Brother MFC-J470DW review: A Multi-functional Printer
The Brother Printers caught up with the international market with their latest model printer, MFC-J470DW. It has earned a strong recommendation based on its user ratings that has come handy equally for office use cum home usage. Would you like to try it?
Why Brother MFC-J470DW?
With an easy-to-use way of working, this multi-functional inkjet printer can also be operated as a dedicated fax machine, a copier and as well as a scanner. The MFC-J470DW has now come up with an exquisite offer claiming the device to be faster than its average output speed. The features are quite business-friendly that resembles of an auto-document feeder (ADF), it is similar to that of an auto-duplex machine that can print on both the sides of a single paper. The software suite was impressive too as that directly opens into the door leading to the cloud prints and scans. What more? It has also included the ability to print from an iOS and your Android devices. The best part of the game is that the ink prices are even lower than the so called popular branded printers which you get below the $100 range. For this reason the MFC-J470DW has earned a strong recommendation based on its user ratings and I am really feeling happy to make a purchase of it for my office use cum home usage.
The Design and Features
The very look of this MFC-J470DW model goes way beyond that of its earlier counterparts with a clunky and bulky design. It looks like a neat and tidy, compact footprint with a width of 16.1 inches by 14.7 inches deep raised to a height of 7.1 inches. No, I can't say that it is the smallest printer available till date on the shelf, but the productivity features of the MFC-J470DW surely surpasses the smallest printing machines like EPSON XP-420 model.
If the entrepreneurs are looking for a printing device that can save their money on paper by using the duplex printing feature, this is going to be definitely a useful piece with a well-integrated hardware that can automatically flip over a sheet of paper and can print on both of its sides.
They have incorporated a 20-sheet auto-document feeder (ADF) tray in it which comes to use when we are going for batch scanning or even while faxing by using the dedicated phone line. For digital performances, they have listed an option of a "PC Fax" where you can use the Internet connection to directly communicate from the computer to the unit -- so you can have the benefit of faxing a document without going for printing it out.
The Ink Supplies
The ink cartridge bay in this model is placed behind a flimsy plastic door adjusted to the right of the paper tray and it carries the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black cartridges that feed up to the printer. The cartridges are damn easy to install and any novice can try it without having to refer to the manual. The door has an easy access to it which is quite convenient for the users when they need to swap them out. The entire process goes with much more ease rather than having the entire unit to be lifted up along with the auto-document feeder.The Performance
The MFC-J460DW has earned the trust of being a widely acceptable multi-functional printer from the Brother brand and the range of making it available at a sub-$100 inkjet printer, the brand has been able to woo the market because of maintaining the basic standard which is able to take a 10-page black text sample document consistently at the rate of 9.78 pages per minute, and if you double the speed, still it goes parallel with its competitor HP Officejet 4630 all-in-one, that comes at the same price.
The print engine too went ahead in the competition of the full-color graphics page test that was performed, came up with an average speed of 3.93 pages per minute. To compare, it shunned down the Epson XP-420 which wasn't even able to bring out a single page in the test, and could only come up with.42 pages printed out per minute. So if you have speed as the primary criteria for your business, this Brother MFC-J460DW would definitely keep you on the safe side.
The image quality proved to be above average and that was quite a pleasant surprise to come out from a $100 printer. The separate ink tanks can be given the full credit for this as they provide an extra level of detailing which other printers of same price range with a single tri-color tank are not able to deliver. You would be able to notice the difference in the smoothness and also in the color transitions, especially when you look at the facial tones and portraits with multicolored variants.
The software driver gives the chance to the users to browse and experiment through the different print qualities and shows ways to conserve the remaining quantity of the inks. So you get the best results with the satisfactory print outs as you go saving on your ink as well, when required.A Few Don't Haves
The Brother brand has tagged the MFC-J470DW model as a "Work Smart" printer, which can indicate that there is something missing in the unit, like all those photo-centric features that contain a memory card reader and a PictBridge-compatible USB port which can pull in the photos directly from the flash storage drives and even from the digital cameras.
But this feature has been replaced by other ones because of which an occasional printing of photos from this machine goes smooth and fine. On the contrary, as its removable paper tray placed right on the bottom consists of plastic tabs it is able to adjust easily to the generally used photo paper sizes like 4 by 6 and 5 by 7 and accommodate them without any struggle. Apart from it is has added some more options to the commonly used standard sizes like letter, executive, legal and even envelopes or index cards.
It is a flatbed glass scanner which nicely fits up to the letter-size documents and you have the option to save projects in whichever variety of formats you wish to have, and also into a hard-drive folder. It can be done equally with a Microsoft Office project, an email message, or simply into the free Scansoft PaperPort document. It is the viewing software that makes it smooth and the Brother brand has done a good job by fixing it up with this model.
My Experience
I got to hear about it from one of my office colleagues. She was quite impressed with the performance as she doesn't need to struggle for each and everything, especially when in a hurry. The speed, the performance all combined to such a convenient price tag made her recommend the product when I was looking for one such model.
The refilling option appeared to me as quite convenient, and if I am not looking for extremely high end printing results, this model would serve my purpose at almost all the functionality that it serves.
