The entry-level Brother MFC-J995DW INKvestment Tank All-in-One Printer ($199.99) offers a good mix of convenience and productivity features that small offices will like. It comes with auto-two-sided printing and can print from and scan to various memory devices, two perks we don't see in many of its competitors. Although its running costs aren't the lowest out there, they are still very competitive, making the MFC-J995DW an excellent all-in-one printer for small and home-based offices with moderate print and copy volume.
Lean, Clean, Printing Machine
At 7.7 by 17.1 by 13.4 inches (HWD) and weighing 19.2 pounds, the MFC-J995DW is very similar in size to the Canon Pixma G4210 and slightly taller, longer, and lighter than the Brother MFC-J775DW and a few other of Brother's lower-volume AIOs. The reason for the additional length is that this new INKvestment Tank model contains four fixed ink reservoirs inside the chassis on the right side of the machine, just behind where you insert the ink cartridges. (I'll talk more about those in a moment.)
For paper handling, the MFC-J995DW supports 101 sheets split between a 100-sheet cassette up front and a one-sheet bypass, or multipurpose tray, on the back. That's the same as the MFC-J775DW and the Pixma G4210 ($267.95 at Amazon) , minus the bypass tray. Epson's ET-3750 comes with one 150-sheet tray, and the HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 has a 225-sheet tray (both of those models are similar AIOs).
Like some previous Brother AIOs in this class, the MFC-J995DW comes with a somewhat small capacity (20 sheets) automatic document feeder (ADF), but it does not support automatic two-sided scanning. Of the printers mentioned here so far, only the OfficeJet Pro model has an auto-duplexing ADF. And that includes the significantly more expensive Epson EcoTank and Canon MegaTank AIOs. Its maximum monthly duty cycle is 5,000 pages, with a 1,500-page recommended print volume.
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The MFC-J995DW supports just about every connectivity option you can think of, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, connecting to a single PC via USB, Wi-Fi Direct, and near-field communication (NFC). Those last two are peer-to-peer wireless protocols that allow you to connect your printer to your smartphone or tablet without either it or them being connected to a router or network. In addition, NFC is a touch-to-print protocol that allows you to connect your mobile devices to your printer by simply touching them to a hot spot on the printer.
Other mobile connectivity features include Brother Cloud Connect, which is a collection of utilities for remotely printing to and scanning from email, the cloud, fax, and various Microsoft Office programs. Most of the popular cloud sites are supported, including both the consumer and "for business" versions of Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive, and OneNote. Third-party mobile connection options include Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, and a few others.
If that's not enough connectivity options, though, you can also copy or scan files to and from the MFC-J995DW via USB thumb drives and/or SD cards from two media ports located to the left of the control panel.
INKvestment Tank
With the MFC-J995DW, Brother has released a new iteration of its ink-cost-savings program, INKvestment, now dubbed INKvestment Tank Extended Print. Unlike Epson's EcoTank and Canon's MegaTank products, where you fill onboard reservoirs from bottles, INKvestment technology (like HP's Instant Ink) relies on conventional cartridges. INKvestment Tank is a hybrid between the standard cartridge system and a cartridge/onboard tank configuration. You still buy and replace cartridges when you're low, but the cartridges offload into internal secondary tanks.
According to Brother, the cartridge's electronics have been moved to the internal tanks, thereby increasing each of the replaceable cartridges' capacity significantly—in this case, what Brother claims to be up to one years' worth of ink. I'll talk more about the number of pages that come in the box and running costs, and those types of specs later, but I should point out that, since the INKvestment Tank does nothing to lower running costs, this new technology's benefits are primarily convenience.
In addition, Brother has thrown in a gauge that counts how many pages you have printed and estimates how many you have remaining, rather than displaying those highly inaccurate ink volume indicators. And, like HP's Instant Ink program, the printer monitors the ink levels and notifies you when they're low, and you can order replacement cartridges directly from the control panel.
Finally, as with the previous INKvestment iteration, the MFC-J995DW comes in an XL version and a non-XL version. With the previous product, though, the distinction is that the XL version comes with three sets of relatively large ink cartridges. The MFC-J995DW XL, on the other hand, comes with only one set, but the tanks themselves can hold twice as much ink—or up to two years' worth, depending on how much you print, of course.
Entry-Level Speed
Brother rates the MFC-J995DW at 12 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome pages and 10ppm for color. I tested it over Ethernet on our standard Intel Core i5-equipped PC running Windows 10 Professional. When printing our 12-page monochrome Microsoft Word text page, I clocked it at 10.5ppm, or a bit short of its rating. That's close to the 10ppm we saw from the MFC-J775DW ($129.99 at Staples) , 5ppm slower than the Epson ET-3750 ($767.20 at Amazon) , 6.4ppm slower than the HP 6978, and 2.2ppm faster than the Canon G4210. The MFC-J995DW's score here means that it's more geared toward moderate-use offices.
When I combined the results from the above 12-page text document with those from printing our more complex Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing graphics and photos, the print time dropped to 7.7ppm, which isn't bad for this level of printer.
I also timed the MFC-J995DW as it printed our two highly detailed and colorful 4-by-6-inch snapshots. Its average of 32 seconds per photo is about par for this level of AIO. It fell behind the G4210 by about 10 seconds, but most of the others mentioned here averaged in the half-minute range.
Good Text and Graphics
It wasn't but a few years ago that Brother inkjet printers were noted as terrific text printers, but mediocre graphics and photo printers, but those days are gone. The MFC-J995DW prints and copies colorful graphical and image content well enough for acceptance in most business scenarios. As usual, text was crisp, well-shaped and highly legible done to about 4 or 5 points.
The only real flaw I found was slight banding in a slide handout containing a black to dark-green gradient that runs the width of the page, but this wasn't necessarily unsightly, and frankly, most inkjets we test have trouble handling this task. The MFC-J995DW didn't have problems printing our test photos, though. They didn't come out as vibrant as you might see from a five- or six-ink consumer-grade photo printer, but otherwise they looked well-detailed and accurate, better than acceptable for most small business, school, and family use.
Competitive Running Costs
While the MFC-J995DW delivers better than acceptable running costs for its purchase price, nowadays there are some printers out there, such as the Canon G4210 (less than 1 cent per page for both monochrome and color pages) that simply leave it in their dust. The MFC-J995DW prints black pages at about 1 cent per page and color pages at just less than 5 cents. If all you print is 150 pages or so each month, those numbers don't add up very fast, and, besides, you probably won't be buying ink for about a year.
Of all the discount-ink brands (Instant Ink, EcoTank, MegaTank, and INKvestment), though, INKvestment's per-page costs are the highest, but, again, this isn't critical for a printer meant to support a modest volume. And compared with non-bulk-ink models, the running costs here are a steal.
So Many Good Choices
Brother printers run forever, and the company backs this one with a two-year warranty, which takes the gamble out of the MFC-J995DW's slightly high purchase price for what is essentially an entry-level machine. Bottom line: I can't think of a reason not to buy this printer, unless you need something beefier or supreme photo output. If it's higher volume, faster, and beefier you want, take a good look at our Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J6930DW, and for superb photo output, Canon's Pixma TS9120 (another of our top picks) should serve you well. Otherwise, for everyday moderate use in a small office, the Brother MFC-J995DW is a great choice.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is an entry-level office-oriented AIO with admirable output quality and, as a bulk-ink model, it costs a lot less to use than many of its competitors.
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