Brother MFC-J4355DW Inkvestment Printer Review

Brother MFC-J4355DW Inkvestment Printer Review

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Takeaway: Compact unit, great quality and fast prints prints in both color and black and white, but manual duplex scanning.

You’ll receive the printer, product literature, and 4 starter cartridges, black, yellow, magenta, and cyan. This compact inkjet printer measures 17” wide, 13” from front to back, and 7” tall. On the left-hand side is the permanently attached 6 ft power in the back corner, and fax line-in and pass-through phone jack. At the back is a manual feed slot with extendable support arm for specialty papers, card stock, and envelopes, so you’ll want to keep some clearance behind it for that and the paper feed release hatch for clearing paper jams as well. The sticker on the back left corner will have the default password for the printer’s direct WiFi connection.

On top of the machine you’ll find the 20-sheet capacity auto-document feeder for faxing, copying, and scanning up to legal size documents, though note that it is not able to perform single-pass dual-sided scanning, which can only be completed manually using the scanner glass. It has an adjustable paper width guide and flip-out page return stopper. The panel on the left opens if you need to clear any jams in this area.

Lifting the lid gives you access to the flatbed scanner, so you’ll need at least 18” of clearance to do so. The scanner glass can accommodate pages up to A4 in size. Underneath the scanner glass, you’ll find the USB port for a wired connection, and the cable will be routed out the back of the printer. Note that a USB cable is not included with this printer, nor does it have an Ethernet port; however, you can connect to it using WiFi-Direct, so you don’t have to put it on a network if you don’t want to.

When you plug the printer in it will start up automatically and go through a self-check process that takes several minutes. You’ll need the setup the printer the first time it’s powered on using the buttons to the right of the 1.8” color LCD as the display is not a touch screen. While the printer can be set up completely through the onboard controls, using a mobile device or computer makes the process a little easier. Note that these starter cartridges have an 1800 page yield for black and 750 pages for the color ones, which is estimated to last most folks around 1 year. After the ink is installed, the printer will prepare the ink for use by drawing it into an internal storage tank, which takes a few minutes, and this is where the INKvestment piece of the product line comes in. The INKvestment tank is supposed to extend the life of the cartridges by regulating the humidity in the machine to keep the ink fresh and ready to use. However, some folks still recommend performing cleaning of the print heads to ensure consistent print quality, if there are long periods of time between printing and that could waste ink and reduce overall printer output. This printer also comes with a free trial of Brother’s ‘Refresh EZ Print Subscription’ which automatically sends you ink at a discount when your machine starts running low if you choose to subscribe.

Paper goes into the main paper tray on the bottom and this tray holds up to 150 sheets; the green sliders adjust for the length and width of your paper. The printer will use the paper for calibration and a print quality test the first time you load it. The paper output also has an extendable arm to collect multiple pages. When printing over the network, after clicking print, the printer wakes up and starts printing almost instantly, though large color images may take several minutes to complete depending on the size and quality of the image. Compared to what I see on my computer screen, it is very color accurate. As for printed text, both the color and black text on this printed document have good legibility, although I find it to be a tad grainy. Printing can also be initiated from your mobile device using the Mobile Connect app. As expected, borderless photos print right up to the edge of the paper. I found the color reproduction and image quality to be very close to what I see onscreen on my device, so I’m pretty happy with it overall.

Scanning can be initiated from the printer itself or via the software. Just make sure to load the originals with the side you want to scan facing down. I had no issue with my computer finding the device on my network and scanning and saving to my computer. If connected to the internet, you can scan to the web as well to repositories like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, and Evernote, among others. Scans are accurate and clear though may produce mirrored ghosting if your originals are double-sided; however, there is a setting that can help remove bleed-through, patterns, or background colors that is pretty effective. Scan resolution can be set from 100 dpi up to 1200 dpi, however, note that at higher resolutions the scanner may take a while to complete the scan.

Overall, the print quality of this printer is very good with both black and white text and color images. I didn’t notice any banding or unevenness and printed photos are vivid, well-saturated, and true to color, even on plain printer paper. Print speeds are up to 19 and 20 pages per minute for black and color pages respectively, but full-page color photos can take several minutes to complete. One great advantage that this printer has over laser printers is the ability to print borderless photos, which could also be useful for business say for printing brochures and fliers. You can print from a computer or phone and there are multiple ways to connect to the device and store scanned documents. It handles everyday office tasks like faxing, copying, and scanning, however, it’s not ideal if you often need to copy or scan double-sided pages.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. #CommissionsEarned
Buy it at Amazon: Brother MFC-J4355DW Inkvestment Printer [Affiliate Link]