The Brother MFC-J6935DW ($349.99) color inkjet all-in-one printer is one of the few micro- or home-office inkjets that can not only print, but also copy, scan, and fax tabloid-size (11-by-17 inches) sheets. The Editors' Choice HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 Wide Format All-in-One Printer can at least print, copy, and scan (if not fax) sheets up to this size, but the MFC-J6935DW has more generous paper capacity and considerably lower running costs than the HP 7740 while rivaling it in speed and output quality, and easily earns an Editors' Choice.
The MFC-J6935DW is very similar to the Brother MFC-J6930DW, but adds the PCL5 printer language and a low-paper warning. The most important change, though, is that it supports the use of Brother's INKvestment cartridges, while the Brother MFC-J6930DW doesn't, leaving the latter printer with considerably higher running costs. Also, the J6935DW's graphics quality is slightly better than what we saw with the MFC-J6930DW.
Wide-Format Wiz
Unsurprisingly for a printer that can handle wide-format paper, the MFC-J6935DW is large and heavy for an inkjet. This two-tone (white and gray) printer measures 14.7 by 22.6 by 18.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 51.8 pounds, and will need a table or bench of its own to rest on and at least two people to move it into place. Paper capacity is a generous 600 sheets, split between two 250-sheet trays and a 100-sheet multipurpose feeder. Both tray and feeder support printing at up to tabloid size. It has an auto-duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper, and can automatically print two-sided documents up to 11 by 17 inches.
Paper capacity is the same as the MFC-J5930DW, although that printer can only automatically print two-sided documents at up to legal size. The HP 7740 has a lower capacity of 500 sheets, between two 250-sheet trays that can support up to tabloid-size paper but lacking a multipurpose feeder. The printer's maximum monthly duty cycle is 30,000 pages, the same as the MFC-J6935DW and the HP 7740, with a recommended print volume of up to 2,000 pages.
Similar Products
Brother MFC-J5930DW
Brother MFC-J6930DW
HP OfficeJet Pro 7720 Wide Format All-in-One Printer
HP OfficeJet Pro 7740
The MFC-J6935DW includes a tabloid-size flatbed, plus a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which supports single-pass duplex (two-sided) scanning, copying, and faxing documents up to tabloid size. The tilt-up front panel has a 3.7-inch color touch-screen display and a numeric keypad. To the panel's lower left is a port for a USB thumb drive.
A Well-Connected All-in-One
A generous set of connectivity choices is one of the MFC-J6935DW's strengths. You can connect to a PC via a USB cable, or to a local-area network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. It can also connect via a direct peer-to-peer connection to a compatible mobile device via Wi-Fi Direct, and supports NFC (Near Field Communication). I tested it primarily over an Ethernet connection with its drivers installed on a PC that runs Windows 10 Professional.
The MFC-J6935DW supports Google Cloud Print, and works with the Brother iPrint&Scan app, and is both AirPrint- and Mopria-compliant to facilitate printing from iOS and Android devices. By using Brother Web Connect, you can scan and upload images to sites such as Box, Brother Cloud Apps, Dropbox, Evernote, Flickr, Google Docs, OneNote, Picasa Web Albums, and Sharepoint Online.
Competitive Speed
In my testing, the MFC-J6935DW showed reasonably good speed, in line with similar printers. I timed it at 16.5 pages per minute (ppm) in printing the text-only (Word) portion of our business applications suite, a little short of the printer's rated black printing speed of 22ppm.The first-page-out time was 8 seconds. In printing our full business suite, which includes PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel files in addition to the aforementioned Word document, the MFC-J6935DW averaged a respectable 12.2ppm. These times essentially match the speeds of the Brother MFC-J5930DW, which tested at 16.7ppm with the Word document and 12.2ppm for the entire suite. The HP 7740 was considerably faster in printing out the Word document (23.6ppm) but slower with the full suite (9.7ppm).
Output Quality
Output quality is a big plus for the MFC-J6935DW, with excellent text for an inkjet, average graphics, and above-par photos. Text should be good enough for most any business purpose except for ones requiring unusually small fonts.
Graphics are good enough for PowerPoint handouts, perhaps even printouts going to people you're trying to impress with your professionalism. Some backgrounds looked a touch faded, and I noticed mild banding in a few illustrations. The banding was not as significant as what we saw when reviewing the MFC-J6930DW. These minor flaws are purely aesthetic and should have no effect on the presentation of information. With photos, there was a slight tint in the monochrome test image. Detail in both dark and light areas of prints displayed reasonably well. Most of the test prints were of a quality better than what we'd expect from drugstore prints.
Because they use the same INKvestment cartridges, the MFC-J5930DW shares the low running costs of the MFC-J6935DW: 1 cent per black page and 4.7 cents per color page, based on Brother's price and yield figures. They are lower than the running costs of the Brother MFC-J6930DW (1.7 cents per black page and 8.2 cents per color page), which doesn't use INKvestment cartridges, and also lower than those of the HP 7740 (2.1 cents per black page and 8.1 cents per color page).
What's Not to Like?
The Brother MFC-J6935DW provides great value in a wide-format all-in-one printer. Its virtues include good speed and output quality, an abundance of connection choices, very low running costs, a good feature set including cavernous paper capacity and a single-pass, two-sided scanner, and the ability to print at up to tabloid size. Unlike the HP Officejet Pro 7740 and Brother MFC-J6935DW, both Editors' Choice printers, the MFC-J5930DW is limited to copying, scanning, and faxing legal-size documents, while those two models can copy and scan at up to tabloid size. You can get the MFC-J5930DW for slightly less than the MFC-J6935DW, but if you're printing tabloid-size documents, you may well want to scan them, too. With that in mind, among the printers mentioned here only the HP 7740 and our new Editors' Choice, the Brother MFC-J6935DW, let you do that.
The Brother MFC-J6935DW can print, copy, scan, and fax at up to tabloid (11-by-17) size, and has very low running costs compared with most of its peers.
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