Lowest cost per page inkjet printer

The great

• Quick at checking and making copies
• Cheap per page
• Images text quickly
• Tall printing high quality
• Handbook feed and 4 x 6 picture trays

The bad

• Sluggish at printing color graphics and glossy pictures
• Cannot print or scan in grayscale from Liquid Crystal Display menu
• Cannot print text or PDF docs from USB Direct interface
• Minimal picture paper dealing with
• No USB slot to get in touch straight to a Computer

Verdict

With a low cost per page, the Brother MFC-J985DW all-in-one offers a good bargain for workers carrying out small office tasks, with few downsides.

The Brother MFC-J985DW provides sufficient functions for employees in property or little office, and provides a really inexpensive per page. The typical ink cartridges with this $170 all-in-one-inkjet have quite high yields and are affordable, maintaining costs really low. Quick to scan and work out copies, the MFC-J985DW delivers large image quality in general. But some functions is too basic for a moderate workload.

Design

The front panel on MFC-J985DW sides upward 45 levels, with a 2.7-inch shade touchscreen in the center. You function the show by tapping on-screen buttons — no swiping — with just bodily Home and right back buttons to the right of this display.

Credit: BrotherThere tend to be harbors regarding the front panel for placing a facts or Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo, including a USB thumb drive. You can scan papers to those memory devices, but you can just print photos from their website — text and PDF documents try not to show up when you look at the print selection on the LCD screen. However, you can print these papers from cloud services, such as for example Dropbox, package, Evernote among others.

Credit: BrotherYou can print and scan from your own smartphone via NFC, making use of Brother's iPrint & Scan application. There is absolutely no USB interface regarding the MFC-J985DW to get in touch right to a PC; you have to place the unit on the wireless or Ethernet system.

Capacity

The printer's primary report drawer holds up to 100 sheets. Atop that drawer, you will find a 20-sheet, 4 x 6 tray that you have to slip toward print a snapshot. A manual-feed tray is from the back associated with the device, but it just accommodates one sheet at a time.

An automatic document feeder (ADF) over the top can hold as much as 20 sheets for copying or scanning. A duplexer allows you to make two-sided prints. One oddity: when it is printing an odd-numbered document, the printer draws the very last page back in as if to print something on the other side, and then kick it right back out blank.

Features

It is possible to program around 12 shortcuts in the printer’s screen. However, after utilizing a scanning shortcut, the on-screen menu leads you back once again to checking in the lone default environment. To reselect a shortcut, you have to get back to home menu after every scan — not exactly a shortcut.

In addition, you cannot scan in grayscale when you're working from LCD touchscreen display — just in color and grayscale. To accurately scan photos or photos in grayscale, you have to utilize the scanning pc software which is included on a PC.

The MFC-J985DW performed well in certain of our speed examinations, though it lagged in printing mixed text and pictures.

This all-in-one provides numerous internet features, including checking to web. Menu options allow you to hook up to Brother on line, One Note, One Drive, DropBox, Bing Drive, Evernote, Box, Twitter, Picasa and Flickr.

Print Speed

The MFC-J985DW performed well in some of our rate tests. It printed text at 8.6 pages per minute, using 35 moments to spit on our five-page test document. This clip ended up being simply shy regarding the quickest speed tested (33 moments by the HP OfficeJet 4650). Whenever we used the duplexer to make two-sided images, the MFC-J985DW’s speed slowed down to about 3.8 ppm.

Printing combined text and visuals ended up being slower, nevertheless. Using a tad bit more than 4 mins to print our six-page shade document, this all-in-one was the slowest in its class. The fastest design, the HP Envy 5540, printed this document within 2 moments, 19 moments. Utilising the duplexer on Brother's printer barely slowed down graphics publishing, with all the MFC-J985DW churning from exact same two-sided document in 4:11.

Printing shade photographs on glossy paper was likewise slow. Using almost 7 minutes to print an 8-megapixel photo on letter-size paper, the MFC-J985DW lagged far behind a number of inkjets. The quickest only at that test, the HP Envy 5540, was three times quicker, printing the exact same image in just 2:12.

Copy and Scan Speed

Despite some sluggish printing times, the MFC-J985DW makes a color content quickly. Taking just a little more than 20 seconds, it bested all other tested models by a significant margin and finished 10 seconds faster than the average inkjet. The MFC-J985DW additionally copied black-and-white papers rapidly, in 15.6 moments, beating the category average of 17.4 seconds. Brother's all-in-one failed to slow whenever copying multipage papers utilizing the ADF. It copied a five-page document in 1:08, or 13.6 seconds per page.

Scanning is very quick on MFC-J985DW, also. The unit scanned a color picture at 600 dpi to JPEG format in 40.7 moments. Only the Canon MG3620 was faster, at 39.4 moments.

Eventually, Brother's printer swept through our backup and scan studies done by additionally scanning to PDF quickly. It made a 300-dpi, black-and-white PDF in 10.7 seconds, that is on par using its rivals. The quickest model, the Canon MG3620, made the scan in 8.9 moments.

Print Quality

I became impressed because of the image top-notch the MFC-J985DW's images. Text seemed relatively razor-sharp on simple paper. Printing on 3rd party, top-notch inkjet report enhanced the sharpness of letters' edges, although the darkness of ink was not because strong as you would get in the event that you chosen a laser printer instead of an inkjet.

Graphics looked attractive on plain paper, with accurate colors and a fair amount of detail, though some midtones lacked details in the original image. High-quality paper improved the results.