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The DCP-385C is a compact, all-in-one color inkjet MFD. This means it is a printer, copier, and scanner all combined into one appealing compact device. Its photo printing capability and a built-in media card reader, PictBridge/USB Direct interface all state that Brother is serious about what it says. A rather large 3.3-inch wide-screen color LCD, which can tilt to suit viewing angles, is also provided allowing you to do a lot more things than conventional devices. You can even edit images here! Along with high-resolution printing, there is high-resolution scanning, thus we can expect a good copier. Now that we have this device with us, we will try to find out how well it fares when compared to other MFDs we have tested so far. 
Bundle Brother DCP-385C 4 Cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) 4" x 6" Photo paper pack Power cables with plug socket adapter USB data cable Software and Driver CD User Manual Quick Setup Guide 
Brother provides a complete bundle and there is no room left for complaining. The power cable has a flat pin plug, but it has been provided with an adapter enabling it to be plugged into any socket. To emphasize the fact that this is a photo-printing MFD, they have also provided a pack of 4" x 6" photo paper for you to get started with printing photographs. Features The DCP-385C is an MFD that can print, scan and copy, but it does not feature FAX. This MFD also sports the office-like looks, which has become a trademark of Brother devices. Since this also targets home users, they have jazzed up the looks a little by giving it a pleasant combination of grey and cream. The body is grey and sloping towards the front. Like its brethren DCP-350C, this one is also built ruggedly and will withstand the rigors of office work. It is quite sleek with a height of just 15 cm. The power connector is located at the back, making it easy to be placed cozy against any wall, thus saving space. There is no hard power switch but a soft power button at the front. 
The input and output tray consists of a single cassette-like structure with the cassette holding the input papers with face down, while the output paper gets accumulated on top, which is the output tray. The output tray has a special bypass tray section to hold up to 20 sheets of 4" x 6" paper. Paper is to be placed with the side to be printed on facing down and the leading edge in, while it comes out with the printed side facing up and the leading edge out. 
The interface is USB 2.0 and the USB cable has to be channeled through a narrow canal into the interior of the device, which may be a problem if the cable is stiff, but it also avoids accidental disconnections. This has to be done by opening the MFD like a bonnet of a car. 
On the right, you can see a flap that opens to expose the cartridge bay. This is very convenient, as you do not have to stick your hand inside the device to install the cartridges. As you can see, there are four separate cartridges, thus you save a lot of money because you only have to replace the cartridge which gets empty which is not the case when using tri-color cartridges. 
The control panel is situated on the right of the swivel LCD and consists of multiple keys. This is very easy to use and lets you access different functions such as Photo Capture, Scanning, Mono and Color Copy, as well as different MFD settings by means of the Menu button. The Ink Management button shows you the ink-level in each cartridge. 
In addition to the PictBridge Direct Printing support, the MFD can read a number of memory card formats such as SD, xD, etc. The PictBridge port can also read and print directly off a USB Flash drive and a Flash drive plugged into this port is accessible in the PC as if it has been plugged into the computer's USB port. 
The 3.3-inch wide-screen color LCD relays necessary information about the status and settings. The LCD displays a preview of images present on the memory card or the USB drive. You can even edit images to a certain extent before printing. There is an Enhance Photo option that lets you apply effects such as Auto Correct, Enhance Skin Tone, Enhance Scenery, Remove Red Eye, and so on. You can even choose to print the index sheet or all photos in the connected device. Scanning to e-mail, image, OCR, file, card or USB memory stick is supported in this mode too in the JPEG, PDF or TIFF formats is supported using the Scan key. 
A panel situated at the back of the MFD comes off and lets you clear paper jams. The scanner is of a flat-bed type and is situated at the top as usual. The lid seems sturdy and is adjustable, thus letting you scan thicker objects like books. The overall build seems very good. This printer supports a color print resolution of up to 6000 x 1200 dpi and can print borderless prints. The claimed droplet size of 1.5 picolitres should help it produce nice photo prints. The scanner resolution is 1,200 x 2,400 dpi (optical) and WIA interface is supported along with the older TWAIN. Drivers and Software The DCP-385C comes with drivers for Windows as well as Mac, but we tested this using only Windows as it is the operating system that you are most likely to have. The driver interface is simple; there are just two pages to it. 
The first page titled 'Basic' lets you do basic things such as selecting the media type, print quality, paper size, color mode, orientation, number of copies and page layout. 
The advanced page lets you select between color/grayscale printing mode, and also whether you want the print to scale according to the paper size. You can also embed watermarks or print in the mirrored mode. 
If you click on the Color Settings button here, you can refine the color settings by adjusting various settings such as color density, white balance, contrast, brightness and hue. By default, Bi-directional printing is enabled, but you can disable it here so that the printer prints only in one direction, thereby improving image quality at the expense of a little time. 
Bundled along with this MFD is the ScanSoft PaperPort - a good document management and OCR software, which is a definite bonus as it saves you the cost of having to buy such software separately. 
The ControlCentre3 is a control panel that puts all the functions of this MFD at a single point at your disposal. 
In addition to the above, the software disc also includes Reallusion FaceFilter Studio - an easy to use photo editor that lets you fine-tune your photos before printing them, and BookScan&Whiteboard Suite - of which the BookScan software corrects scans of books you scan using the MFD, while the Whiteboard cleans up and enhances the text and images from photos taken of your whiteboard. The installation is fairly straightforward, but it takes a little longer than 10 minutes. The MFD takes around 10 seconds to get into the ready state once switched on. We put the MFD through a variety of tests to test its printer as well as scanner components. Font size printing test : We printed a page containing all the letters in font sizes ranging from large to very small. The printer had no problem in printing all the font sizes and they looked crisp. Text print speed : We printed a page of black text in draft and normal quality to find the speed as well as quality of the print. The first page took 18.2 seconds in the fast mode and 32.9 seconds in normal, which is not so fast. The continuous printing speed in the fast mode in the first minute is 10.95 ppm, and later reaches a maximum of 14.29, while in the normal mode, the ppm in the first minute and subsequently were 2.32 and 2.93 respectively. The speeds in fast mode are average, while the normal mode speeds are quite slow. While the normal mode quality is decent, the fast mode quality has a lot of fringing and the edges are not well-defined. Occasional skewing once every few lines was also visible. 
Presentation document speed : This consisted of a page of multi-colored graphs, text, charts, patterns, and photos. The first page of the document took 20.1 seconds in the fast mode, while it took 38.1 seconds at best quality; both of which are slow speeds. The continuous printing speed in the fast mode was 5.69 ppm in the first minute, and it reached a little over 7.06 thereafter, while these speeds in the normal mode were 1.8 and 2.18 ppm respectively. The quality is decent in the normal mode as was in the text print, but in the fast mode, the colors are washed out and there is fair amount of fringing. 
Photo print: Since this MFD has photo printing features, we printed the test photograph collage as well and it finished the job in 4 minutes 14 seconds, which is a bit faster when compared to other printers. The intricate details were neatly produced, but there is some amount of graininess and the whole print has a red cast that makes it unsuitable for photo printing as the color reproduction is not good. To give you some idea of what we mean, the blacks do not look black, but brown. The scanner test : The scanner exhibited good performance. It could capture all the details and the color and grey shades were faithfully captured as well. It took 14.2 seconds for a preview scan - a decent performance. Mono scans at 200 dpi for A4-size paper take just 12.3 seconds which is quite fast. The color scanning at 600 dpi takes just 112 seconds. This is very slow and it usually takes less than half this time to complete the job. The copier test : As you may know, an MFD is also a copier, and our copier test tries to find how well the printer and scanner components work in tandem. A black copy took 31 seconds, while a color copy took 50 for the first copies. The ppm for mono copies ranges from 2.27 to 2.62, while that for color is 1.38 to 2.31 ppm from first minute to subsequent minutes, which are average speeds. Copy quality is pretty good in the normal mode. There are no paper-handling issues as long as you place the paper stack neatly in the input tray. It seems that Brother MFDs no longer have the paper handling issues it was plagued with earlier. Earlier, MFD models were was not able to lift photo paper of 150 gsm, and we had to use a lower gsm paper for the photo print. Our Verdict The Brother DCP-385C is a multifunctional solution for printing, scanning and copying for home and SoHo segment. Fax is absent and it is completely fine, because this device is not meant for bigger offices, where Fax is required, and you can still connect it to the PC for PC-Fax functionality. The UI is pretty simple to use and the pretty-looking wide-screen swivel color LCD shows you different options and status of the device. It also shows you the preview of images from memory cards and lets you apply certain effects to them before printing. Camera connectivity is taken care of by the PictBridge port, which also lets you plug in USB Flash drives and print directly from them. The device is touted as having photo printing features, but the results are not impressive. The photo prints are detailed, but the colors have a reddish cast. The text and presentation print quality is pretty decent in the normal mode, but the fast mode has the colors washed out and the text skewed. It uses four ink cartridges and that makes it a lot more economical to use than MFDs with tri-color cartridges. The color cartridges cost Rs.520 each and can print 325 pages, thus the cost per page is Rs.1.60. The black cartridge on the other hand costs Rs.930 and can print 450 pages, thus yielding a cost per page of Rs.2.07. If this is to be used in office, you can purchase a pack of two black cartridges for Rs.1,770, thus reducing the black cost per page to a more economical Rs.1.97. Also available is a pack of the three color cartridges, which is available for Rs.1,470, making the cost per page for color cartridges drop to around Rs. 1.51. With a decent software bundle, the Brother DCP-385C is decently priced at just Rs.6,120 + taxes and comes with 1 year onsite warranty, but if you can bypass the wide-screen LCD, then the DCP-165C seems to be a better deal and it is priced a thousand bucks lower. With 83 service centers around the country, you should not have problems getting this MFD serviced. Specifications 
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