Brother MFC-J6545DW
Brother’s A3 MFD makes a play for being the ultimate SMB workhorse.
We rarely review printers as nowadays they tend to be commoditised, uninteresting, and seldom used in domestic settings. But Brother has turned our heads with a model that it hopes represents the best of breed for SMBs. Indeed, beyond the pun-laden moniker, there’s much to admire.
The MFC-J6545DW is a multi-function device that is sturdily built and quite compact considering it’s both capable of printing and scanning A3 images using automatic document feeders. You’ll still need a large desk to support its 18KG bulk, but it’s very quiet and the functionality it affords is well worth the space it takes up.
As we’ve seen across the market, inkjet is making many laser printers redundant. Their quality has always been better but now their running costs and speeds are competitive. inkjets also have fewer parts to go wrong.
Nonetheless, running costs aren’t inconsequential Brother should be applauded for including two, full sets of full-sized ink cartridges in the box which, it says, will enable two years of printing. This translates as: a regular ink kit (3,000 mono, 1,500 CMY) plus an XL kit (6,000 mono, 5,000 CMY). That’s a great deal for many SMBs but and a refreshing change from the old industry days of stingily providing a solitary, partially-filled set.
Setting the beast up is incredibly simple thanks to the 9.3cm colour touchscreen, sensible buttons and intuitive menu system. We also found that the smartphone app was one of the best designed we’d used to the point where we actually preferred forwarding documents and photos to our phone and printing from there. We also used it to scan multiple A3 documents and images directly to our phones.
We’re a bit less enthused about the physical connectivity which sees all wires connect deep inside the machine and then guided out through an overly-elaborate, labyrinthine cable-tidy system – you’ll need long cables. Meanwhile Wi-Fi is only b/g/n which could theoretically slow down some networks.
But paper management and handling is superb. Brother cleverly uses landscape orientation for both paper feeding and printing which helps to save space and improve speed. But text prints at 15ipm (mono) and 11ipm (colour) which isn’t very fast, especially in a market with page-wide inkjet nozzles that print as fast as the paper can travel over them. This is underlined by the two minutes, 37 seconds it took to produce a colour photo on A4 glossy paper. While quality is good (perfect for brochures but not fine art) that’s not quick.
Other features are notable if not revolutionary and include printing direct from cloud apps like Evernote, printing (and scanning) multiple pages on one sheet, saving workflows and documents to memory.
At $999 and with a two-year RTB warranty, it makes for a good-value, very-usable, do-everything MFD that’s both quiet and a joy to use – even if it’s not very fast.