I have had this printer for a couple of weeks.
Selecting it was a bear because of all of the disparate reviews, biased websites, and crazy comments about all of the different brands. Trying to find the "perfect" one was definitely going down the rabbit hole! Part of the reason I selected this one is that I liked the idea of fair ink pricing, as well as not having to replace the cartridges very often.
I was a bit scared because of some of the comments I saw (including a number of single stars!)
I can say that I am very glad I purchased this printer. The print quality is fine, the ability to print double-sided prints is AMAZING at this price point, the quality of the scans is great, and not a single problem. I will admit that the color prints are not professional photo-quality (probably why the cartridge lasts so long!) but I expected that. You can get very high quality color printers, but they will cost much more, and definitely eat through your ink in a heartbeat.
I don't understand people - some of the comments are clearly old OS, user error, and poor infrastructure issues ("It was difficult to set up on my Windows 7 system...." Um Windows 7 is 8 years old... how about updating your computer? "It was hard to set up with my WiFi..." I am not sure how that is Brother's problem...? WiFi is set up over the network by the user on the user's device...) yet they rate the printer lower because of it. Yes, this is not a commercial-quality printer, but it is also not priced that way. It is a home-use printer, and performs (and is priced) just perfectly for that.
No problems with WiFi - I have 2 MAC's, 1 PC, 3 tablets, and 2 iPhones that can print from this device over my home network.
Bravo Brother!
Great product so far! I've had this printer for about a week and so far I'm very impressed. I had a lot of printers over the years and all of them have been HP. After destroying my old HP printer by putting off brand ink in it (their ink and new ink refill program are really expensive), I decided to try a Brother. I print a decent volume of items, but usually in batches, so I may not print much for a few months, then print a couple hundred pages in a couple days. With the HP auto refill program it just didn't make sense for my ink usage. I decided to try this Brother because it includes 2400 pages of black and 1200 pages of color worth of ink.
My first impressions of this device out of the box is how can it be this small? I've gotten used to the HP Officejet 8000 series, which is at least more than double the size of the Brother. I have a small home office, so the space is much appreciated. The build quality also seems to be a little better than the HP printers. There is not as much paper storage in the tray, but there's plenty for me. The print quality is great for what I have printed so far. Document with text look good and crisp, even in fast mode. I also tried to print an edgeless 4x6 and it turned out great.
Scanning on this printer is easy and painless. I was amazed at the speed the ADF scans, especially compared to my old HP. The included PageManager software is even pretty helpful, which is uncommon in my experience for printer software. Scan quality is good, I haven't tested it with images though.
I had no issues setting it up with OS X, which impressed me. I always had problems with HP printers (especially the scanner function) connecting to my Macs.
So, we will see how long this printer last, I'm hoping that the ink will last me over a year, maybe even two. I wish that I would have had one of these in college, I would go through the 2400 pages in a semester.
I've owned two Brother laser printers in the past and have had very good luck with them so when I needed to get a light duty all-in-one I felt comfortable going with Brother again. Needless to say they've done an excellent job again. Setup for this printer could not be more painless and if you're configuring it to be used wireless you don't need to install any software or even connect it to a computer. The cartridge cleaning took about 5 minutes and then all I had to do was connect it to my network and I was good to go. If you're using a Mac just add the printer and the drivers install in 1-2 minutes. I was up and printing in about 15 minutes counting the cartridge cleaning time.
What I really like is that you can configure the scanner to send the scanned images straight to your email. This is so much easier than any other scanning process I've seen and as a bonus you can have multiple email addresses stored and protect them with a PIN so random people don't send scanned images to your email. The touchscreen is nice and crisp and responds well to inputs, the print speed is more than adequate and the image quality should be fine for most home office uses.
Two things I noticed are that the yellow prints very lightly which is not a huge deal to me and the paper tray is really tiny. I don't do that much printing so this isn't a huge issue, but for some it may be annoying to constantly be refilling the paper tray. If you need a solid all-in-one printer for light duty home office needs I can't recommend a Brother printer enough. Beats the HP and Epson printers we've had in the past handily!
I did a LOT of research before choosing this printer.
The printers i was considering buying:
Brother DCPL2540DW
MFC-J5920DW
MFC-J985DW
MFC-J985DW XL
I was thinking about all the options. Do i need color? black and white? Should i go for Ink or Laser?
First off, if you are trying to get a black and white printer, i would go with a a brother laser printer. It looked like it prints fast and the high yield toner allows 2 cents per black and white page.
The thing that dumbfounded me was the INKvestment Technology that was released with Brother's Inkjet printers. They boast less than 1 cent per black and white and less than 5 cents per color page.
Doing the calculation based on how much the INKvestment ink is right now it came out to 0.7 cents per page for black and white.
You have to be careful though! There are many different printers from Brother that are "Ink Efficient" but make sure you pick one that has "INKvestment" technology so it can reap benefits of high yield efficiency with its ink printing.
I have read the reviews of other people saying the "Colors are faded" but that has to do mostly with the Settings they used. Last night, i literally printed a photo from our wedding on glossy photo paper and couldn't be happier with it. Of course it is not as high quality as getting it professionally printed, but for "at-home" use and printing for kids projects, i couldn't be happier.
the ONLY draw back would be the Printing Speed. It is much slower than i would have wanted, but I do not run a at home business and only print for the convenience and occasional projects for kids so it really serves that purpose. If you want to get something that prints faster and has all the same benefits, i would go for the MFC-J5920DW.
I didnt get the XL version of this printer because the two extra packs of ink would only cost an extra $10 based on market value of the ink being offered. Didn't seem to be worth it RIGHT NOW. especially with the possibility of ink prices going down, it may not be worth it at all really.
I highly recommend this printer for at home and would have really liked a printer like this for college. being $150 and comes with a set of INKvestment high yield ink.... i don't think you can choose a better printer.
If you have any questions regarding my experience, leave a comment, i will try my best to respond
This printer has huge ink cartridges, was easy to set up and has more features than any printer I've owned so far. It works great and we'll see if the ink lasts like they say it will. Just sooo tired of having to buy ink that costs almost as much as the printer...
Feature Product
- COST-EFFECTIVE: Brother INKvestment cartridges printing for less than one cent per page for black and white and less than five cents per page in color. Color ISO-Based Max Print Speed : 10 ppm
- BUSINESS CAPABLE: Automatic duplex two-sided printing, up to 20-sheet ADF, and connectivity to desktops, laptops, mobile devices, and tablets
- WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: Print and scan documents from virtually any location with Wi-Fi connectivity with the assistance of Wi-Fi Direct
- AMAZON DASH REPLENISHMENT ENABLED: Upon activation, Amazon Dash Replenishment measures the toner level and orders more from Amazon when it's low
- WARRANTY: The Brother MFC-J985DW Printer comes with a two-year limited warranty and free phone, email and chat support for the life of the product
- Scanner Type- Flatbed with ADF (Standard or Optional)
Description
Whether you operate a home business or large office space with multiple cubicles, Brother has an office printing solution perfect for any application. One of the most durable, cost-effective, and reliable printers available today is the Brother MFC-J985DW Inkjet All-in-One Color Printer with INKvestment Cartridges. The Brother InkJet MFC-J985DW is one of the most user-friendly printers currently on the market. A 2.7" touchscreen display makes navigating the powerful features infused in the MFC-J985DW a breeze. Brother INKvestment color cartridges are an innovative and cost-effective solution for any business. In fact, you can print 2400 pages in black for under $25 and 1200 pages in color for under $15.
This multiple-purpose office printer is packed with business-friendly features including automatic duplex two-sided printing, up to 20-sheet ADF, and connectivity to desktops, laptops, mobile devices, and tablets. Thanks to the assistance of Wi-Fi Direct, a powerful Bluetooth and Wireless connectivity platform allows anyone in the office to print and scan documents from virtually any location inside the Wi-Fi connectivity network. One of the most user-friendly features is automatic Amazon Dash Replenishment. Perfect for business owners of small and large organizations, the Amazon Dash Replenishment service, upon activation, measures ink level and automatically orders refills from Amazon when low. This ensures that you never run out, increases business efficiency, and reduces operational costs.
The Brother InkJet MFC-J985DW allows you to scan directly from the machine to popular cloud services — including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, and more. Capture and digitize paper documents with Brother Cloud Apps for electronic storage or sharing as well. It is a compact and light-weight printer that fits in nearly any workspace and is backed by Brother’s two-year limited warranty and free phone, email and live chat support for the life of the product.
I just received this today. Purchased it to replace my hp envy 110 that refuses to connect thru wifi without setting up each use. In our home, we have multiple devices that need to connect to the printer. That includes a couple Windows computers and various versions of iPhones and iPads.
Based on the reviews on Amazon and also in pcmag as one of the best inkjet a for 2016, I bought this to resolve my wifi issues.
2 hours after initial setup, I'm finally able to print through AirPrint. I will say that I installed the software from the included cd and could print wirelessly from my Windows laptop almost immediately. I could also print from iOS devices using the brothers iprint & scan app quickly too.
Back to AirPrint...this was going to be a dealbreaker for me.
Took quite awhile to sort through the online manuals (but very happy to see so much documentation available).
Here's how it finally worked:
Confirm that your Brother machine is connected to the same network as your computer.
1. Open the web browser on your computer.
2. Type “http://machine’s IP address” into your browser’s address bar (where “machine’s IP address” is your machine’s IP address).
For example: http://192.168.1.2
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To find your machine's IP address, print your Network Configuration Report. For more information, see the Online User's Guide: solutions.brother.com/manuals.
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3. Click AirPrint.
4. Select Disabled if you want to disable AirPrint; select Enabled if you want to enable AirPrint. By default, AirPrint is enabled.
5. Click Submit.
6. Restart your Brother machine.
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My AirPrint was already enabled but that's a good check. And it's great that you can do this all from your device instead in having to figure it out on the printer. If you want to do it thru printer, go to network>WLAN>TCP/ip then arrow down to APIPA and make sure it's set to on.
If it's already on like mine was, then you probably need to enable your IPv6. Once again, it's under network>WLAN>TCP/IP. Arrow down to IPv6 and make sure it's enabled. Voila! You should be able to see your brother printer on your device. If it, that's over my head and you should contact brother.
I've now printed pictures, images and docs and they all look good. All devices are connected. I'm a happy camper.
I wouldn't let my issue dissuade you from purchasing this. I only documented it to save some else trouble. Seems like a good machine.
Dropped one star for my troubles.
It is working fine. I was able to set it up through my home network via one-touch WPS (whatever that is) so every computer in my house that uses wifi network can print to it. Printing quality has looked good, so far just printing on paper in b/w and color, have not tried using photo-paper. It can be a bit hard to read the menu screen down on side of printer (not an issue if you put it somewhere high).
The biggest negative is that, on install, Brother added like half a dozen programs to my computer many of which are set to auto-start on start up. I hate that. The last thing I need are extra programs running perpetually in the background drawing resources. I went into the task manager and disabled 3 or 4 Brother's programs from auto-start on start-up. I think that's annoying.
This really is a great printer. I'm happy I purchased it. In my house we print A LOT of stuff (for a household user). As such, I was looking for something that would bring my monthly ink cost down. This is the solution.
What I like about it:
- Very easy to operate. Paper trays are very accessible.
- No bloatware! There were no bulky, worthless, crapware applications that came with the driver.
- It isn't overly mechanical with unnecessary moving parts (less maintenance to worry about).
- It prints good quality photos. This isn't the bulk of our printing, but we print a fair number of photos. There are better photo printers available, but this still makes nice prints. That being said, it isn't marketed as a photo printer.
- Standard color prints on inkjet paper are better quality than other printers I've used (even photo printers).
- Only 4 ink cartridges to deal with.
- Black & White only mode when a color cartridge is out.
- Network cable is hidden nicely (I use ethernet instead of WiFi or USB).
- Doesn't take a lot of room on the desk
What could be better:
- Photo prints are slow (regular color prints on inkjet paper print at a good pace).
- It makes a quiet, high-pitch whining sound when printing. The pitch changes as the printhead moves back and forth.
- You have to remember to extend the paper catcher before you print (I put it back often so I don't run into it and break it off). Otherwise your prints will fall to the floor.
What I haven't used yet:
- The scanner
- Faxing capabilities
Have had this printer since Nov '17 and it's been great! One of the best printers I have ever owned and there are specific reasons:
1) Setup was super easy, even for WiFi if you just take your time and follow the directions step by step (15 mins)
2) It simply works!! Even when in standby for days/weeks I can easily print from my phones, laptops, even Chromebooks!
3) Ink doesn't dry out! There have been stretches where I won't print for close to a month and when I do, printouts looks great. No head cleaning, alignment etc that just wastes ink (looking at you HP)
4) InkVestment Ink looks to live up to its name as current cartridges are going strong
Overall I'm glad and have recommended this printer to everyone I know that asks. I'm honestly a bit shocked I did not just look at Brother printers earlier b/c it would have saved me a lot of time, frustration and costs with other brands.
So it's been close to a year since I purchased this printer. I bought it as I was beginning my MSW program and would be printing a lot of journal articles and other reading material. It's used by others in the house as well. All the major functions work well as expected and the additional cloud functions are a real added value. Scanning to a searchable PDF straight to onedrive is one of my favorites.
The REAL power is in the INK! Purchased October 2016 and I have not changed ONE CARTRIDGE through mid-July 2017 (and still going with low ink warnings)! That's after 2 semesters worth of printing along with the other printing that happens in the house. We don't print the most, but the old printer would have definitely gone through 2-3 complete cartridge swaps by now. With the supplied cartridges, it looks like I won't have to buy ink for another 1 - 2 years at this rate.
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