Brother - INKvestment Tank MFC-J805DW Wireless All-In-One Inkjet Printer - White

After using this printer for a while, its best feature is how economical it is in terms of ink usage. The ink cartridges last a lot longer than traditional ink cartridges, and they don’t cost as much. This All-In-One printer is a little pricier upfront, but I expect my replacement ink cost to be a lot lower in the long run. You truly do get a lot of ink in each cartridge for a lot lower price. The overall functionality of this All-In-One (AIO) is on par with other AIOs I’ve owned. I’ve used all the features, which include scanning, copying, printing, and faxing. The machine hasn’t malfunctioned, and overall it performs as it’s designed to. I do want to make the distinction between duplex printing and single pass copying. This printer can print on both sides of a page (duplex printing). It can’t, however, copy or scan a double-sided document from the automatic document feeder (ADF). The ADF uses a single pass scanning process. Meaning, in order to copy or scan a double-sided document, you’ll need to feed the document twice (once for each side) into the ADF. Other more expensive AIOs have double pass copying and scanning built into the ADF. This one doesn’t. It may not be that big of a deal to some, but to others it may matter. Otherwise, the print quality is good. I’ve printed many 4 by 6 photos on borderless photo paper and the images are clear and crisp (see photo). I’ve been using the High Quality output option, as opposed to the default Normal output setting, and my photos come out nicely. The colors may not be as bold in comparison to my high-end photo inkjet printer, but the colors are still vibrant. Another note I want to make is regarding installing the right drivers. I used the provided drivers on the CD and I didn’t have any trouble installing them. However, when I first installed the printer, my computer recognized the printer twice for some reason and listed it twice (one a copy) in the list of installed printers. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was accidently using the printer with the generic Window drivers installed. Not only was the printer not functioning properly, the printed images and pages were of low quality. Once I realized that I needed to use the other Brother printer listed, the one with the proper drivers installed off the CD, everything was of high quality and the printer functioned perfectly. Afterwards, I went ahead and deleted the bad version of the printer from my computer so there wouldn’t be any confusion in the future. Another tip. To easily connect this printer to your wireless network, you can enter in your network name and password directly into the printer itself. You can do this on the little screen on the front of the printer by navigating to the Wireless Network menu settings. Once connected, any computers and phones on the same network will not have a problem finding the printer for installation and printing. The suite of software installed for this printer does provide a lot of options. I haven’t many of the software features yet, but one feature I do like is the ability to send faxes from my phone using the Brother iPrint&Scan app. For example, you can select any document on your phone, such as a picture of a document you took on your phone and send it as if you were physically standing in front of the printer. The app will send the image to your AIO printer and the printer will initiate a call on its phoneline to fax the image to your recipient. This has become extremely helpful when I need to fax something, but I’m not home in front of my machine. Overall, this is a well-designed machine. It has a small footprint for being an All-In-One (meaning it doesn’t take up much space on a table). I am satisfied with its performance and quality.

The Brother J805DW is new to our household, so we don’t have long-term experience with it. My first impression is how small its footprint is. I’ve included a photo of it sitting next to an older printer, and the size difference is substantial. Regardless, it is a full-featured All-in-One printer, and includes scanning capabilities (including an Automated Document Feeder [ADF]), faxing, color printing and mobile integration. It also comes with adequate ink for a year’s worth of printing. Brother bases this on expectations that you will average around 150 pages a month. The physical size of the unit’s ink cartridges is noticeably larger than any I’ve used before; still, it’s going to be interesting to see if their projections are accurate. Setting the J805DW up went smoothly and connecting it to our home network was easy as pie. Shortly after downloading and then installing the printer driver, everything was up and running. The documentation accompanying the printer says that the Automated Document Feeder can handle up to 20 pages at a time. I did a test run with 14 sheets, and while it did complete the scan successfully, the last 3 or 4 sheets came out shifted to the side of the feeder. Further, the resulting scanned images all looked askew as though they weren’t properly seated in the hopper. I re-scanned a few times and the results were all similar. I tried scanning the same documents using the platter and they came out looking perfect! For anyone who does a lot of scanning, this printer does not support duplex scanning. That means that it cannot scan both sides of a document at the same time. Also, the ADF has trouble handling stock heavier than 24lbs. I tried some heavy stock and found that it always ended up stuck as it was being ejected. Per their documentation, the ADF can handle 17-24lb paper without problem. The app that handles scanning has selectable options from which you can pick. For example, one option lets you email the newly scanned document to yourself. Another lets you save the to your device’s C-drive. You can also send the document to a Cloud Service. I generally deposit mine in a folder on my Microsoft Cloud drive. Options also allow you to specify what type of file type it should create, such as PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others. The scanning process is adequate, but I was hoping for some additional functionality. When the scanning process pauses and before you save the document, it allows you see thumbnails of what the scanned document pages look like. This is a handy feature. And it allows you to add more pages, if that’s needed. Again, this is fine. What it doesn’t do is give you the ability to delete any of the already scanned pages. Nor does it allow you to sort the pages into a different order if a page was scanned out of sequence. If there’s a problem with even one scanned page, your only option is to delete the whole thing and start over. Mind you, these limitations aren’t a reflection of the printer, but of the software written to support the printer. Faxing, which I do a fair amount of, was easy to set up. When you install the printer driver, it will ask if you want faxing capabilities. Just answer Yes. Once installed and during the first faxing run, it will create an address book for you to use to store names, addresses, and phone/fax numbers to use when sending a fax. The address book is size-limited and only allows you to save 40 auto-dial records. I’ve never used more than a dozen or so, so 40 is more than ample for me. The paper tray, like the printer itself, is also small and only stores 150 sheets of paper. Connectivity to the J805DW is limited to Wi-Fi (which I prefer for portability) or by a USB interface for direct connection to your PC. This printer supports duplex printing, which means that you can print on both sides of a sheet of paper when needed. The estimated cost of printing is much better than any of my past printers. The manufacturer estimates that it costs $0.01 per page to print in black ink and less than $0.05 per page in color with their INKvestment Tank Ultra High-Yield cartridges. All said and done, Brother provides a 2-year limited warranty and free Brother online, call or live chat for the life of your printer. Not too shabby! I think this printer is a good deal and, for me, a keeper!

This printer came out of the box ready to use except for the ink. The large ink cartridges are the best selling point for this machine. I followed the directions given on the quick start guide. I was surprised to find that the screen was not a touch screen and instead used arrow buttons. To connect to the network, I input the password the old flip phone method-- hit a button multiple times to go from lower case, to upper case, to numeral, etc. The instructions did not provide that tip though, totally wondered if that would work and it did and was faster than arrow buttons. (if you ever texted someone on a Nokia phone, you know what I'm talking about). Installing the ink cartridges was dead easy. Slide them out of the protective plastic and insert. No special tabs or covers. It took a few minutes to fill up the hoses with ink, but that was fine. It printed a sheet to ensure it was working, so I moved on to connecting my computer to use it. I thought the CD was a nice touch to include for those who are not tech savvy enough to download the program from the website or who live without internet. I downloaded and installed the Brother program. After starting the install, it kept thinking I did not have a connection to the internet. There was not a A/B usb cable in the box and I was too lazy to dig one out, so I fiddled with it. It kept hanging up. I finally said heck with it and cancelled the install, thinking I would continue later in the day. On a whim, I tried to print to the printer and it worked! This printer is pretty quiet. It's a color printer, so I printed a color photo to see how it did. I was unimpressed with the print, so I then printed it on another printer at my house and the difference was really pretty stark. I have included both pictures. The pale one is from the Brother and the darker more vibrant one is from another brand of ink jet printer. Right there, I knew that it had fallen in my rating. I find the difference startling. Same photo, not edited, side-by-side. After all, why have a color printer, even if the ink lasts a long time, if it doesn't print in color well? Other things to not like about this printer is that it is awkward to put paper in the tiny capacity tray on the bottom. It also feels a bit flimsy to me, but then I tend to USE printers. The low capacity tray was a turn off. For a similar price (or maybe $20 more) you can get a printer that has a much larger paper tray, larger touch screen control center, automatically prints double-sided without having to flip the paper, and even scans a double-sided original and prints color twice as fast. Nah, wait for a sale on a better printer. Also, who has a landline to connect a fax to?

Set up was easy enough. Unpacking was easy due to two (2) foam cushions and a few cardboard inserts. Set up was easy also. Just remove the green shipping tapes, add paper and the ink cartridges. The printer was ready to go. I could have easily connected the printer either via USB cable (NOT INCLUDED), cat5e patch cable to my router / switch, but I chose to use the WiFi. Using the included PC CD-rom program, connecting was painless. I like the Paper-Port 14 scannning software that downloads as an add on package. Makes scanning and document filing simple and very professional. The color print quality is great and this gets 5-stars! The paper tray has the ability to hold pre cut photo paper of most common dimensions (5x7, 4x6, etc.) I like the flatbed scanning glass, great for most work. Very clear scanning of documents or photos. I could only give the automatic feeder 3-stars. It is for low volume sheet feeding, 20 pages max. It jammed too often and you can't get the black feeder plate open to see if anything is stuck in the rollers. Also, the way the pages feed from below then stack has something to be desired; they too, get jumbled. But that aside a very economical printer with super large Tanks of ink that make per print cost of only $0.01 each. Lightweight and very small footprint it easily sits on my desktop.

Setting up the printer is as simple as entering your WiFi password and installing the toner cartridges. I had already downloaded Brother’s iPrint&Scan and the Mopria Print app for Android, so the first test page was printed from my phone. Mac OS setup is fast so the 2nd test page was printed within another minute. Windows 10 is where I hit the wall. We have two Windows 10 laptops and I have only been successful installing the drivers on our spare laptop. That install went perfectly. I tried it after several hours of struggling with our primary laptop. It has been 10 days, countless install attempts several different ways, hours wasted researching and we still don’t have drivers installed on our primary laptop. I’ve tried everything. I’m at a loss, and I never need tech support. I’m trying to register the printer but I’m having problems with their website. I created an account but there was an error at the end of the process. I can’t log in, even after resetting the password several times. I created a new account with a 2nd email address. Now I could log in, but I was unable to register the printer. After submitting their web form there is no confirmation or error displayed when the page refreshes. I’ve tried several times with no luck. The printer isn’t listed in the registered products section of my account overview page. Today I can no longer log into my (2nd) account. Frustrating. I really hoped to have the problem with our main windows 10 laptop resolved before posting this review. If that were our only computer, I would be really disappointed with this printer. The printer set itself up for google cloud printing. I logged into Cloud Print and the printer was already in the list. I love the auto document feeder. It makes this printer slightly taller than my last all-in-one, but it is worth the additional height. It is impossible to accidentally leave the originals on the main scanning bed. The auto feeder runs your document over a narrow scanner on the side of the main scanning bed. Convenient but occasionally it can be a little crooked. It also has a slightly lower max resolution of 1200 × 600 vs the 1200 × 2400 of the main scanner glass. I had to use the Brother iPrint&Scan app on my mac to scan. Normally I can use the Open Scanner button in System Preferences but that produces errors with this scanner. You can send scans directly to each of your computers using the Scan to PC option once you have iPrint&Scan configured on the computers. If you have one computer available, it will automatically use that computer. If you have multiple computers available, the printer will display a list so you can choose. Mac also requires the download/install of iPrint&Scan Push Scan Tool. I also really like being able to send scans directly to OneDrive and Google Drive. The ink tank refill area, right in front, is extremely convenient. The ink cartridges are large, it will be interesting to see if they last a year. I used a refill kit to fill the cartridges on our last all-in-one. I hope to avoid that with this printer. It is extremely easy to remove and reload the adjustable paper tray. There is also a manual feed slot on the rear of the printer if you want to print on envelopes or a single sheet of paper. The printer supports two-sided (duplex) printing. I like the tip-up control panel. All the controls organized on one adjustable panel, nice. The color LCD is large enough to get the job done but I find myself squinting at the smaller fonts. If you plan on using USB, the port is located deep inside the machine using a foot or more of your cable to reach. I really like the design of the printer/scanner, but I still can’t install the drivers on my main windows laptop. Not being able to register the printer and the issues with (both) my Brother accounts doesn’t help either.

SUMMARY Entry-level multifunction inkjet printer designed for small and home-based offices with moderate print and copy volumes. It prints well overall and is affordable to use, and it has a handy single-pass auto-duplexing automatic document feeder. Supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, and USB 2.0 connections. In addition to Wi-Fi Direct, mobile connectivity consists of Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, and Brother's iPrint⪼an app for both Android and iOS and cloud services: Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive. THE GOOD: Affordable & automatic ink replacement Border-less printing Decent quality Print from mobile devices or the web Physical buttons for functions & numbers :) One year supply of ink included. THE BAD: Quirky software for network connection Small LCD screen No SD card support Setup was fairly easy until the wireless connection part via iPrint software for Windows (no issues with Android) it would not auto detect the printer after many tries and you have to hit wireless setup button (pictured) which is not mentioned in quick setup or reference guide. Once you do that it connects. Software install URL on quick guide is out of date and redirects you to the support page where you have to select model manually for drivers. Printer guides must be adjusted from the bottom which means you have to pull it out completely. Ink cartridges that looked fancy enough to carry Dilithium crystals for the Enterprise C, are very easy to slide in and take out with a push. On print quality text came out well-shaped and highly legible down to about 6 points, or more than small enough for most business documents. Photos, too, were detailed but print test from PrintAtest.com when compared to others like HP were slightly less sharp below text font 14. FINAL THOUGHTS: I had some issue connecting to WIFI but overall a good printer that really could use updated software for commercial owners, Brother is mainly business oriented and it shows in the vanilla iPrint driver. I just want it to connect to WIFI auto like some other printer brands do, or at a minimal have a big red WPS button in software, but maybe I’m spoiled? Note: A WPS button refers to a Wi-Fi Protected Setup button that connect your router and device with one click.

Unboxing was a breeze. Setting up the printer was a different story. Once you insert the ink cartridges the display states the printer will begin filling the ink tanks which takes 7 minutes to complete. You then are prompted to set the date, time, and network connections. It will then finish the set up process. Total time for set up is approximately 15-20 minutes. This printer is perfect for someone who does not print often or need to copy/print quickly. Print time is extremely slow. The way you load paper is difficult and it does not have a large paper tray at all. I would recommend this product for casual use. I would not recommend this product for business or student use, do to the speed of print and paper tray size. The printer does have a display this is very small and the buttons can be tad confusing. Over all 3 out of 5 stars is all I could give this printer for the reasons stated above.

I became a Brother Printer Advocate about 6 years ago. This one replaces my last one that the power supply died on. Between the two, I've not had 1 paper jam -- which is one of my chief complaints of other models I've purchased. It's very easy to use, even with the MAC. It's perfect for my needs, which generally are Black and White, but the color is nice when I need it.