The Brother MFC-J6945DW ($349.99) is a light- to medium-duty wide-format all-in-one inkjet printer designed for small-office use. Like its predecessor, the Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-J6935DW, it can’t solely print, but additionally copy, scan, and fax tabloid-size pages and comes with a beneficiant paper-input capability. The cherry on prime is that it prints fairly nicely and at a really cheap value per web page. All of those perks add as much as a simple Editors’ Choice for the MFC-J6945DW.
A Wide-Format Stalwart
Measuring 14.9 by 22.6 by 18.8 inches (HWD) and weighing 53.1 kilos, the MFC-J6945DW could be very near the identical measurement and weight as its predecessor, in addition to related in measurement to its closest opponents. The HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 Wide Format All-in-One, for instance, is lower than an inch bigger in measurement all the best way round and weighs about 10 kilos lower than the MFC-J6945DW, whereas Epson’s WorkForce WF-7720 Wide Format All-in-One is simply barely bigger and weighs about 3 kilos much less. Keep in thoughts, although, that the Epson mannequin helps not solely tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) media but additionally super-tabloid (13-by-19-inch) paper.
The MFC-J6945DW’s paper capability is, like its predecessor’s, a copious 600 sheets, break up between two 250-sheet drawers up entrance and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray on the again. All three auto-duplexing paper sources assist as much as tabloid-size sheets, as does the 50-sheet single-pass duplexing automated doc feeder (ADF). It has a most month-to-month obligation cycle of as much as 30,000 pages, with a advisable month-to-month print quantity of two,000 pages. Its paper capability and obligation cycle figures beat all of its competitors talked about right here.
You could make configuration modifications and arrange and execute walkup features from the MFC-J6945DW’s spacious and easy-to-use management panel, proven under.
And you possibly can monitor your AIO, generate studies, and make configuration modifications from a built-in safe (HTTPS) web site, dubbed Web Config, proven within the photograph under.
From the Status web page, as an example, you possibly can view ink ranges graphically and by approximate remaining pages, in addition to paper drawer ranges. Notice additionally the Internal Ink Reservoir stage standing indicators, which inform you how a lot ink you have got left to work with.
Copious Connections
The MFC-J6945DW’s normal interfaces are Ethernet, close to discipline communication (NFC), USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct. NFC and Wi-Fi direct are peer-to-peer community protocols for connecting cellular gadgets to the printer with out both them or it being linked to an middleman community or router. Mobile connectivity, together with these two peer-to-peer protocols, is intensive. Third-party options embody Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria, or you possibly can join your cellular gadgets on to the printer with Brother’s iPrint&Scan.
Brother’s Web Connect cloud providers assist you to join on to each the private and enterprise iterations of Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive, and OneNote. Other Brother cloud apps embody Office Print (for printing from cellular and 365 variations of Microsoft Office), Scan to Office (for scanning to cellular and on-line variations of Microsoft Office), Scan to Mobile, Cloud Secure Print, and Easy Scan to Email. And if all that isn’t sufficient, you possibly can at all times go old-school and scan to and print from a USB thumb drive through the port on the left facet of the chassis.
Tank Within a Tank
All 4 of the foremost inkjet printer makers—Brother, Canon, Epson, and HP—provide some form of ink-cost-savings program. With the debut of the MFC-J995DW a number of months in the past, Brother launched a brand new model of its program dubbed INKvestment Tank Extended Print, or INKvestment Tank for brief. INKvestment Tank is an amalgam between a typical cartridge system and an onboard tank configuration. You nonetheless purchase and exchange cartridges once you’re low on ink, however the cartridges offload into inside secondary tanks.
Between the exterior cartridges and inside tanks, the printer holds numerous ink. Rather than displaying these extremely inaccurate ink quantity indicators, INKvestment Tank counts what number of pages you have got printed and estimates what number of you have got remaining. And, very like HP’s Instant Ink program, the printer screens the ink ranges, notifies you after they’re low, after which affords to order alternative cartridges immediately from the management panel or the machine’s onboard web site.
Brother says that the brand new, reengineered ink cartridges that include the printer present as much as a 12 months of ink. That’s primarily based on a formulation of 300 prints per thirty days, 60 % monochrome pages and 40 % shade pages. Frankly, if that is all you propose to print every month, you most likely do not want this a lot printer. As you may see momentarily, although, mixed with its quantity rankings, the MFC-J6945DW is able to churning out nicely past these meager numbers.
Solid Performance
Brother charges the MFC-J6945DW at 22 pages per minute (ppm). I examined it over Ethernet from our normal Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC operating Windows 10 Professional. At 18.3ppm, the MFC-J6945DW churned at 3.7ppm slower than its ranking. That’s the identical rating we bought from its predecessor, the MFC-J6935DW, final 12 months, and 5.3ppm slower than the HP 7740. It beat the Epson WF-7720, although, by simply lower than 4ppm. While these speeds are appropriate for many workplaces with light- to medium-duty output necessities, in case your workplace or workgroup wants sooner, higher-volume printing and copying from a wide-format machine, Epson additionally affords the Editors’ Choice WorkForce Pro WF-C8690 (at a considerably larger buy worth), which turned in a rating of 10ppm larger than the MFC-J6945DW on this portion of our assessments.
See How We Test Printers
Next, I printed a number of colourful Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint paperwork containing complicated charts, graphs, and different enterprise graphics, after which mixed these scores with the outcomes from printing the above 12-page textual content doc. This resulted in a charge of 12.2ppm. Here, the MFC-J6945DW fell behind the WF-7720 by 2.2ppm and beat the HP 7740 by about 2.5ppm. The higher-end Epson WF-C8690, alternatively, managed a decent 6.6ppm sooner than the MFC-J6945DW.
It’s necessary to notice, although, that the above scores derive from printing letter-size pages, not wide-format output. Tabloid-size pages, which comprise twice the floor space than letter-size media does, ought to take about twice as lengthy to print, and super-tabloid pages ought to take a bit longer than that.
Quality Output and Low Overhead
The MFC-J6945DW produces glorious textual content for an inkjet, common graphics, and great-looking pictures, particularly for a four-ink enterprise mannequin (in contrast with a five- or six-ink photograph printer, that’s).
This AIO’s textual content output must be greater than adequate for many enterprise purposes. Graphics come out with strong fills and gradients that movement evenly from one shade or tint to the subsequent. And, along with brilliantly and precisely coloured pictures, the MFC-J6945DW helps borderless output as much as letter-size, permitting you to print paperwork and pictures that look as if they had been professionally designed and reproduced. I’ve no complaints concerning the MFC-J6945DW’s output.
As one among Brother’s INKvestment Tank fashions, at 1 cent for monochrome pages and 5 cents for shade prints, the MFC-J6945DW prices much less to make use of than most printers on this class, particularly wide-format fashions. Not even the higher-volume Epson WF-C8690 talked about above, at 1.6 cents black and 6.7 cents shade, delivers operating prices that low.
You Can’t Go Wrong
As we mentioned about its predecessor, there’s not a lot to dislike about this printer. It’s quick sufficient, prints very nicely, delivers cheap operating prices, and comes with nearly each productiveness and comfort function obtainable. (It does lack Bluetooth, however compensates with Wi-Fi Direct and NFC.) Brother does no corner-cutting right here, and it pays off, making the MFC-J6945DW a simple Editors’ Choice for a light- to moderate-duty wide-format AIO.