Tag: Brother INKVestment continuous inking system

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.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother MFC-J1300DW INKVestment colour inkjet multifunction printer. This is Brother’s attempt at a high-ink-capacity approach to inkjet printing where there is an ink tank for each colour. But, unlike Epson who use separate tanks that are filled from a bottle, they use cartridges which hold some of the ink and the ink is transferred to a holding tank before it is used.

There is the Brother DCP-J1100DW which doesn’t have the fax ability and may be an economical path. Luckily it has the automatic document feeder which is of importance if you do want to scan or copy multiple pages at once.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$300

Inks and Toners

The printer itself

Connectivity and Setup

The printer can be connected directly to the host computer using a USB cable. But it can be connected to your network via Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi wireless. This supports the ability to directly enter your Wi-Fi network’s passphrase as part of a wizard-based setup routine on the control panel.

Like with most of Brother’s inkjet printers, the cables for the USB or Ethernet connection are snaked in under the scanner platen which may be seen as being awkward for a newcomer.

Ink cartridges as part of Brother INKVestment system – no need to deal with ink bottles

The Brother INKVestment approach offered by the MFC-J1300DW inkjet multifunction printer is based around high-capacity cartridges that offload ink in to tanks integrated in the machine. This is based upon a continuous-inking approach that Epson and others use for their “tank-based” printers but uses the simplicity associated with cartridge-based printers. It meant that there were no special procedures needed to be performed to get the printer up and running.

Paper Handling

Being a compact printer, the Brother MFC-J1300DW uses the traditional portrait feed-through method that most inkjet printers use. As well, it has a small A4 paper tray for storing paper, but this can be a limitation if you expect it to print a large job.

There is a low-profile automatic document feeder that works as expected and can come in handy for copying or scanning multiple pages or sending a fax.

Walk-up functions

A low-profile design is what this printer is about

There is support for Brother’s cloud-driven Web Connect functionality. This includes cloud-hosted scan-to-email, a fax-vault function with the ability to receive faxes to email or online storage, amongst other things.

A problem that can appear with “walk-up” scanning directly to removeable media is that the pictures don’t come out with a similar kind of quality that you would expect if you scan to a regular computer. I had noticed this with a project where I was to scan some pictures for broadcast use and found that you can’t determine the level of JPEG compression for pictures stored to the removable medium. This could be rectified through the use of an option to determine the JPEG compression level for SDXC cards or large-capacity high-speed USB devices along with support for USB 3.0 for the “walk-up” USB interface.

There is a USB port and SD card slot for printing photos from memory cards but this function is very limited. It doesn’t support DPOF printing where you can set up a print order on your camera, nor does it support PictBridge printing from your camera. As well, I could only see the first 300 pictures on an SDHC card that has 1099 pictures on it available for printing. What seems to be happening is that the user class who value the high-quality digital cameras is being forgotten about when it comes to walk-up printing functionality.

The Brother MFC-J1300DW is able to work as a Super G3 fax machine but doesn’t support T.37 or T.38 IP-fax endpoint abilities. It may not be seen as an important feature except for some professions like the legal and medical profession who do rely on fax transmission of documents. This is augmented with a “fax vault” function that allows received faxes to be forwarded to an online-storage service like Dropbox or an email address, but this function requires forwarded faxes to be printed locally by the machine as they arrive.

I would personally require this forwarding-to-online-storage function to have an option of not printing faxes successfully forwarded to online storage. This would be of value for out-of-hours fax reception in an environment where there is a risk of confidential faxes being seen by the wrong eyes. It could also use an SSD or SD card as an alternative to these options where you don’t want confidential material on an online service or via an insecure email setup.

Computer and mobile-device functions

I have installed the drivers from Brother’s Website for this printer on to both my Windows 10 computer and a friend’s Macintosh running one of the newer versions of MacOS which was to be used by them to scan some photos. Here, the driver-installation procedure went according to plan for both platforms.

I used my Samsung Android mobile phone to print out an email using the Mopria driver-free printing protocol and this setup worked properly via the home network. Here, the Mopria subsystem discovered the printer properly and turned out the document as expected.

Print / scan speed and quality

The print speed was very typical for an average inkjet printer that uses the orthodox printing arrangement rather than the newer landscape printing arrangement.  Here, it still turned out a sharp document for each print job I had sent to it.

I kept an eye on how this printer handles two-sided printing, especially when it comes to any “drifting” between the front and back of the page. There wasn’t any of that issue with this machine which would make it work properly with desktop-publishing jobs involving oddly-shaped documents like bookmarks or hang-tags.

I have test-printed two photos on to photo-grade paper and have found that there is the sharpness and definition in the images. The pictures do come out bright but the colour saturation could be improved slightly especially when handling reds.

I have scanned some photos with this printer and have found that there are problems with handling high-contrast photos especially if they are the kind of snapshot prints you get from a minilab. It may be a problem associated with most consumer scanners especially when it comes to reflective material.

Limitations And Points Of Improvement

This baseline home printer could be improved upon through the use of landscape printing. It is more so if the goal is to make this class of home multifunction printer more compact. As well, it could benefit from a “mezzanine” photo-printing tray like what the previous Brother home MFC printers offered along with having a deeper paper tray so you can have a larger amount of paper on board.

Having a higher-capacity paper tray can exploit the INKVestment system further by allowing for larger print runs to be fulfilled. Here, it would work well towards the end of school or college / university semesters where there is the likelihood of large assignments being printed out, whether at a proof-reading stage or for handing in.

Similarly, having the output tray as a separate item that is integrated with the printer rather than being attached to the paper tray can make the printer easier to load. This could also allow Brother to innovate further by designing an output tray that automatically extends when a print job is about to be turned out and retracts when the documents are removed.

Most of these Brother printers could support SMB or HTTP-based scanning to or printing from network and Internet resources. A feature like that could make more use of NAS systems as a digital document archive. Similarly, Brother could maintain interest in the standards associated with walk-up printing of digital images from cameras , be it PictBridge wired connectivity or DPOF removable-media-based print orders. This would earn its keep with printing out “there-and-then” prints of photos you took with your digital camera.

A question that can easily crop up with the Brother “INKVestment” approach is the cost of buying replacement ink cartridges at a later time like after that promised year of use. Here, it will be about whether it would be cost-effective to buy newer cartridges for the printer or simply to replace it with a machine of similar standard. But I have found that the cost to replace all cartridges on this printer wouldn’t be more than the initial purchase price of this machine, thus it doesn’t appear to be “disposable”.

Similarly, using the tank approach in the INKVestment system could allow for the ability to replace empty cartridges while there is ink in the tank so as to cater for heavy print runs. This could be facilitated through the use of an indicator that shows whether a cartridge is empty while there is reserve ink in the tank. Even an option for higher-capacity cartridges can come in handy where there is a situation of peak usage.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I expect that the Brother MFC-J1300DW INKVestment colour inkjet multifunction printer is being positioned as a general-purpose home or home-office printer with the focus on a long time between replacing ink. Here, I would see it work well as a multifunction printer to be kept in a study or similar location and handle a typical household’s print requirements.