Tag: inkjet printers

Introduction

The Brother MFC-J5845DW is the first Brother printer that combines the INKVestment tank-based printing technology previously seen in the Brother MFC-J1300DW printer with the landscape (lengthways) printing method that Brother had pioneered. Here, like most of the Brother printers that use this printing method, it has an expandable paper tray so you can load it with A3 paper. It can scan A4 pages and can print both sides of an A4 or smaller page.

A step-up model known as the MFC-J5945DW has, as an extra function, two separate paper trays rather than one, which can allow you to have A3 paper or a different media type “on the ready”. There is a more expensive variant known as the MFC-J6545DW that is equipped with A3 scanning and the ability to print on both sides of an A3 page which could be seen as a way to make more utility of the booklet-printing function in the supplied print driver software in the context of printing A4 multipage documents on A3 paper.

These printers have a two-year manufacturer’s warranty and they come with a supply of ink that will last for two years under average usage conditions. This is in the form of a set of high-capacity ink cartridges and a set of extra-high-capacity ink cartridges in the box as well as the starter cartridges to get your machine going. But with these machines, I always list out the cost of the cartridges because you may end up replacing the cartridges sooner than estimated due to practices like using them as the “short run printing press” including printing many photos or presentation materials which this printer is very adept at as you will see later on.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$699

Inks and Toners

The printer itself

Connectivity and Setup

The Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction printer connects directly to the host computer via USB 2.0. Or it can connect via a network using Ethernet or Wi-Fi with a best-case performance for a Wi-Fi segment being 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4).

It didn’t take long to get the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment printer set up, thanks to the instructions that came with the machine. This even included the use of the machine’s display to show how to prepare the ink cartridges and load the paper.

You still have to open the lid to connect the printer to any wired connection other than its power. This is something that has been common with all of the recent Brother multifunction inkjet printers, but it can confuse people who aren’t used to this kind of connection arrangement.

Paper Handling

The use of Brother’s landscape-printing approach for printing on common office paper sizes has allowed the printer to turn out documents very quickly. It also allows for a relatively-compact printer even though there is some overhang thanks to the INKVestment cartridges.

There is still a straight-through bypass feed on the back of the printer for using occasionally-used paper sizes and types.

Walk-up functions

Brother high-capacity INKVestment cartridges in place

There is the ability to copy as well as scan to or print from USB memory keys. As well, this printer has the ability to work with online services, mainly the “big-name” file-storage services and the main cloud-driven online notebooks like Evernote and OneNote.

The digital copying functionality supports book copying and ID-card copying but it still has the same problem associated with the rest of the Brother multifunction stable. That is where the scanner doesn’t scan to the edge of the glass platen, which is a limitation for most of us who line the original up against the edge of the glass in order to stabilise it during scanning or copying.

The fax-machine functionality which works with the plain-old telephone service or the T.37 email-based setup is very similar to what is offered in recent Brother multifunction printers. This includes the ability to use Dropbox, OneDrive or similar services to store received faxes but it could support a more comprehensive “fax-vault” function with the ability not to print incoming faxes out as they are received or to store to local storage media that can be encrypted.

Computer functions

I downloaded the Brother MFC-J5845DW printer’s drivers from Brother’s support Website and installed them from the downloaded package, with it working out properly. This meant it didn’t take long to get the printer up and running.

I have used the Brother MFC-J5845DW printer for Mopria-based driver-free printing from my Android phone and this worked very smoothly. Here, the printer was quickly discovered using the Mopria print software on the phone very quickly and I was able to immediately turn out a PDF file very quickly.

Print / scan speed and quality

I have used the Brother MFC-J5845DW to turn out a large print run and found that this printer is quick on the mark. I even noticed negligible dwell time between printing each side of a page when it turned out an auto-duplex print job with it printing on both sides of the paper. The documents came out very sharp for an inkjet but some people may not find them as sharp as a business-grade laser printer’s output.

I created a test page with lines at each margin on each side of the page and used that to identify if there is any page shift when the printer is printing on both sides of a page. This is important for those of us who take advantage of auto-duplexing for purposes beyond paper economy. This is where you use the printer for desktop-publishing jobs where you are creating things like luggage tags, door hangers and the like where you need to cut out a particular shape but you have the design on each side.

The Brother MFC-J5845DW exhibited a slight shift of a few millimetres between the front and the back along the long edge during this test. There wasn’t any of that shift on the short edge, illustrating that this kind of shift happens in the same direction as the paper is fed.

I have printed some test photos through the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction printer and they have come up on a par with the same images printed on the Brother MFC-J5720DW multifunction printer.

There is still strong colour saturation, which will earn its keep with brochure and presentation printing. But on this printer, the skin tones come up without being too red and that is without taking away the vibrancy from primary colours that exist in the same image. As well, the Brother MFC-J5845DW shows increased sharpness and definition which can underscore a perceived improvement in how accurate it reproduces the photos, proving that the four-ink inkjet printers like what Brother offers can yield some very good photo-printing output.

This test was showing that Brother is improving on how their office inkjet printers can handle presentation-grade and photo-grade print jobs where visual appeal and quality do matter. The MFC-J5845DW and its current INKVestment peers are working towards that holy grail of being the desktop short-run printing press for small businesses and community organisations.

Limitations And Points Of Improvement

Brother could then have their inkjet printers use Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) technology in order to allow the printers to work with these networks without reducing the network segment’s throughput and performance. This may be something that will come about in a subsequent product generation once the necessary silicon arrives.

As well, Brother could have their multifunction printers work as T.38 IP-based real-time fax endpoints especially as most phone setups are moving away from the “plain-old telephone system” technology to VoIP. They can also support a full “fax-vault” function especially as faxing is still valued by the medical and legal professions as a preferred means for exchanging highly-confidential documents “over the wire”.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

What I have seen of the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction inkjet printer and its peers is that it combines Brother’s inkjet printer technology improvements in one value-for-money unit. This is the high ink capacity approach offered by the INKVestment tank+cartridge ink-delivery platform alongside the landscape printing approach that improves printing speed for standard-size documents and provides the ability to print to A3 or similar-sized paper.

I would seriously consider the Brother MFC-J5845DW as a value-for-money high-ink-capacity inkjet multifunction printer that works well as a general-purpose A4-based printing workhorse but you want to occasionally turn out A3 print jobs.

The fact that it works on inkjet technology can be a bonus if you are placing emphasis on media flexibility especially when it comes to making hard copies of digital photos or printing presentation-grade work. This is where it performed exceptionally by yielding high-definition hard copies of the test photos.

I would also consider the Brother MFC-J6545DW full-A3 model as an ancillary “A3 specialist” printer for workplaces where an A4 colour laser printer or multifunction is being used as a regular document printer while you use that printer for the large paper sizes.

Article

Epson EcoTank ET-L355 printer

Epson: Cheap printers, expensive ink? Let’s turn that upside down | The Register

From the horse’s mouth

Epson UK

Product Page

Press Release

Epson USA

Product Page

My Comments

Epson is running a lineup of inkjet printers that break the rule of how inkjet printers are sold. Typically these printers are sold at a cheap price with the cost made up in how much you pay for the consumables.

But this lineup of piezo inkjet printers is sold at a premium and comes with 2 years worth of ink along with high-capacity ink tanks. The desktop printers use a box on the side for housing the ink tanks and use a similar pipe system to recent HP OfficeJet, Brother and other Epson printers. It is also driven by Epson’s experience in industrial inkjet printing presses and wide-format printers.

Epson EcoTank ET-L555 office printer

Models already available in the UK sell at £299.99 including VAT for the premium ET-L555 office model that has an automatic document feeder and £219.99 for the home model without the automatic document feeder. The ET-2500 will go for US$379 while the ET-4550 which has all the features will go for US$499 in the US.

Personally, I would like to see Epson offer the EcoTank or SuperTank high-capacity printing as a user-installable option for some regular office inkjet printers so that those of us who want to push these printers as short-run printing presses can do so.

Similarly, using the EcoTank system along with quality-optimised printing for promotional material could raise the concept of having that desktop printer earn its keep as an organisational short-run printing press. Oh yeah, you should know where to obtain replacement ink for these printers and refill their ink tanks promptly to avoid airlocks.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother MFC-6720DW A3 colour inkjet multifunction printer which is the latest in Brother’s A3-capable multifunction inkjet printers

The model I am reviewing is the second-tier model in Brother’s new A3 multifunction range with the Brother MFC-J6520DW economy model having only one paper tray and the top-shelf Brother MFC-J6920DW having single-pass duplex scanning and NFC / Wi-Fi Direct mobile connectivity

Prices

Printer

Brother MFC-J6520DW: AUD$279 (Single paper tray)

Brother MFC-J6720DW: AUD$299 (Two paper trays)

Brother MFC-J6920DW: AUD$429 (Two paper trays, single-pass duplex scan, NFC support)

Inks and Toners

It is also worth noting that the Brother LC-133 series ink cartridges, which are standard-capacity cartridges for these printers are compatible with most of Brother’s newly-released consumer and small-business inkjet printer range whether as standard cartridges for some models or high-capacity for others. This may allow you to buy and run different Brother inkjet printers from that range yet be able to buy the same lot of cartridges to replenish them which can be a bonus if your supplier does sell them in quantity at a cost-effective price.

The printer itself

Setup

Brother MFC-J6720DW loaded with documents

Like most of the recent Brother multifunction printers, the trend is to place the network and USB computer-connectivity sockets within the machine and have the machine open up in a clamshell manner to expose these sockets. But Brother also moved the telephony connections used for regular telephony-based faxing to this same area. This can confuse some users who are installing the printer for the first time or moving the printer to a newer location.

Other than that, this printer worked well when it came to setting it up. But Brother still needs to work on the computer software so it doesn’t time out and throw an error message if it can’t find the printer quickly enough or prefer to use the operating system to discover the hardware.

This printer, like the other Brother A3-capable inkjet multifunction printers uses a paper tray that extends to a large size for A3 or collapses for A4 and smaller paper. As well, you load the ink cartridges in a compartment that is at the front of the machine, moving away from the need to lift heavy lids to replace them. Personally, I would like the printer to identify if multiple new cartridges are being replaced at a time which can come in handy if you were doing a few large printing projects and you needed to replace a lot of cartridges.

Walk-up functions – can be started from printer’s control surface

I have done quite a few copying jobs such as some family trees for someone who lives with me and this has yielded high-quality copies although it doesn’t print to the absolute edge and can clip the original at the edge. As well, it “copies to memory” so that you can remove the original document before the copies are printed which can come in handy with multiple-copy copy jobs. Even the ID copy function worked properly with you having to keep the card in the same corner when you turn it over.

Like with most of the recent Brother printers, there could be an option for the printer to keep the same settings rather than timeout to default settings. This would make things easier if you were doing larger copy, scan or fax jobs where you have to spend some time organising the original documents to be worked with. Luckily there is the ability to “preset” common setups as shortcuts which can make this workflow quicker and easier.

For that matter, when you copy, fax or scan from the glass platen rather than the automatic document feeder, you have to position the original lengthways. This confused me initially due to using the Brother MFC-J4710DW which was the first to use landscape printing and required the original in “portrait” mode.

The fax functionality works both with the regular telephone, offering Super G3 with a best case of colour A3 or T.37 store-and-forward with monochrome A4 faxing. If the standard was extended, it could support JPEG colour faxing. The T.37 store-and-forward faxing function is available with a free firmware update from Brother’s Web site.

Like other recent Brother inkjet printers, these printers implement the Web Connect functionality which allows them to be used with a lot of hosted services like Dropbox and Facebook. This comes in to its own with the “download-to-print” functionality for photos or PDFs that these services can offer.

Computer functions

The software that Brother supplies with this printer and most of the other printers gives up too easily when it is searching for the device. It could use the host operating system’s hardware-discovery methods to find the printer.

As for printing, it can turn out most jobs quickly but you would have to set the print driver to the “best quality” if you want to turn out “presentation-grade” colour work.

The A3 functionality comes a long way for larger graphics work including most signage but use the “Booklet” printing with A3 and you turn out a double-sided four-page A4 booklet which could save you money or give you a desktop-publishing bonus.

For operation speed, it turns out most most business documents very quickly but takes a slightly longer time to turn out “best-quality” work. Even turning out the A4 booklet on A3 paper came out properly and quickly.

I have printed some test photos and noticed that this printer does work heavier on the yellow and turn out a darker image. There is still a bit of a redder flesh-tone in people’s faces and this may have an impact with turning out best-quality brochures. For a small-business inkjet printer, these don’t beat the previously-reviewed HP OfficeJet 8600a as a high-quality photo/brochure printer.

Limitations And Points Of Improvement

One area I would like to see improvement take place is with the software where the onus for discovering the printer is placed on Windows rather than the printer’s software.

These Brother printers like the MFC-J6720Dw could implement a straight-through paper path for their automatic document feeders, especially with machines that have the single-pass duplex scanner. This makes them easier to trust with documents that are on fragile paper. Similarly, they could benefit from increased flash memory or a dedicated SDXC card slot for “fax vault” functionality, caching of print queues and similar functionality.

Also a midrange Brother A3 multifunction printer could still implement A4 duplex scanning with A3 one-side scanning as has been achieved with the prior generation of Brother A3 multifunction printers such as tbe Brother MFC-J6910DW that I previously reviewed. This is while a premium model could still support the full-duplex operation for all paper sizes.

Similarly Brother could work on these printers and the rest of their business inkjet printer range to make them answer HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8600 multifunction printer when it comes to printing brochures, flyers and similar marketing collateral. They could achieve this by making the colours more vibrant in most printing modes especially with coated or gloss / matt paper and being able to handle multiple sheets of special-media paper whether in the manual-bypass tray or the paper drawer.

This is due to inkjet printing being material-flexible due to the absence of heat in the printing process. It would be highly relevant with the Brother A3 inkjet printer range because of that paper size appealing to noticeboard or shop-window use or to creation of A4 booklets when the printer is set up to print in “Booklet” mode on A3 paper.

Another way that Brother could “cut in” with their A3 printers woudl be to provide an A3 single-function printer that can answer a lot of the “wide-carriage” A3 inkjet printers offered by Canon and HP or a DCP-series A3 multifunction printer without fax abilities to come in to its own as a cost-effective A3 multifunction when A3 faxing is not on the agenda.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

Any of us who handle large documents regularly would find this latest range of Brother’s A3-capable multifunction printers earning their keep. For most of use, the Brother MFC-J6720DW would come in handy especially if we are also using it as the main printer. The MFC-J6520DW costs $20 cheaper but I would consider it a false economy due to having to switch paper when you want to print on a different paper size. The MFC-J6920DW, which costs significantly more, is for those of us who copy or scan a lot of double-sided documents or want the ability to work with Android-based mobile devices in a standalone manner.

You could easily partner one of these printers with Brother’s HL-4150CDN or HL-4570CDW colour laser printers or the cheaper HL-3150CDN or HL-3170CDW for a high-performance colour desktop-publishing setup for your small business or other organisation. This is where you can use the laser printer with laser-capable media for high print runs while you use these inkjet printers for smaller print runs, large A3 documents, double-sided single-sheet A5 flyers or A4 multi-page booklets on A3 paper and similar work.

Article

Home inkjet printer fabricates circuit boards on photo paper | ComputerWorld

Video

My Comments

There have been a few methods for building electronic-circuit prototypes which involved a “breadboard” of some form and having the components anchored down with either mere friction, with wires inserted in a spring or screwed down with a screw and washer. This was either used to teach electrical and electronics concepts or to “rough out” an electronic-circuit idea and having it work properly before spending time on building a printed circuit board for permanent deployment.

Now Microsoft have come about with a method of making printed-circuit boards using the common inkjet printing method that most printers (including a lot of the ones reviewed here) implement. Here, users could design a circuit using a regular computer and print this out on the photo paper. But the inkjet printer would have to be equipped with a cartridge that holds a special conductive ink and think it is printing something in black and white.

You could then think that you have to solder down the various regular components like diodes, resistors, capacitors and transistors, punching their wires through the paper. But this could prove to be difficult with heat-based soldering and wires attached to the components. Instead, Microsoft and 3M are implementing “stick-on” components that are conductive through the tape as a way to build the circuit that work in a similar way to a SIM card where there is conductive areas on that card.

There would be the requirement to use card-grade paper for improved mechanical reliability as well as the ability to connect regular wire to these circuits whether to connect regular batteries, switches and the like or connect between two circuits. Another issue would be to provide the conductive-ink cartridges for most of the currently-issued inkjet printers so that one can get going with using these printers for turning out the printed circuit boards.

But what I see of this is that equipment used by most computer users could come in to its own with learning electronics or building electronics circuits, especially “short-order” circuits. At the moment, the idea hasn’t been commercialised but the kind of people who could make it sell would include the educational sector or electronics shops of the Maplin, Jaycar or Radio Shack kind.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother DCP-J552DW multifunction inkjet printer which is part of Brother’s newer budget-focused series of home / SOHO-positioned multifunction printers and “fax-machine replacements”

Most of the printers in this series have auto-duplex printing and Wi-Fi wireless connectivity . The top-most models in this series offer an automatic-document feeder and, in some cases, Ethernet connectivity while the flagship fax-equipped model can support NFC-based printing for your Android-based mobile devices.

Prices

Printer

The machine’s standard price AUD$129

Inks and Toners

Officeworks does sell a pack which has each of the colours as a high-capacity cartridge for AUD$78.31.along with a pack that has all of the cartridges plus a supply of “snapshot” paper for AUD$126.

The printer itself

Initial setup and functionality notes

Like most of the Brother inkjet printers, the DCP-J552DW is easy to set up. You may find this confusing at first when you receive a brand-new machine that your starter supply of ink cartridges are taped in a bag above the paper tray and effectively in the printerrather than strewn in the box.

Ink cartridges loaded in the front

These inks are able to be installed quickly through the use of a front-loading compartment. But it takes five to ten minutes for the Brother printer to effectively get itself ready when have just installed the ink cartridges and is due to the nature of the piezoelectric inkjet system.

Like the Brother DCP-J925DW, this printer uses an A4 paper tray which also has a mezzanine tray for loading a small supply of “snapshot-size” inkjet paper for printing out copies of your digital photos.

As for integration with the network, you are able to use the printer’s touchscreen to enter your network’s parameters or start a WPS setup routine. Like an incresing number of network-capable consumer multifunction printers, the Brother DCP-J552DW uses Wi-Fi wireless connectivity only.

Walk-up functions – can be started from printer’s control surface

There is the usual collection of “walk-up” functions available on this printer and, for that matter, this printer does them the right way. Herem the user interface is through a touchscreen which offers a highly-flexible level of functionality. There is even the ability to set up “preset tasks” for common scanning and copying scenarios such as double-sided copy or ID copy.

For copying, there is a lid that you can pull up by its sides in order to improve the quality of copies made from bound materials. Very often, this is a job that is often performed to make recipes, music pieces and similar work available in a portable manner or to avoid losing or damaging the cookbook or music book when you are using it.

Businesses also appreciate the ability to use ID copy which works well without needing to reposition the card in another location on the glass platen. It could work best if you had the card in a vertical position on the glass rather than the horizontal position.

Printing from Web services

Like the previously reviewed Brother MFC-J410DW landscape-printing multifunction printer, this unit supports the ability to print from Web services. Here, you use the Brother Web Connect page to link your printer with Dropbox, Facebook and co to print resources on these sites. This is actually the formation of Brother establishing a Web app platform with scan-to-email and outline copy / scan functionality.

In my opinion, who knows whether Brother will link all of their device classes i.e. these printers, the label printers and their craft equipment especially the high-end embroidery machines with this app platform.

Computer functions

The driver’s setup routine for the Brother DCP-J552DW leaves a lot to be desired because it doesn’t automatically detect the printer quickly. Here it required me to enter in the printer’s IP address or Node name, these details which I was able to find on the printer’s control panel display under Settings – Wi-Fi. Other than that, the driver and other software worked properly when I had it in place.

The supplied software does appear easy to use in a similar vein to what is typically offiered with this class of printer. There is even a “pop-up” help function so you can seek further help with the printer. Of course, this software doesn’t place unneccessary visual or performance load on the computer by running unnecessary print monitors.

Print quality

The Brother DCP-J552DW printer turned out the print jobs pretty slowly and dwelled for a few seconds after slightly retracting the paper when printing both sides of a document in a similar vein to previous Canon printers that I have reviewed.

I have run a test concerning the printer’s auto-duplex abilities and there is no unwanted shift going on with the paper when it is printing on both sides. This makes it work well for turning out luggage tags and other documents that implement odd page sizes. As well, it covered the whole sheet of paper when printing a document on both sides.

For document printing, the Brother DCP-J552DW works well, yielding sharp text but doesn’t yield the strong sharp colours. But phtot printing tends to come up with reduced contrast and definition along with less of the colour saturation compared to some of the other consumer multifunctions that I have tested. It is more like a lower-tier office multifunction printer.

I have done a few scanning jobs using the Brother DCP-J552DW and have noticed these observations. Firstly, if you are scanning a document, the on-device user interface allows for multi-page PDF scans by asking the user if they want to scan another page after the printer has scanned the current page. If they touch “Yes” on the screen, the printer will prompt them to load the next page and start scanning. For accuracy, the printer performed as expected for an average multifunction device for both the photos and the business documents.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

For connectivity, I would like to see Brother implement HomePlug AV2 in their SOHO printers as an alternative network technology, or resist the temptation to eschew the Ethernet socket on these printers because Wi-Fi wireless networking doesn’t always work out due to the nature of the radio technology. Similarly, Brother could move towards support for 5GHz Wi-Fi technology as this band opens up as an uncluttered home-network Wi-Fi band.

Like with most of the multifunction printers, I would like to see these printers have increased onboard memory to cache print jobs to avoid waiting on host computers or networks for the data. This can allow for quicker printing and support heavy print runs more easily.

To improve on useability, the Brother DCP-J552DW and its peers could benefit from contrasted page marking on the edge of the scanning platen, especially the “reference corner” of the platen. This is so you can easily know where to position documents for scanning.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I am finding that the Brother DCP-J552DW and the MFC-J470DW fax-capable peer fit in well as a budget or entry-level printer that could fit in well in the home as a cost-effective solution for a common printer for that household. This is although I am seeing this machines trying to snap at the heels of HP’s Photosmart series of multifunction printers like the Photosmart 5520 with the 4-cartridge print mechanisms.

Here, it would perform well as a regular document machine rather than a photo-printing machine and, due to the use of individual ink cartridges for each colour, could be the cost-effective printer that you can still afford to run.

.It would be better value to run this printer primarily on the Brother LC-133 series of high-capacity cartridges to gain better value out of it. Even buying a multi-pack may also come across as being worth it so you keep an extra cartridge on hand for each colour to avoid problems that can easily happen with piezoelectric inkjet printing mechanisms.

Introduction

The Brother MFC-J4710DW colour multifunction printer that I am reviewing is based on a new paper-feed concept where the paper is fed through the machine by the long edge and marked across the long edge when the document is printed, which would be described as being “landscape orientation”. The key advantages of this design yield a relatively compact machine compared to most desktop inkjet printers which are much deeper as well as a quicker turnaround when the document is printed.

I am reviewing the MFC-J4710DW which is the top of the line model in this series and this has two paper trays as well as Wi-Fi networking. Lesser models like the MFC-J4510DW have a single paper tray as well as omitting the single-pass duplex automatic document feeder. The cheapest models like the MFC-J4410DW also have a slower print speed for those who don’t value the quick turnaround.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$299

Inks

The printer itself

Loaded deck view with lengthways document output

As I mentioned before, the Brother MFC-J4710DW prints along the long edge of the A4 sheet of paper. There are two paper trays so you can use different media types or sizes like A4 and A5 or letterhead and regular paper.

Installation and setup

USB and Ethernet connections under scanner bed

Like with the previously reviewed Brother MFC-J6910DW, this printer uses a cavity in the top of the machine under the scanner bed for connecting USB or Ethernet cables. This is different to the common practice of having these connections on the back of the printer and may impede in having them easily accessible if you wish to move the machine between different locations. Of course, the power and telephone connections are kept easily accessible.

For network connectivity, this printer supports Ethernet and 802.11g/n Wi-Fi connectivity. It also is ready for IPv6 networks which are becoming the norm for business networks and will become the norm with the next-generation broadband Internet.

Print cartridges loaded from the front

Like the other inkjet multifunction printers that Brother offers and the newer HP OfficeJet small-business Inkjet printers, this printer has you load the cartridges via the front of the machine. This is a method which I applaud because you don’t have to lift a lid to change the ink cartridges when you run out of ink and this printer doesn’t require much effort to remove or insert the cartridges. It didn’t require much effort to load the cartridges in the printer which would work well with its useability.

Walk-up functions – can be started from printer’s control surface

I have done a few copying jobs with this printer and have found that it could benefit from a few improvements when it comes to locating the document on the glass platen for copying.

Here, you have to have the markings for where you locate the documents for scanning and copying in a contrasting colour so you can find where to position that document.

As well, the automatic document feeder can appear to be confusing for the unitiatied especially when it comes to locating the document. Here, you have to make sure that it is between the light-grey document guides and this issue may also be of concern with printers that use ultra-compact automatic document feeders. As well, the pages that are finished with are appear to be on top of the pages that are yet to be scanned which can be very confusing when you wish to remove pages that are finished with and / or add more pages to the job during a scan or copy of a large document.

It has copying features like optimised book copy, “copy to A3” and ID copy which are features I would start to expect from most copying devices. The optimised book copy feature worked very well when I was doing some copying of recipes from some cookbooks for someone who was cooking these recipes at another kitchen. It was also very accurate when it came to copying the documents.

The Brother MFC-J4710DW supports Super G3 colour faxing over the regular telephone line and has the expected capabilities of a business fax machine. As well, you can download a free add-on from Brother’s Website to enable it to become an endpoint for T.37 “fax-via-email” services. This includes the ability to forward faxes received via email to regular fax machines that don’t support this technology using the phone line.

Memory card slots and USB walk-up-printing / device-charging port

There is of course memory card slots and a USB port to facilitate “walk-up” printing of images and PDF documents from USB thumbdrives or memory cards. This also has the ability to print from PictBridge-capable cameras, but can work as a charging point for your smartphone, tablet or other gadgets even when the printer is in a quiescent standby mode.  These are hidden behind a black drop-down flap on the front of the printer.

Web-based services

Brother supports integration with the popular Web-hosted storage, photo-sharing and social-networking services with this printer. This setup operates in a manner which I like and I was pleased with it after I tested it with my Facebook account to print 2 images from an album of mine.

Here, you don’t have to enter your login parameters in to the device, which avoids using a small touchscreen keyboard for this effort. Instead, you use the Brother Web Connect page to enrol your printer with the cloud storage, social network or other service you have your account with. Once you log in to your service, a user interface will come up to ask you whether to allow this software and service to have access to your resources and those resources you are entitled to have access to. Then, if you give the go-ahead, you are given a temporary registration number which you key in to your printer on its control surface.

Then, at the printer, you select “Web” then select the service you want to use and touch the “Register/Delete” option. This is where you key in this registration number and give the account a known name and have the option to set a PIN to prevent unauthorised access to the account. With the photo-sharing services and the social networks, you have the ability to print out the pictures or download them to removeable media that is plugged in to the printer. As well, you can scan or upload the pictures to the photo sharing service or social network.

If you use Dropbox, Evernote or a similar service, you also have the ability to turn out hard copy of PDF documents and scan hard copy documents to these services as PDF files. Personally, I would like to see the ability to upload PDFs from removeable media that is plugged in to the printer.

It is one of a few method that I would like to see for linking users’ accounts on Web-based services with devices like printers or consumer-electronics devices in order to benefit from these services. Here, it exploits the reduced user interfaces that these devices typically have such as a numeric keypad or a D-pad by avoiding the need to “pick” letters on a virtual keyboard or be nimble with the numeric keypad for text entry when you sign in to Facebook, Picasa or Dropbox from one of these devices.

As for loading images from a Facebook album, it can take a bit of time to show up the pictures from that album but the pictures were gradually loaded one by one. But once you chose the pictures to print, the print duration was very similar to what I would expect for turning out photos.

Working with mobile devices

As for working with a mobile device, the Brother MFC-J4710DW printer worked properly with the iPrint&Scan mobile app on my Android phone. This was more so when it came to turning out photos or PDFs held on that phone.

There is also native support for Apple’s AirPrint technology as well as Google Cloud Print technology which can go a long way with printing from the iOS and Android devices.

Computer functions

Although I use the latest driver software from Brother’s Web site rather than what was on the CD in the box. I had found that the software had loaded very quickly without noticeable issues on my Windows 8 computer.

The ControlCenter 4 desktop-scan software could benefit from a “continuous scan” option available not as a custom setting but as an option immediately selectable from the scanning screen. HP’s desktop scanning software has the option to add pages offered as a default option and you click “Finish” to have the file completed and saved at the end of a scan job. Here, this would come in handy when you manually scan multi-page documents using the scanner platen due to factors like odd paper sizes, bound material or fragile documents; or pass a large multi-sheet document through the automatic document feeder.

The scanning procedure was very quick and accurate and performed properly even when I was scanning some very old fragile documents to PDF files.

As for the print driver, this software didn’t show any unnecessary dialogue boxes or pop-up messages during the printing procedure.

Print quality and reliability observations

This printer takes up less desk space compared to a conventional inkjet multifunction printer

A 30-page printout on one side of the paper had yielded a quick reliable turnout but the colour may not appear to be as accurate as it should be for the printout. The high-speed turnout was brought on by the ability to work along the long edge of the paper.

A test that I do with printers that have auto-duplex facilities is to have the printer print a “download-to-print” door-hanger campaign document master on both sides of the paper using this function. Here, I look for any shift between the front and the back of the document so as to determine whether the duplexer mechanism is causing any unwanted shifting between the front and back of the document which may concern those of us who are using this function as part of creating odd-shaped desktop publishing projects like bookmarks, luggage tags or door hangers. I had noticed a very slight shift between the back of the document is slightly forward on the long edge compared to the front when I completed this test on this Brother printer.

Landscape document output on the Brother printer compared to the portrait document output on an orthodox multifunction printer

The Brother MFC-J4710DW also had passed the reliable printing test where I had it print a 90-page PDF using auto-duplex. This was important because a lot of people may think that the “long-edge” printing may be too “cutting-edge” to be considered reliable in a first-generation implementation of this technology. It has successfully completed the test without causing any worries.

When I printed out the test photos on the glossy paper, I noticed a strong yellow overtone on the pictures which was noticeable on the white parts of the image. As well, the flesh tones tended to become a bit more red. There also wasn’t much of the sharpness and definition in the images. I had done this test using the “best” settings for the printer driver rather than the normal settings and it may be a driver-specific issue. When it came to turning out images from the Internet using the printer’s control panel, there wasn’t much of that yellow overtone.

I had to use the manual bypass slot at the back of the printer to load the glossy paper sheets and this required me to load each sheet one at a time. Here, I was able to see the “long-edge” printing feature in action when it came to handling the pictures.

The big question that is likely to be asked about the Brother MFC-J4710DW and its peers is whether the “sideways print” / “long-edge print” / landscape print technology is too “cutting-edge” for reliable operation? Personoally, I had found this to be reliable for a first-generation implementation of this setup.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

The Brother MFC-J4710DW could benefit from a few extra features and these may be issued with subsequent-generations of this print setup.

One feature that would come a long way would be to allow more than one sheet of paper to be in the manual feed slot for situations where you may be printing many multi-page documents on A3 or special media.

It could also benefit from a document rest that automatically extends and retracts in a similar way to what happens with the HP Envy printers. This can keep the printer having that compact shape that it is known for/

The on-device software could benefit from a few useability improvements. For example, the Web Connect functionality could allow for searching or sorting “other users” on a social network when you are hunting down pictures to print from a “friend’s” album.

The other issue that is of concern not just with this machine but with all of the network-enabled multi-function printers that have fax ability is to support Internet-based time synchronisation. Here, you could just then determine what time zone you are in and the printer sets its clock for you automatically like what happens with most desktop and mobile computer operating systems. Similarly, a lot of these printers could benefit from increased memory or flash memory in order to allow for efficient copy, fax and “walk-up” printing functionality as well as being able to maintain its own network print queue.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I would recommend that the Brother MFC-J4710DW or its peers be considered as an option when you are considering a general-purpose desktop multifunction printer for the small business, professional’s office or a home office. This is especially where space is at a premium or a large desktop multifunction printer doesn’t look the part in your office space’s aesthetics.

The cheaper models may work well if you are on a budget and don’t place value on printing speed or simply have a high-end laser printer serving your high-speed printing needs.

HP OfficeJet 150 mobile all-in-one printer

A device that you may consider purchasing for your portable computer would be a mobile printer.

What are these mobile printers

A mobile printer, like the Canon PiXMA iP100 single-function printer or the HP OfficeJet 150 all-in-one that I reviewed, is typically a compact inkjet or thermal printer that is able to run on internal batteries or AC power or, in some cases, car DC power through an external power supply. These typically are the size of a shoebox and connect to the host computer through a USB wired or Bluetooth wireless connection. In some cases, some of the thermal variants are the same size as a stick of wood.

These printers typically use either a dual-cartridge colour inkjet or a direct thermal printing system which can be costly to run if you use them frequently.

As for features. the current inkjet models have ended up with various forms of functionality that allows them to be of service to gadgets like digital cameras without the need of a computer. For example, they will have PictBridge printing ability so you can print from your digital camera using the camera’s control surface. A few of the printers like the HP OfficeJet 150 have standalone “print from removable media” ability so you can print from a USB memory key or SD card.

Some of the printers that have the ability to scan documents will typically have the ability to scan them to the computer or, increasingly, to removable media like an SD card.

Why do they exist

If you wish to use a printer at your customer’s or business partner’s site, you need to make sure that your laptop computer has the printer drivers for that printer. This problem hasn’t been rectified with a universal graphics-capable printer driver that can work with all printers yet.

As well, a lot of places which offer public-access printers can charge a princely sum for you to use these printers and a lot of us don’t want to impose on a client’s resources for our hard-copy needs.

Who would need to use these printers

Canon PiXMA iP-100 mobile printer

If you use a computer on the road but always need to be able to turn out hard copy like invoices, receipts or contract documents that you give to your customer, these printers would suit your needs.

A printer with PictBridge or “print from removable media” abilities may come in handy if you need to turn out a draft print of a photo you took with your digital camera. An example of this may include photographing something you need to highlight to your customer and you want the large print so they can see it easily.

The scanning feature would come in handy for anyone who wants to take a hard-copy document to electronic form. Some applications may include sending a receipt or work-consent form that was signed by the customer via email to the office for filing.

Similarly, scanning a fuel-station’s till receipt to electronic form could be par for the course when it comes to keeping track of work expenses using your bookkeeping software and these printers could make it easier to do this chore “there and then” when you fill up your vehicle for example. This can then avoid the situation where you have a glove box full of fuel receipts yet to be “booked in” to your accounting system.

What you should know about using these printers

The mobile printers are best used as secondary or auxiliary printers that are intended for on-road use rather than as the main printer for your computing life. The reasons I would give for this is that they typically use consumables that are more expensive than regular desktop printers.

For example, the inkjet printers use a two-cartridge colour-printing system where you have to replace the colour cartridge if you run out of one of the colours. The thermal printers may require you to use thermal paper that comes as A4 cut sheets rather than as the classic “fax roll”.

Similarly these printers would take a longer time to print or scan the document than a regular desktop printer due to the use of smaller low-powered motors optimised for battery-powered use. The also can continuously feed a small number of sheets of paper which may make them unsuitable for turning out large documents.

At the time of writing, these printers don’t have any support for network-driven document printing so they wouldn’t be able to work properly with the typical smartphone or tablet that uses a mobile operating system.

Conclusion

The mobile printers are a fantastic computer accessory for your laptop computer but they don’t work well as a primary printer device when you are at home, at the office or at the shop. Rather they are best suited for printing small documents at the client’s site or in the hotel room.