Brother MFC-J885DW review: Outgunned by faster do-it-all printers

These days, $150 -- about £100 or AU$200 -- buys you an "average" multifunction inkjet printer. You know: the ones that do printing, scanning, copying -- and throw in good old-fashioned faxing capability for good measure. You can certainly get cheaper, but at this price, you can usually snag decent extras like an auto-duplexer (for double-sided printing), as well as a dual-paper input tray for both regular sized and photo paper.

5.9

Brother MFC-J885DW

The Good

The ink cartridges on the Brother MFC-J885DW cost less to refill than other name-brand printers and the output quality is also commendable down to small fonts and faint lines.

The Bad

The plastic materials cheapen the overall feel of the printer, the 100-sheet paper input capacity will likely be too small for the average small office, and the output speed is lacking compared to the competition.

The Bottom Line

Brother certainly makes a lot of very respectable work-friendly all-in-one printers, but the J885DW isn't one of them.

Indeed, the Brother MFC-J885DW -- part of the company's Work Smart series for small offices -- has all those features at that $150 USD price point (£140 or AU$250). But, unlike so many other great Brother printers, this one just misses the mark in several key areas; its slow print speeds are easily outmoded by the competition, the design suffers at the hands of its cheap plastic materials and the paper input tray capacity is lacking for serious home office professionals. It's just a flat-out "don't buy."

Note that the MFC-J885DW reviewed here is identical to the MFC-J880DW (a model number exclusive to some online and international retailers).

Brother MFC-J885DW (pictures)

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Design and features

The Brother MFC-J885DW can fit into relatively small spaces thanks to its compact footprint that measures 15.7 inches (39.9cm) wide, 13.4 inches (34cm) deep, and 6.8 inches (17.3cm) tall. You'll need a little extra space for the paper input tray, though, and that's where my complaints begin.

The tray is removable, which is useful for loading paper into it, but why would a printer that positions itself as an asset for small offices only have room for 100 sheets of regular letter-sized paper? Brother says it's able to print up to 2,500 pages per month (also called the "duty cycle"), so get ready to refill the tray a lot if you think you'll approach that amount of printing volume. By comparison, the majority of printers for small businesses and home offices have a 150-sheet tray, at least.

Brother tries to make up for it with a separate input tray on top of the main one that fits an additional 20 sheets of 4-inch-by-6-inch photo paper in there, but the build quality is a real point of issue, too. The plastic the company used is really thin and flimsy, and I kept worrying that parts of the tray would snap off every time I reinserted it back into the machine. Everything from the door of the media card reader to the fold-out auto-document feeder is made of the same plastic, and it gives the printer an overall cheap feel.

The good news, though, is that there's no shortage of features that Brother incorporates into the printer, and it's all stuff that businesses will find useful for workday productivity. As mentioned earlier, you get a 20-sheet auto-document feeder on top for sending multipage documents through, and there's also a duplexer built into the rear of the device that you can use to save money by printing on both sides of a single sheet of paper.

Since Brother hopes the average consumer will find as much utility in the J885DW as a small business would, there's also a media card bay just to the left of the center console. Behind it, there's a port for PictBridge-compatible USB cameras or just a USB key for data transfers, and you also get a dual card reader for Sony MemorySticks and SD cards.

As you've probably seen with other modern printers, the control panel is devoid of the buttons in lieu of a 2.7-inch (6.9cm) touch screen LCD. I personally prefer hard buttons for shortcuts and the number dial pad, but that's a matter of personal preference. The screen does register the touch of a finger with accuracy, though, and I can see it being useful to customize exactly which apps and settings you'd want to use for a particular office setup.

The color scanner is hidden on top underneath the lid, and you can use the scan-to feature to send a document directly to a variety of destinations: email, media card, computer file, flash memory, and more. You can also use the free Brother iPrint&Scan app to send jobs directly to a mobile device.

Connectivity and wireless

You can make a quick connection to any computer running Windows or Mac OS by using a simple USB cord, but if you do that you won't be able to take advantage of the multitude of extras you get with a wireless connection.

Using Wi-Fi Direct access, the printer guided me through the process of linking it to my network and I was able to get up and running with wireless connection within five minutes -- it was a very easy and streamlined. And if you have an NFC-compatible smartphone, you can simply place the phone on top of the designated NFC landing area on the printer and start printing snapshot photos and memos just as easily.

Like many of the big-name printer manufacturers, Brother offers a full suite of cloud printing software that lets you use your smartphone or tablet in conjunction with Web services like Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox and others to view your projects across a wide landscape of services.

Additionally, Brother also works nicely with Google Cloud Print and Apple AirPrint to send wireless jobs to and from the printer using the Google Chrome Web browser and Apple iOS devices, respectively.

As an aside, Brother also deserves a little extra credit for offering a limited two-year warranty with the printer that includes free phone support for the life of the product. The standard warranty we usually see with printers is only a year, so good on Brother for standing by its product longer.

Ink and supplies

The ink cartridge bay sits behind a flimsy plastic door to the right of the paper tray and houses the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black cartridges that feed to the printer. The cartridges are easy to install and you probably won't even need the manual to figure it out. The process is a lot more convenient than lifting the whole scanning bay and auto-document feeder to get to the tanks.

More good news is that you'll spend less on ink refills compared to competing printers in the same price range, even more as time goes by with continued use. Assuming you invest in Brother's XL capacity cartridges that offer a better value for more volume up front, the costs add up to 2 centers per page of color ink and 4.6 cents per page of plain black text. That's less than the same XL ink costs of the Epson XP-420 (3.5 cents for color, 5 cents for black), so you'll save money if you do end up printing a lot of color photos and business handouts.

Performance

While I would consider the output quality of the Brother MFC-J885DW to be acceptable for professionals, the print speeds leave a lot of room for improvement and ultimately led to my decision to give this printer a less-favorable review.

I was expecting its print speed to measure up at least on par with Brother's own MFC-J470DW, but it really lagged, even while printing our standard ten-page black text sample document. This model could only churn through 5.31 pages per minute (ppm), while the J470DW rocketed past at 9.78ppm, almost double the speed.

The print engine also couldn't keep up with the competition in the full-color graphics page tester with an average speed of only 4.13ppm. The only area where the J885DW earned a little respect is the 4-inch by 6-inch snapshot photo test, where it was able to print 7.73ppm.

Just not up to snuff

Brother certainly makes a lot of very respectable work friendly all-in-one printers, but the J885DW isn't one of them. The output speed will have you waiting at the printer for your job to finish, and I suspect that most offices will feel disappointed by the build quality as well, even at the $150 price point. Combined with the low paper input capacity, purchasing this printer means you'll be subjecting yourself to a lot of labor for below-average speed performance.

If you're seriously shopping for a printer for your home office, the MFC-J470DW is a much better option -- it has all the same features as this unit but with dedicated buttons on the control panel, cheaper ink refills, and is $50 less on the retail price. The only thing you'll have to sacrifice from the J885DW is the touch screen display and the NFC compatibility.