Brother MFC-J6920DW review
What is the Brother MFC-J6920DW?
Brother introduced a redesigned small business, inkjet printer range last year, the most interesting features of which were its ability to print A4 pages in landscape mode and print occasional A3 pages, through a slot at the back. Now the company has expanded the range with true A3 machines and at the top of the range is the MFC-J6920DW.
Design and Features
Using the same, clean-cut black and white styling as earlier machines in the range, this A3 printer manages a surprisingly modest footprint. This is largely due to the fact that both the paper trays, each of which can take up to a healthy 250 sheets, are telescopic and only need to be expanded when printing A3. Either tray can also take A4 paper and the top one can take sizes down to 15 x 10cm.
The top of the machine is stepped, to accommodate the Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), which can also take A3 originals. The left-hand half of the top cover swings over to become the ADF feed tray and the lid, although substantial, has extending hinges for scanning bound documents.
The control panel looks surprisingly blank, as its 93mm touchscreen is supported on the right-hand side by a series of context-sensitive dedicated touch buttons, including a number pad for fax dialling, and on the left-hand side by a Near Field Communication (NFC) area for easy mobile device connection.
In a printing context, NFC enables quick wireless links from phones and tablets, without compromising network security. It means that simply by touching your device to the NFC area on printers such as this one, a connection is made so you can print documents or photos.
Brother MFC-J6920DW - Cards and NFC
To the right of the control panel, a pull-down cover reveals the four ink jet cartridges which slide into place in moments. The XL black cartridge is rated at 2,400 A4 pages, so you won’t need to be changing it every few days.
To the left, behind a similar cover, are card sockets for SD and MemoryStick and a USB socket, which also supports PictBridge. Support software includes Nuance PaperPort 12 as well as Brother's own MFL-Pro suite.
Brother MFC-J6920DW - Print Speeds
Brother rates the MFC- J6920DW at 22ppm for black print and 20ppm for colour. We didn’t see speeds that high. Our 5-page text test returned 7.8ppm and this increased to 11.4ppm on the 20-page test. This is a fair speed for an inkjet printer, but barely over half the rated figures. A 20-side duplex version of the document gave 5.6 sides per minute, which is reasonable.
The 5-page, A4, black text and colour graphics document gave 7.0ppm and the A3 equivalent gave 3.5ppm, exactly half the A4 figure. A single page A4 copy from the flatbed took 21s and an A3 copy took just 7s longer, at 28s. A 10-side, duplex A4 text document copied in a fair 2:04.
15 x 10cm photos took between 1:08 and 1:16, which is an impressive set of speeds and varied very little between sources. The print from a Samsung Galaxy Mini Android smartphone was very quick and the Brother app offers more useful control than many.
Brother MFC-J6920DW - Print Quality and Costs
Print quality on plain paper is reasonable, slightly better than from Brother’s earlier inkjet engines. The fuzzier appearance of print from piezoelectric printers, like those from Brother and Epson, compared with thermal print from Canon and HP machines, may be down to the different ink compositions required by the two printing methods.
Photo prints show good natural colours and worthwhile levels of detail, though some is lost in darker areas of images. Colour on plain paper is bright and text over colour registration is good, though we did notice some banding in colour fills.
Using the highest capacity cartridges gives page costs of 1.7p for black pages and 5.7p for colour, including 0.7p for paper. These are similar to the best of the competition in the small business inkjet market and show again that inkjet print costs are often lower than those from similarly priced laser printers.
Should I buy a Brother MFC-J6920DW?
A3 all-in-ones are thin on the ground, with HP’s Officejet 7610 being that company’s only offering and the Epson Workforce WF-7525 being the only one from Epson.
The Epson machine has similar specifications and print speeds, including twin trays and duplex print, but is more expensive to run. HP’s A3 offering only has a single tray and no duplex scanner, so doesn’t really stack up. This makes the Brother MFC-J6920 the clear and obvious choice.
Verdict
Brother’s MFC-J6920 is a good, modern inkjet all-in-one, with all the facilities you would expect in a proper A3 machine: full print, scan and copy, single and double-sided on the larger paper. More importantly, it's the best printer of its type, making it easy to recommend.
What is AirPrint?
If you can open it on your apple device, chances are you can print it with AirPrint and an AirPrint compatible printer. Airprint works with Safari, Mail, Photos, iWork, PDF's in iBooks and many third-party AirPrint compatible apps available from the app store.
