Brother - INKvestment 4355 Wireless All-in-One Inkjet Printer with 1.8” Color Display (MFC-J4355DW), Great for Small Offices - White

This Brother printer was so easy to set up and connect to my laptop and S23 Galaxy phone. The print quality is fabulous. No issues so far!

Good printer. Easy to setup and simple/quick wireless printing.

This is my first inkjet printer in a long while. I like that Brother’s INKvestment line of printers have an internal sealed tank for storing the ink which is meant to increase the printer’s capacity, touting up to 1-year of ink out of the box (1800 black and white and 750 color page yields) and reducing the need to purchase and replace cartridges as often. However, keep in mind that the printer will still need to perform cleaning of the print heads to ensure consistent print quality, if there are long periods of time between printing which could waste ink and reduce overall printer output. This printer also comes with a free trial of Brother’s ‘Refresh EZ Print Subscription’ which automatically sends you ink at a discount when your machine starts running low. This all-in-one printer is compact while still being able to hold up to 150 sheets of paper in the tray. It weighs about 20 lbs and has a small footprint perfect for a small office or using on a desk. There’s a 20-sheet capacity auto-document feeder on top for faxing, copying, and scanning up to legal size documents, though note that it is not able to perform single-pass dual-sided scanning. Two-sided pages must be manually flipped over, in order, to scan the opposite sides, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to automatically collate the pages. The scanner glass for manual scanning accommodates sheets up to A4 size. At the back is a manual feed slot for specialty papers, card stock, and envelopes, so you’ll want to keep some clearance behind it for that and clearing paper jams as well. On the left-hand-side are two telephone jacks, one for the fax line, and the other for a pass-through telephone connection. Setting up the printer was very easy using the mobile app and guided instructions on the 1.8” diagonal color LCD on the front of the printer. Just note that you’ll need to register and login into a Brother account to use the Brother iPrint&Scan computer software and Mobile Connect app. You get four starter cartridges: black, cyan, yellow, and magenta, and they are easy to install in the compartment on the front with a firm press. The printer can connect to your network or computer via WiFi or USB but does not have an Ethernet port. You can also connect to it using WiFi Direct, so it does not need to be on your network at all. Scanning can be initiated from the printer itself or via the software, and I had no issue with my computer finding the device on my network and scanning to my computer. If connected to the internet, you can scan to the web as well to repositories like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, and Evernote, among others. Scans are accurate and clear though may produce mirrored ghosting if your originals are double-sided; however, there is a setting that can help remove bleed-through, patterns, or background colors that is pretty effective. Scan resolution can be set from 100 dpi up to 1200 dpi, though note with higher resolutions the scanner may make several passes and take several minutes to complete the scan. As for print quality, this printer does a very nice job with printing plain black and white text in documents. The lettering is clear, clean, and crisp with no soft or blurry edges and lines are straight, even, and uniformly spaced. The color images that this printer outputs are finely detailed without banding when reproducing color gradients. Photos are vivid, well-saturated, and color accurate appearing very close to photo quality, even on plain printer paper. While print speeds are rated to 19 and 20 pages per minute for black and color pages, note that printing a full-page color photo can take several minutes. One advantage that this printer has over laser printers is the ability to print borderless photos, or edge-to-edge, which can also be useful when printing brochures for business. Overall, whether printing duplex text documents from my computer or color photos from my cell phone, the printer woke up and printed with impressive speed and quality. There are multiple ways to connect to it, and you’ll have the convenience of integrating with web apps with an internet connection. It handles everyday office tasks like faxing, copying, and scanning though isn’t as convenient if you often need to scan or copy dual-sided original documents.

Brother has long been associated in the market as the printer brand that is cheaper, more accessible, and value focused. Brother, even in the commercial space, has offered great values compared to the competition. This is no less true today, when other manufacturers attempt to turn ink into a subscription service, Brother brings the Inkvestment line with its generous ink amounts. Brother’s latest Inkvestment printer, the MFC-J4355, is a great MFC device. Inside the box you’ll find a well secured printer, some paperwork, a power cord, and the starter cartridges. There are a few pieces of tape that secure the printer in transit, but they’re pretty easy to remove. Setup is pretty easy. After plugging in the printer, it will display a QR code that directs you to the app for setup. You can also setup via USB cable (USB-B to USB-A, not included), but the phone setup was preferable for me. The USB port hides under the service hatch, and is odd in its placement, requiring you to snake it in wasting a good 10+ inches of cable. It’s no huge loss as the WiFi is reliable. The setup guides you through the installation of the Inkvestment cartridges. The printer takes its time during this stage (about 10 minutes) where it fills the internal tanks from the Inkvestment cartridges (the LC506). The brother Inkvestment printers use this sort of hybrid approach, where there is an internal tank which is filled from these cartridges - which are installed very much like like traditional cartridges. The advantage here is that you can replace these before you run out of ink, and while not cheap, they offer a much better value than many competitors. After filling the tank, it will prompt you to insert paper to the main paper tray and print an alignment and test sheet. This sheet is then scanned and used to ensure the printer is properly aligned and configured. Once connected (via a WiFi access point the printer exposes), the phone can configure the printer fairly quickly. After connecting to your WiFi network, it exposes itself on your internal network through industry standard protocols. No matter a Mac, PC, iPhone, or Android device, the printer showed up quickly and worked immediately. Airprint is supported, as well as just general mDNS support for printer discovery. Windows downloads the correct driver quickly, and because this is from a common family of printers (the MFC-J4335 is extraordinarily similar), the compatibility is quite high. Besides the device compatibility, there is a long list of apps that this printer can use on the device. The 1.8” display, while ‘stunning’ in the marketing documentation is really anything but. It is however serviceable for occasional app connections. I would probably not want to use this small screen and menu if I was printing from my Google drive on a regular basis, but the capability to connect it and use it is a nice touch. This is something that brother really has had in their printers for well over a decade at this point, and I like that they continue to offer this on their smart printers. You’ll find connections for the Office products, Onedrive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, and more. Print quality wise, I found this brother to be quite good. While not as precise as a good laser, the alignment was excellent out of the box. Text was a bit softer than I’ve had with some other ink jets, but it still appears quite crisp at normal font sizes. Color banding on gradients was quite smooth until less than 20% of the color saturation. Printing text was lightening fast, with paper out in seconds and getting shoved from the print tray with force. The rated speed is 20ppm, with up to 19 color. Of course if you use the sensible feature of duplexing, that speed goes down to closer to 5 pages per minute (both sides). However, automatic duplexing in a printer this affordable is impressive and I’m quite pleased that it has it. Photo quality is acceptable. On regular paper, contrast is pretty bad. Photo paper improves this situation quite a bit. Overall I wouldn’t buy this specifically for photos, but it definitely could print a few 5x7’s for the office desk. The MFC portion of the MFC-J4355 is pretty solid as well. You get not only scanner and copier functionality, but also fax. If you don’t need the fax, that’s fine, but there is a modem still built in and you can use it to send faxes (untested, but I believe it). The printer offers not only a flat bed scanner, but also an ADF (automatic document feeder). While this scanner doesn’t auto duplex, it does make it trivial to send a multi-page fax or scan physical mail to a single document if you’re trying to go paper free. The MFC-J4355’s feature set, while great for the average consumer, is really perfect for many SOHO scenarios. The solid printing, scanning, and MFC capabilities are really huge positives over the normal home user’s needs. This is a great productivity printer that will fill many people’s needs while also offering fair and affordable ink. Brother has long been associated with affordable laser printers, and their ink jets are also to be taken seriously in this space. With the Inkvestment approach, and a sensible feature set and design, the J4355 should be at the forefront of printers to consider.

Printer may be okay but Best Buy screwed the pooch by sending me a used one and thinking I wouldn’t notice. Small scuff marks; small broken piece; semi-hidden scratch. Nice try, Best Buy.