The Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW (INR 16,500) is a small business/home office all-in-one inkjet printer. This model includes a number of small office features as well as high-capacity ink cartridges with a very low cost per page. According to the company, the INKvestment cartridges included in the box could last up to a year, making it one of the best all-in-one printers for affordable ink we’ve seen. Given these high ink yields, you might wish this all-in-one had a larger paper tray than its 150-sheet capacity.
The MFC-J995DW’s 20-sheet document feeder as well as 50-sheet output tray, both of which have limited capacity, are unsuitable for large jobs. The specialty media tray on the chassis’s back can only hold one sheet at a time. The duplexer, which allows for two-sided printing and is quick, is far more impressive.
Design
The front control panel angles upward 45 degrees, making the 2.7-inch colour touch screen easier to use. The touch screen worked well for most menu items, but entries that required a full QWERTY keyboard to fit on the screen (such as a Wi-Fi password) made selections a little difficult for my fingertips. If you plan to use the printer on a low table, the panel should be angled upward 90 degrees, as in the Canon Pixma TS9120 (our current Editors’ Choice).
An SD Card slot and a USB memory port are located on the lower left side of the front panel for printing or scanning to a memory card and USB thumb drive, respectively. When a USB thumb drive is inserted, an on-screen menu appears with three options: photo, scan to media, along with web (for cloud printing from OneNote or OneDrive, for example). However, you cannot print PDFs from a thumb drive; only JPEGs can be printed, despite the fact that PDFs can be scanned to a thumb drive or an SD Card. When inserting a USB thumb drive, the screen displayed thumbnail previews of the photos slowly, taking 2 seconds or more to show the first one.
Printing Speed
The MFC-J995DW performed admirably in small office printing duties, printing onto plain paper in its 150-sheet tray. It printed our five-page text document in 29.1 seconds, or 10.3 pages per minute, which is significantly faster than the category average of 34.5 seconds, or 8.7 pages per minute. The unit printed text documents at 4 ppm when using the duplexer to print two-sided.
The MFC-J995DW printed mixed text and colour graphics quickly, finishing our six-page document in 1 minute and 13.8 seconds, or 4.9 ppm. This was only a few seconds slower than the fastest model, the Epson XP-640, and far outpaced the industry average of 2.7 ppm. In fact, the MFC-J995DW produced two-sided prints faster than the category average. It printed duplex copies of the same document at an impressive 3 pages per minute. Letter-size glossy photos printed in 4 minutes and 6 seconds, which is slightly faster than the 4 minute and 33 second average.
Copying and Scanning Speed
The MFC-J995DW produced copies quickly. It completed a colour copy in 15.1 seconds, which is significantly faster than the industry average of 25.5 seconds. It was, in fact, the fastest colour copier in its category to date, outperforming the Editor’s Choice Canon Pixma TS9120, which completed the same task in 17.3 seconds. Copying in black and white was also quick. The MFC-J995DW copied text in 12.7 seconds, compared to 14 seconds for the Canon TS9120 and 15.2 seconds for the category average.
The MFC-J995DW produced single-sided copies of a text document using the ADF at a blistering 7 ppm faster than its single-page speed of 4.7 ppm. The all-in-one scanner performed admirably as well. It took 38.5 seconds to capture a 600 dpi JPEG, which was significantly quicker than the average of 1 minute and 10 seconds.
Print Quality
This Brother all-in-one printer produced consistently high print quality. Text appeared sharp and dark, though not as dark as in some models. The text in duplex prints appeared slightly lighter. Graphics were printed with great detail, and colours appeared accurate and saturated. Graphics looked just as good in duplex prints as they did in single-sided prints. Glossy photos with accurate, well-saturated colours, appealing textures, and a wealth of fine details.
Copies were of comparable high quality. Text and graphics were both accurately reproduced. Graphics from magazine pages appeared to be nearly identical to the original, with lots of details and accurate colour. Copies of the same mixed text and colour graphics in black-and-white retained the original’s midtone transitions and reproduced fine details. Scans to PDF format accurately reproduced crisp text and detailed graphics. Scans of photographs, on the other hand, were less successful.
Ink-Cost
Only high-yield and super-high-yield cartridges, known as INKvestment ink tanks, are available from Brother for this model. For example, while most models provide a black-ink cartridge rated to print 200 or so pages, the lowest yield cartridge in this all-in-one is rated to print 3,000 pages. At 3k, it has a cost per page of 1.2 cents, which is significantly less than the industry average of 7.6 cents.
The high-yield colour cartridges are rated to last 1,500 pages and are available in a 6k three-pack, resulting in a cost per colour page that is significantly lower than the average: 5.8 cents versus 20.8 cents. With such high yields on INKvestment cartridges, Brother estimates that the first four included in the box could last up to a year.
Verdict
The Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW has a lot of office-worthy features, including a fast duplexer, at a reasonable price. As long as your jobs are small and almost entirely on plain paper, this efficient model is likely to impress you with its extremely low ink costs. As long as you ignore the mediocre scans of photographs, the print, copy, and scan quality are all excellent. The one-sheet limitation on the specialty paper slot, as well as the ADF’s modest 20-sheet capacity, limit this model’s flexibility. However, if the majority of your plain paper jobs fall within this range, this cost-effective all-in-one is very likely to perform admirably in your office.
