The Brother MFC-J995DW INKvestment has some impressive features which helped it get onto our list of the best all-in-one printers. It's now lower priced than ever despite offering some high level features.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is aimed at home use but has office-level features making it ideal for anyone that will be using it often. That's not just for printing but for scanning and copying too. The whole unit comes in at 17.1 x 13.4 x 7.7 inches, and it weighs 19.2 pounds, making it longer than some models but that's space well used to store extra ink.
All that ink makes this a low-running cost model which can produce high quality prints both for monochrome and color. While you get a 100-sheet cassette in the front there is an option to loads one-sheet bypass at the back – not a lot but nice to have the option for specialty paper.
On the front is a 45-degree angled 2.7-inch color touchscreen which works well for everything aside from full keyboard use when the WiFi password needs to be input, for example. This has both USB and SD card inputs on the left of that control panel and inside the lid, for easy input of jobs from solid state memory.
Brother MFC-J995DW review: Print quality
- Fast printing speeds.
- Excellent print quality.
The Brother MFC-J995DW manages to output text documents at a rate of 10.3 pages per minute in testing, making it a lot faster than the average for this category which sits at 8.7 ppm.
For mixed text and graphics you'll get 4.9 pages per minute, beating the average of 2.7 ppm – in fact this does two sided prints faster than the average model can churn out a single side.
Photo prints on glossy paper take four minutes and six seconds which is nearly half a minute faster than the average speed.
But what about quality?
From text to graphics to photos, the Brother MFC-J995DW delivers high quality all round, despite being super fast too. Text is sharp and dark while graphics come out with lots of detail thanks to rich and well saturated colors.
Glossy photo prints are accurate with well-saturated colors and fine textures as well as lots of sharp detailing.
The same can be said for copies and scans. The only area that can cause struggle is printing from an Android phone which took a little longer than usual.
Brother MFC-J995DW review: Features
- INKvestment system is very cost effective.
- 100 sheet capacity, with 50 sheet output tray.
- ADF, WiFi, and remote printing.
The Brother MFC-J995DW offers huge ink cartridges which can save you money in the long run but also means less worry about changing them over regularly. This is ideal if you plan to print a lot.
While that touchscreen is a useful way to print from SD or USB, you may not use it much if you're printing from your phone or laptop. That said, the angle does make seeing the screen easier if the printer is lower down.
The paper cassette is pretty average with a 100 sheet capacity. So not great if you're buying as a home office option that will be printing a lot. The 50 sheet output tray doesn't particularly help here either. But it's the specialty input at the back which is a let down as it only holds one sheet. That means printing off glossy prints has to be done one at a time as you manually feed in the paper.
There is an ADF tray with a 20-sheet feed which makes copying easy. You also have an auto duplexer for printing on both sides of the pages. The only gripe here is that the duplexer doesn't work in conjunction with that ADF feeder, meaning you can't do automatic two-sided scanning.
WiFi direct printing is useful but the addition of NFC also makes this easy to setup and print from a smartphone. This is ideal if you have other people who will use the printer and want to quickly pair up to print directly.
Brother Cloud Connect is also useful, offering remote printing support that covers scanning from email, cloud, fax and Microsoft Office programs. This supports the likes of Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Evernote, Box and OneNote. You also have third-party support so you can print with Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria and a few more.
Brother MFC-J995DW review: Price and warranty
- MSRP is $199.99.
- Cheap running costs.
With an MSRP of $199.99, the Brother MFC-J995DW is a well-priced machine. On top of this, the INKvestment tank system helps it stand out from many other all-in-one models as it represents a long term saving on ink costs. This uses super high-yield cartridges which make it rated to print a whopping 3,000 pages from full. At around $35 a pop for ink, that means you can get pages at a rate of 1.2 cents each – far lower than the average of 7.6 cents per page.
All that said, this isn't the cheapest high-yield ink printer out there – it's just more affordable than lots of the standard ink cartridge toting printers.
The upfront cost is lower than ever and since it comes with ink cartridges it represents a saving over competing models which will run out of ink far sooner. Brother claims you are loaded up with up to a year's worth of ink. But at 1,500 pages per cartridge, you may find it lasts longer.
The Brother MFC-J995DW comes with a one-year limited warranty as standard.
Brother MFC-J995DW: User reviews
Customers who bought the Brother MFC-J995DW from Amazon have rated it at 4.4 stars out of five. Critical points say the claim of two years of ink is misleading and the printer can be loud. While positives focus on it being perfect for a home office, cheap to run and offering fast and quiet printing.
Best Buy customers rated the printer at 4.5 out of five stars. Negative comments include the ink not lasting as long as expected and some connectivity issues. Positive points include ink lasting a long time, great picture print quality and easy of setup and use.
Should you buy the Brother MFC-J995DW?
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a powerful all-in-one printer which is ideal for anyone that needs scanning, copying, ADF loading and high-yield ink cartridges that save them on effort and money.
If you're looking for dual-sided ADF duplexing and the lowest ink costs then there are other options that may be better suited to your needs. But at the price this offers a lot and it does so with fast and high-quality printing.
