction

On color prints, the tones are fairly accurate although a little lighter than on the original. The images are very light. This difference is all the more visible on black and white photo prints: the prints have a greenish tinge. Print lines are visible (caused by the back and forth of the carriage mechanism).

As for print speeds, a 4 x 6-inch photos take 1 minute 40 seconds to print, while the competition, Canon for example, gets down to 20 seconds. Don’t expect better results for A4 prints – they take even longer: 5 min 10 seconds for our test documents.

Low energy consumption but high cost per page

This printer consumes little energy during printing, just 21 Watts, and 4 Watts at rest. The same can’t be said for the cost per page, which is very expensive. If you do get this printer you'll probably want to print mostly in black and white.