Brother Wireless All-in-One Inkjet Printer, MFC-J895DW, Multi-function Color Printer, Duplex Printing, NFC One Touch to Connect Mobile Printing, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled

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Just brought one of these home. I have always used an HP printer until frustration drove me to the store. The brother setup was not the most user friendly, (found it a bit tedious that each web app needed to have a temporary pin generated by a computer), however within an hour I had everything setup and all apps installed that I wanted to use. I am tech savy so a less tech savy user would probably need assistance to set these things up. However they are fairly easy to use once set up. My favorite part of the printer is the automatic document feeder (ADF) scanning option. When you buy these cheap all-in-one printers the ADF is something that usually doesnt work, and if it does it works poorly the ADF on this printer works well. It feeds pages to be scanned in straight, not at an angle, it hasnt jammed on me yet (scanned probably about 200 pages through the ADF so far), and gives me the option to save it as a file or email to myself. It is not a fast ADF by any means, but this is not important to me. Will never buy an HP printer again

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I previously had a Canon Pixma which was the printer from hell with all kinds of things I hated so getting a printer that did not make me want to throw it out the window from day 1 was super important. I was looking for something that woke up and started printing immediately, did not disconnect from the network every time it went to sleep, did not gobble ink, did not print only from an app on my computer but also from the device itself, printed quickly, had double sided printing and scanning (and copying), was easy to set up on my network without connecting directly to my computer, had an easy to navigate interface both on the device and on the app, and could print from a variety of devices including laptops, chromebooks, and phones. The MFC J895dw meets all these requirements and comes in a reasonably compact size as well. Print/copy/scan are all speedy, it connects right away to whatever device has sent the print job, setting up the printer wirelessly (without the cable connecting it to my computer) was easy, and I was able to get all the software I needed from the Brother website (I dont have a CD drive) without getting any extra unwanted software, unlike with Canon where I got more junk than you can imagine and none of it useful. For anyone who is concerned about the comments about slow printing, those folks who are having problems need to tweak a setting of some kind or update the firmware or a driver. This printer is so fast that if I forget to set up the little arm that catches the pages, they will literally shoot out a foot away from the printer (no worries - this does not happen as long as the arm is extended). I spent a lot of time reading reviews and going through the options on Consumer Reports, and I am really happy I chose this computer. I was hoping to spend less than $100 but as great as this printer has been so far, I dont even feel bad about going over budget for my purchase.

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Print quality is not as sharp as the HP it replaced but makes up for it with its easy wireless access from all of our devices. Have been able to access it from multiple laptops and Apple and Android phones.

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Bought this to replace a much larger HP I had bought from Costco that lasted a few years before dying. Spent a small fortune on ink for the HP so wanted to go to a more ink friendly company. This had all the features I needed for home - not a home office. If you need a machine for a anything more than occasional scanning DO NOT BUY THIS. This is a great machine for what it does but would not support a even a small home office in my opinion. Go for a larger more business oriented machine. This is a very small footprint which us great and has Automatic Document Feeder. I use the scan to email or scan to Dropbox functions which work great. This really shines though in the ease of connectivity to all my wireless device in the house to allow for wireless printing. I have an Macbook Pro, Surface Pro 2, iPads, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6 Plus and all connect perfectly and print perfectly. Very easy. Print quality is perhaps slightly below the HP I had but I can live with it (for general home purposes). I cant comment on the ink yet because I havent had to buy replacement but I intend to buy some off-brand anyways. So far very happy with this for what I need it for - GENERAL HOME USE.

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PROS: Easier set up than past Brother printers Solid text quality Good picture quality Inexpensive ink Fast printing speed (12 ppm text) Fast copying Front loading of cartridges 20 page auto document feed Duplex printing Rear manual feed slot (for envelopes or photo paper) Large 2.7 inch touchscreen display Cloud printing capability NFC capability SD card slot USB 2.0 port CONS: Scanning not available (or easily available) for Linux or Chrome OS Color photos are somewhat bland on this printer but are better than past Brother models (good to good+) Black and white photos were low average for me with this printer and looked dull and uniform Not enamored with Brother paper tray (see below) OVERVIEW: The Brother MFC-J895DW, Wireless, All-in-One printer gives you good bang for the buck. Brother is not known for producing the most refined printers out there, but they do make a great workhorse and have some of the cheapest proprietary ink on the market. I got this printer to replace my old MFC J870DW all-in-one and, I have to say, Brother has come a long way since 2014. Pretty much everything on the J870DW was easier from get-go from set up to print quality, everything has improved vastly. What you get here is a feature-filled, serviceable printer that is great for families or a home office. ALL-IN-ONES Just a quick word on all-in-one printers. The all-in-one is the jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none printer. If you want excellent black and white text quality, go with an inexpensive laser-jet printer. If you want high-level, frameable print quality, go with a high-end Epson or Canon color photo printer. If you want great black-and-white photo printing, get a dedicated photo printer with a separate cartridges for black pigment ink and gray ink. If you want the best fidelity scanner, get a high-end scanner.... What I am trying to say, is that all-in-ones do a lot for you, but they are not always the best option for printing a ton of text (they are too slow and you will not get heirloom quality text). They also arent the best option for high-end photo reproduction (if you want that you want museum quality prints, get a specialty photo printer made by another manufacturer). The all-in-one gets you get a versatile printer: you can print photos or text, copy, scan, and fax. These will be in the good range, but never in the high-end range. Where does the Brother fit in--probably closer to high-average to good quality across the board. Canons and Epsons, at least for me, tend to be more precision instruments and thus more high-end of the all-in-ones. Still, even their offerings dont quite cut the mustard when compared to their dedicated printers. With the Brother, you get a solid all-in-one that may not be the prettiest printer on the block but will take a beating and still carry on. It will also do a more than serviceable job and the cost of the printer and cost of the ink cost wont put you in the poor house. WHAT DO YOU GET The printer comes prepackaged with 4 high capacity ink cartridges. The printer itself was packaged simply in the usual large box. It was easy to extract and basically all you have to do is plug it in I didnt measure the length of the cord, but it was plenty long enough to reach an outlet in my set up and average length for the printer. This is not he most stylish printer: its basically a black box with a tilting front panel with the large 2.7" tough screen and buttons. The left upper panel (the one marked brother) flips out to reveal the USB port and SD card slot. The right panel is where you front load the ink cartridges. The footprint is exactly as advertised: 6.8 x13.4 x15.7 inches. Small enough to be compact and large enough to take or scan A4 paper. SET UP Installing the ink was a breeze. Just remove the plastic protector from the cartridge and slip into the appropriate slot. The ink is front loaded in the right side panel, so you dont have to open the printer--like we did in the bad old days--to pop in the new cartridges. Easy peasy. This printer uses Brothers standard paper tray. Im not really enamored of it. It goes in and out of the slot well enough, but its a pain to take out, open, and load each time. You then need to connect to your home network (or connecting directly to your printer with a USB cable). This was desribed in the quick start guide and also easy using the now-larger touch screen. You then have to install the printer on your computer (and, yes, I tried them all.) For a PC or Mac you then download the iPrint & Scan software from Brother and this sets up the proprietary drivers and software for the printer. This was simple. The Brother software isnt beautiful but you do get things like ink levels, a lot of flexibility when scanning, and a number of other features. Not the best implemented software, but--so far--no printer software is all that robust. If you are using Linux, you can download wither an .rpm or .deb file and install the drivers that way (as usual, with Linux, there are no extra frills). Printing works just fine in Linux, but I could not get the scanner to connect via Wi-Fi. (Note: To load the drivers in Ubuntu, I found it was easiest to download the .deb file and install it using GDebi. If you dont have GDebi, go to terminal and type: sudo apt-get install gdebi . This will install gdebi and then when you download the .deb file, just click on it and away you go.) For iOS and Android, you simply download the iPrint & Scan software. For Chrome OS, you simply follow the instructions to install a printer in Chrome. (This should be trivial, but it took some doing. I ended up installing the printer as a generic printer, rather than a specific Brother printer. It works well, but I dont have scanning capabilities on Chrome.) THE PRINT TRAY Im not enamored of Brothers print tray. It does front load but its a bit frustrating to adjust. You can adjust it for a number of paper sizes and it even expands with the press of a button to legal size. You do have to pull it out of the printer, open it like a clam shell, make the adjustments and then insert the correct sized paper. A major plus--there is a rear, manual feed slot on this model. Its not the most convenient thing, but if you want to print a single photo, its much faster to feed it through the rear tray than it is to have to remove the front tray, make size adjustments, and load the photo paper. The rear tray is much better at handling heavier stock paper, which often gets caught up causing a jam or doesnt get picked up when put in the front tray. PRINTING TEXT Print quality for text has been great. The text appears to be sharp and very easy to read. A laser jet might have sharper quality, but its hard to notice. Good enough for school or work applications. The advantage of a laser jet would be two fold: better print quality and print speeds faster than 12 ppm. But 12 ppm for an inkjet, is spot on. No complaints here. There is a duplex tray, so you can save paper by printing documents on both sides of the paper. This feature worked well. PHOTO PRINTING Color prints fared better than black and white but--even with the brand new inks on photo paper--the colors are a bit muted and the resolution isnt 100%. That said, Brother has come a long way from the last printer I had. The color photos are solidly in the good to good+ range. Black and white, however, is not as good. There is minimal pixilation but the blacks and grays are more of a wash than they should be. Once again, if you want seriously good B&W photos, you need a printer with a dedicated black photo cartridge and a separate gray cartridge. You can find these in a few all-in-ones, but if you really want the B&W (and even color photos) to pop or if you want a lot of control of the printing, you will need a real photo printer. Unlike my previous Brother printer, there IS a rear, manual feed slot, so you can load photo paper separately without removing the cartridge. This allows for photo printing or printing envelopes without having to remove the front tray. That said, photos are good enough for casual pictures and portraits, but certainly not professional work. They are also good enough for any of your kids school projects. SCANNING: Scanning is easy enough to do on a PC or Mac using the Brother software. For Linux and Chrome OS, the scan function doesnt seem to work. You have to scan to an SD card or USB drive and then manipulate the document on your computer. The scanner is serviceable. It is not the sharpest of scanners but is fine for text documents. If you want to archive photos, it will work, but you will want to use a more precision scanner if you want full photo-quality. This is basically a 1200 x 1200 dpi optical scanner at the max, but whatever the dpi, if the end resolution isnt so good it really doesnt matter what the dpi is. Its kind of like having a gazillion pixel camera with a not-so-good lens. Youll have lots of pixels but the picture will still be blurry. SD OR USB CARD PRINTING/SCANNING Its a little difficult working with the small 2.7" window, but at least this is bigger than past Brother printers. The instructions are fairly clear and its generally easy--if not somewhat cumbersome--to print a photo or scan directly to an SD or USB drive. As noted above, its a feature that other printers companies are leaving out on lower end printers in deference to cloud connectivity, but especially given that the scanner functions dont seem to work with Linux or Chrome OS, you really do need the ability to scan to directly to SD or USB. PAPER HANDLING: I did not try to put 150 sheets in the automatic paper feeder but for 10-20 sheets of paper it works perfectly THINGS I DID NOT TRY: Faxing, NFC capability CONCLUSION: All in all, this is a great value for an all-in-one printer. Brother has come a long way when it comes to making their set up user friendly. As noted above, expectations have to be appropriate for these multi-function printers, but even given the weak spots for this printer, it is a great printer for home or home office. Recommended.

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It is hard to find a good printer anymore as everything is produced in China with questionable build quality. This printer is produced in the Philippines which appears to be slightly better quality. This printer is relatively inexpensive without being cheep and offers a good balance of features, cost and quality. The printer supports iCloud and Google Cloud print as well as the ability to print from and scan to most common web sources. These features were pretty easy to setup. The printer supports full duplex printing (although not really fast) and has a scanner with a sheet feeder (not duplex). PROS: Duplex printing Sheet feeder for scanning Alternate rear paper path for envelopes and card stock. Low footprint (nothing sticks out) Low cost ink (several options) Good internet connnectivity Paper cassette tray Easy to use color touch screen with good sensitivity. CONS: Lightweight build quality Although advertises two paper trays, you must manually move tray to use the photo tray Power cord on side not back. Photo quality poor.

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Cant use black and white ink if any one of the colors goes out. So, basically, you have to keep buying color cartridges even if you want to print in black and white. Right now, I need to print in black and white but I am out of the yellow cartridge so it will not allow me to print at all.

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LAST UPDATE: 12/30/2017 I just got an automatic update on the printer. It informed me of all the features that are no longer supported. It further informed me that to use the features that I purchased it for, I must now use their cloud! Well I did not buy this printer to be forced to use their cloud. Read their privacy policy fine print. I will not buy Brother again.. ........A little tricky to install. I set up all of the software on one computer but I did not really like how the program wanted to take over managing my pictures etc. On the other computers, I just installed the drivers and basics. I liked that set-up much better, Set-up was not glitch free, at one point I called tech support. By the time that they called back, the problem had been solved but they were very easy to reach and willing to help. The printer makes good quality prints and works well once set up. I set it up wireless and have had no problems with connectivity with macs and PCs. The scan function works well too. I like the printer, just wish that the software was not so cluttered. UPDATE: I went from 4 to 3 stars. After using the printer for a while now, I have to report that it has proven be very temperamental when it comes to connectivity after all. I have to reset my router, manually reconnect the printer and/or run the "connectivity repair tool" from Brother ....often, very often......

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The printer was off line when I went to print 8 out of 10 times. If you want a wireless printer chose something else. Almost every time I had to print something I had to turn the printer off and turn it back on (this didnt always work on the first try and the process needed to be repeated often). Calling Brother support was useless, as they advised me to make sure it was selected as my default printer. Purchased it Oct 7 and tossed it in the garbage on Dec 29th. I had enough.

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After having this product for a little over 6 months, I can say that I am very displeased. During a print, the magenta port clogged for some reason. After many attempts to clean the print head and print quality checks, still no magenta. I contacted customer service, and they told me to do an initial purge. This did nothing but drain my ink. So, I bought more cartridges. Still no magenta. After a second initial purge, the ink cartridges emptied a second time. More cartridges, and I still have no magenta AND the cyan is now missing as well. VERY disappointed. UPDATE Brother sent me a brand new machine. And this one was fine for about 50 or 60 pages, until the yellow port clogged. At this point, I am so disgusted that I will never again purchase a brother product or recommend one to anybody unless they are interested in an overpriced paperweight that uses a lot of ink.

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