Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Printer
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2019
Pros:
Cheap to operate for an inkjet. I have printed 175 pages so far and only used about 10% of the ink. I like the tank method over the bottle method.
Fast, Quiet, and very smooth operation.
Many different ways to hook it up: WPS, WPS with PIN, SSID/Password (the method I used), Ethernet, or USB (yes it can be a share printer too, if you do not want it on your network).
Brother iPrint and iScan; either on your computer and/or your iPhone. Wonderful, if you get documents that need to be printed now, and your computers are off, just tap on your iPhone anywhere in the house and you have them instantly – Love It! Of course, If on a computer, you can print directly from your programs (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.)
Poster Print, yes it is cool to get giant documents printed out from Word or Excel; but what is really nice is being able to print out giant maps via 4K Jpegs. I can now get giant detailed maps that are razor sharp. This could possibly be better than sliced bread.
Print Quality, the sharpness is about 97% of a Laser Printer. Color printing, either plain paper or photo is excellent. Black ink on documents is excellent, deep rich and dark; just a tad better than the laser.
By-Pass Feed print for envelopes or photo paper works great, of course you can use the tray for that too.
Scanning works very good, and if you need to adjust the quality of the scans you can do that too. This is not my primary scanner, I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap for that. The Brother Scanner can address scanning books, etc. that a ScanSnap cannot do.
Cons or Caveats:
Windows 10 Install: Turning off (temporally) the Windows 10 Firewall (Private Network) is a requirement if you are installing from the CD. Otherwise it may fail to install OR may not install correctly. If you install over the internet you may also have to turn off your Internet Gateway Firewall to the Net, if installing directly from Brother?
Brother telephone support or email support is useless. If you are having problems form day one, then call Amazon directly and “they can” get you connected with Brother support that may resolve your problem.
The Brother “ControlCenter4” is for the most part a completely useless program and is seriously out of date. For example: If you attempt to print photos there is a very limited “trimming” capability. It is virtually impossible to complete genuine cropping and/or aspect ratio framing. The standard and free Windows 10 Photo program addresses that problem very easily. Then use the Brother iPrint to print out your photos (at photo quality setting) and it works perfectly.
If you have attempted several “installs” and it did not work correctly because you failed to “turn off” the firewall(s), then the Brother uninstall utility that came on the CD may not do its job. You will also have to use Windows Control Panel to uninstall the remaining applicable software assigned to this printer. Next, you will then have to go to Control Panel (again) for your “Printer Listings” and “Remove Device(s)” for all items associated to this printer. You do not have to remove the printer from your Network (it can still be listed as a Network device-with your WiFi is still connected to it).
Many Spectrum WiFi Routers do not support WPS or WPS with PIN correctly, that is why I used SSID/Password which has worked perfectly from day one as a Networked Printer. You would use the “WiFi Wizard” on the printers touch screen to do this, very simple. The “Wizard” also presented about 20 WiFi’s in my neighborhood, about 8 more than my iPhone!
There is also a Uninstall Utility program from Brother via download for this Printer; However, this printer is NOT listed from the drop down list in that program. Maybe someday Brother will update that program for “this” printer?
4.75 stars - It is good printer IMO. How will it be in 10 years?
