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Just another home and small office multifunction color inject printer from Brother you might think. But as well as having a powerful array of features at a reasonable worth, the Brother MFC-J870DW has established a unique milestone in this class.
Brother MFC-J870DW: Design and Features
There is nothing snazzy-looking about the Brother MFC-J870DW, but with its Epson-like design, this thick 4-function printer print, copy, scan, and fax, would not stand out like a sore thumb if it is positioned in a living room. Its gray case measures solely 16.1 x 9.6 x 18 inches and weighs almost exactly 20 pounds, so it may fit into many locations a larger printer or MFP would not.
One uncommon feature is the placement of the Brother MFC-J870DW connection ports. With many compact MFPs, your entire scan bed unit is hinged and lifts as much as exposing the ink cartridge holder. With the MFC-J870DW, lifting the scan unit exposes the USB, Ethernet, and fax line connectors, all of that are routed across the inside the unit so that the cords exit within the rear. The ink cartridges are accessed by way of a swing down door on the right-front side of the unit. To the left of a tilting control panel is one other small door that covers the memory card and USB slots.
The input paper tray is on the very bottom, and at the front of the machine. But it holds a scant 100 sheets of the letter- or legal-size paper, or 20 sheets of photograph paper. Above the paper input/output trays is the control panel, with a 2.7-inch color touchscreen, that may be tilted to a user’s comfy viewing angle. All of the controls are easy and simple to operate. One function the machine lacks is auto duplexing via the automatic document feeder (ADF). It is not a deal breaker, but auto duplexing is an extremely handy feature.
As with many printers on this price range, the Brother MFC-J870DW has wonderful connectivity choices. Along with USB and Ethernet, it additionally has Wi-Fi and may hook up with phones or tablets outfitted for Near Field Communications (NFC) pairing. Along with Web connectivity via AirPrint, Brother’s own iPrint & Scan, and Google Cloud Print, the MFP can print directly from a wide range of memory cards as well as a USB storage drive.
The ink cartridges used within the MFC-J870DW are available in 2 sizes. The standard L101 cartridges yield approximately three hundred pages per cartridge (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) and price about $15 every, while the high-capacity L103, at about $22, yield twice that, making them a a lot better value.
Brother MFC-J870DW: Specification
- Dimensions: 16.1 x 9.6 x 18 inches
- Weight: 20 pounds
- Functions: Scan/Print/Copy/Fax
- Inks: 4-ink tank (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow)
- Connectivity: USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, Brother Cloud apps
- Paper input tray capacity: 100 sheets
- Display: 2.7-inch
Brother MFC-J870DW: Performance
Brother claims ISO speeds for the Brother MFC-J870DW of 12ppm for black print and 10ppm for color. Our 5-page text print gave 7.5ppm in regular print and 9.4ppm in draft mode. This increased to 10.2ppm for regular print on the longer, 20-page test piece, though, which isn’t far off the claim and is a good speed for this class of printer.
The quality of the photograph prints is well up with the competition, with accurately muted, natural colors and bold primaries, when needed. On plain paper, things are not quite as clean, with some graininess in areas of solid fill and fading when copying colors. Black text is dense and solid, but not fairly as precise from the peizo electric heads on this machine as from the perfect of Thermal inkjets.
The ink cartridges are available in 2 capacities and utilizing the high yield versions offers page prices of 3.3p for black and 7.9p for color, each including 0.7p for paper. The black print worth is just like many of the printer’s main competitors, but the color costs is up to 2p lower than from some direct rivals.
Brother MFC-J870DW: Verdict
There is no question that the Brother MFC-J870DW has a host of fantastic features together with optical-disc direct printing and touchscreen controls.
Pros
- SD, MemoryStick and front USB sockets
- Separate photo tray
- 20 sheet ADF
Cons
- Photo tray manual operation
- Plain paper print a little blurred
- Very slow photo prints