Brother, MFCJ6945DW, INKvestmenttank Color Inkjet All-in-One Printer with Wireless, Duplex Printing and Up to 1-Year of Ink in-Box, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready

The Brother Inkjet MFC J69xx series has evolved over time. The J69 prefix on a brother model indicates the highest end of this style of inkjet printer from Brother. My old Brother J6910DW has been dying, and is just over 6 years old. My purchase of a new J6935DW is due to very positive experiences with older devices in this line. My ownership of Brother MFC inkjets has been ongoing for about 10 years, some have been low end, J915, others higher end such as this. Generally these are well made units, and work well with 3rd party inks. Color printing is very good, but photo printing is imperfect, if you are seeking a true photo printer this may not be your best choice.Some of the newer features which have impressed me is getting not only ink levels for each cartridge over a local Ethernet network (Brother has provided this for a long time), but information about paper levels too. It helps to know how low or high the paper volume per tray is. Occasionally a long project may be printed (my record is 235 duplex pages for a friends doctorate). Knowing if there is enough paper without having to go and look helps. It permits me to leave the printer and computer going, while tending to other business.My J6935DW came well wrapped, and set up was easy. The cartridges seem very similar to prior cartridges. Most of the print mechanism is similar. Except the paper feed. This has been changed for the better. Instead of 8.5 x 11 paper being fed with the long side perpendicular to the unit, the paper is now adjacent and fed in a way which would have been sideways considered with older printers in this line. That is the long end of the paper in a tray is now parallel to the printer. It comes out parallel as well.The new method of feeding, printing and ejecting paper means less movement occurs. Instead of 11 inch movement, only 8.5 inches are moved. This may not sound like a lot, but adds up, and there have been no feed problems. The output tray protrudes much less from the printer, and isn't in danger of being damaged. Older units often had almost an entire page length hanging off a very slim piece of plastic. The new shorter feed in and out seems to hold a higher percent of the paper within the printer body. While at the same time, the output tray while a few inches out from the body is also better built (larger, more solid, feels a lot more durable) than older models. The weight is also heavier than older models. This is nearly as heavy as some smaller color laser printers.Speed is very good, connectivity is great, the bundled software (Paperport with Windows) works well, the MAC software isn't something in use at my home at this time. Support for Windows 10 is excellent. While 3rd party ink is less expensive, the price difference isn't as great compared to Brother MFC models.Scanning, and in particular duplex scans of ledger size paper has always been a problem. The overall structure of the upper scan unit seems stronger, and manages large paper, even bundles of large paper far better than prior printers. If you scan, or duplex scan a lot of paper, this is a very good product.Finally there is a 3rd tray, sort of a utility tray, which in older devices was indicated as a printer tray, for the MFC J9635DW function has been extended. It is much easier to feed a variety of stuff through the auxiliary tray input than on any prior model based on my experience. While the J6935DW will be the highest ed of the Brother Inkijet line (for the moment). Other similar units in this series, of comparable design time, are likely very similar. Brother inkjet printers with 4 digits, that is MFC-Jxxxx will always handle ledger paper, the lower the model number, the less a printer model can manage paper (going from duplex to simplex scanning, then to simplex printing, and eventually to a 3 digit printer, which would be a home printer, not an office printer). Brother home printers are good, but not as durable as Brother office printers (generally).The ink cost, and marketing, are probably a bit of a stretch. Brother seems to be bifurcating market not only on paper handling, but on cost of ink as a consumable. The J6935DW uses the Brother Inkvestment concept. Which to me seems more about marketing than any quality of ink. Thus the Brother MFC inkjet line may be changing from models differentiated mostly by paper handling capability into a series delineated by both paper handling and ink cost. My use is in a home where there is considerable use of our printer, and a single shared printer on a local area network is preferred. If your use does not require ledger, duplex, long prints, or similar heavy use of a printer, other models are probably a much better choice as this is expensive. My Brother J6910DW cost a bit over $200 in 2011, today the J6935DW runs a bit over $300. This is nearly a 50% increase in cost, and while the printer is of much better quality, and paper handling has certainly improved, the quality of the output isn't very different from older and lesser units. Do not buy this for any increase in print quality, buy it for the volume it can print, low cost of brand name ink, paper handling, and scan features.My last mention here, is the printer still comes with a CD instead of a flash drive. Installing Paperport requires a CD / DVD reader. The drivers can be downloaded. My guess is future versions will either download Paperport to Windows computers via a printer proxy service or Paperport will be installed via a flash drive. Paperport does seem largely downloaded with this version, but the CD is the gatekeeper to assure license. It would be nicer if the printer were the key.

I run a small business and had to replace my HP OfficeJet 8600 Premium All in One recently after about 6 years of use. The 8600 worked great for what I needed and I figured I'd buy the newer version that HP had out. I've always considered myself an HP guy when it came to printers although I'll never own another one of their computers.I was looking around right before their newer versions came out and settled on the HP 7740. I like the duel trays because I print documents on both letter and legal size. I was thoroughly disappointed after set up. It was slow and noisy. The print dialog box was a hassle to change paper size and print trays and then after the first day it would get stuck and not change trays at all. I returned and bought the new HP 9025 all in one that just came out. Taking it out of the box I could tell it was cheaper quality. After set up it too sounded like a car getting ready to throw a rod when print...when it finally printed.After more researching I took a chance with the Brother J6945 and I love it. Set up was short and easy. The print dialog box is simple to change quality of print, paper size and tray. Printing is very fast and quit. You can scan to RTF which is a huge advantage in my line of business. The touch screen on the Brother is very simple and quick to use.A great printer is important to my business as time is money and this Brother was a great investment. I've only had it for about a month but have used it often and not a single problem yet.I was hesitant to make the jump to Brother but am so glad I did. A great product is worthy of a great review.

Update:- Paper jams at the start of every print.- Unable to print more than 5 pages before it jams- Now pages are printing blank...cleaned printhead, but can't even print a test page because of continued jams.--I waited a long time to give my review so I could really get to know this printer so I've had it for a little over 2 years now. I bought it when I was expanding my business because I was looking for a reliable printer. Needless to say, I'm still looking. I don't know how this is considered a "pro series" anything. Out of the gate, I realized that this printer was designed weird, the USB port is inside under the scanner bed then snakes out the back which is not only a waste of cable but unless you have it on a table with access to all sides you have to rotate this monstrosity to access both inside and the back instead of just the back or side like most printers. Then there's a latch in the MP tray that causes printing errors (more on that later).For reliability or productivity, I would give 1 star. I've never before seen a lazy printer but after printing 120 A5 sheets it's like it gets tired and either forgets what it's printing and prints only half the last page, prints only one side of a double-sided page, or it quits and just stops printing a few pages before the end of the job. Now I keep getting repetitive paper jams if I'm printing any more than approx. 30 pages. Even if I take all the paper out of tray 1 and print from tray 2 it still says I have a jam in tray 1. I have to restart the printer and my computer every few pages and start a new job or the jams keep happening. It's like there isn't really a jam, the printer just wants to take a nap or something. Forget the multipurpose tray- automatic paper jams all the time. I can't even print envelopes. This is also where you want to locate the printer where you have access to all sides because you'll need to clear those paper jams from the back. After spinning it back and forth so many times I accidentally pushed on the touch screen one time and it cracked so that's no longer functioning and it's been impossible to find a replacement. It broke while still under warranty but customer support is non-existant.Also with the multipurpose tray, there's a little latch you have to hold down when you load the paper. If you don't do it correctly (there's really no right way, the printer is just moody) or if you initially loaded more than say 5-10 pages and you're down to the last few it gives you an error message and you have to keep fiddling with it...then you'll inevitably get repeat paper jam messages.Lately, it's also been doing this thing where it says "Receiving Data" and it doesn't accept print jobs or it stops in the middle of a job and it takes multiple restarts to get up and running again.TBH I've had $100 printers that I expect this sort of thing from but for this price, you really want what you paid for. I find myself printing on my "cheap" printers often because this one just isn't reliable and wastes a lot of my stationery with paper with jamming all the time. I honestly wish I could return it for something else, this is my 1st brother printer but I don't think I would buy another from Brother after this experience.