BROTHER DCP-7020 TONER CARTRIDGE

Brother DCP-7020 Review

Overview:

The 3 in 1 Brother DCP-7020 is a bulky piece of multifunctional hardware that, though on the heftier side, is more than capable of handling an individual or very small office’s print, copy, and scan requirements. The device’s built in ADF and simplified control panel make the unit perfect for the novice copy user with minimal experience. 

Pros:

While faxing is not within the Brother DCP-7020’s capabilities, printing, copying, and scanning certainly are. The unit comes with a USB and Parallel port and, in a smart usage of hardware, can have both in use at the same time. This means that, though the printer is not a networking model, in can in fact be connected to two host PCs at the same time without incident.

The unit’s automatic document feeder sits atop its flatbed design and holds a sufficient 35 pages at one time. Additional pages can be added to the device while it is in operation, though the real beauty of having an ADF in the first place is minimal user involvement. Either way, scans and copies alike will benefit from the inclusion of the feeder, though the document glass makes scanning individual pages, as well as three dimensional objects, a reality.

Up to 99 copies can be made continuously from a single source. This “limitation” is caused by the fact that the Brother DCP-7020 has a mere 2 digit quantity counter, but it is easy enough to repeat a copy process if more reproductions are required. Copy quality itself is also more than respectful, with the unit’s print quality topping out at 2400 x 600 dots per inch.

Scan quality matches that of printing with an optical scan resolution of 600 x 2400 dots per inch. Scans can be done in color as well as black and white, while the rest of the functions are restricted to monochrome. If higher resolution scanning is required, and interpolated scan mode can be activated to produce up to 9600 dots per inch of quality, though this process is considerably slower than regular optical scanning.

No memory expansion is available, though the device’s 16 MBs built in should be plenty to handle what this slower device was designed for. Paper storage is also regrettably non expansive, but its 250 sheet input capacity is complemented by a single sheet bypass slot for special media types.

Cons:

Unfortunately one of the main drawbacks of the Brother DCP-7020 is not exactly a fault of its hardware, but more so that of its consumables. The unit’s drum life is exceedingly low and, though consumable costs for the discontinued model are very low, the cost per page remains high simply due to the way the low yield consumable system was designed.

The device is also slow on the draw when it comes to both print and copy speeds. The unit can barely pull off 20 pages per minute when printing and offers the same copy per minute speed. Device’s in the same category are now made with 30 page per minute engines and cost roughly the same prince, making the Brother DCP-7020 nothing short of obsolete.