Brother - INKvestment Tank MFC-J6545DW Wireless Color All-In-One Inkjet Printer - White/Gray

---SETUP--- The setup for this Brother printer is time consuming if you’ve never used an inkvestment type printer before. The size of the printer requires two people for safe handling. The ink cartridges are easy to install and have a unique wedge per color to prevent wrong insertion. The black ink, however, must be shaken 15 times before it can be used. After that, it takes 8 minutes for the ink tanks to do their first cycle. If you do all the steps back to back and with no errors, you’re looking at a 20 minute setup with WiFi. ---FEATURES--- The key feature of this printer is that it uses “inkvestment” technology. All that means is that the ink tanks (read: cartridges) have been modified to fit more ink, require less changing, and be cheaper to replace. The box touts to have 1 year’s worth of ink included in the box printing 300 pages per month. Additionally, it works as a fax, scanner (with OCR), and copier. It has up to 4800 x 1200 DPI color resolution, the ability to air-print (iOS and Android), and scan to cloud services. ---PERFORMANCE--- The performance of this Brother printer was excellent with a few mishaps that may or may not affect you. This printer is meant for small business, but not all businesses use all features. When it comes to printing, the quality is above par. I printed a high-quality color image on photo paper with photo-quality settings and the image looked incredible. Additionally, I printed a similar image on card stock fed through the alternate multipurpose tray that can be used for envelopes or other sizes and paper types and the results were equally impressive. Printing on paper is great as well, but I did find a tiny issue with this. As my multi-paper document was printing, at some point, one of the papers didn’t land flat on the bed. Instead, it curled up causing a few others to coil up behind it (pictured). It only happens once, but I thought I should mention it since it did occur in a setting where there was no air source coming through and the printer was on a stable surface. Another thing that I noticed was that scanning an image through the feeder tray didn’t come out entirely straight, but it’s not a feature I plan on using often. Lastly, I did print using my iPhone, which didn’t require any additional apps once the printer was connected to my network. Printing via the phone, though, has limitations on the options of what tray to print from as well as other functionalities. ---EXPECTATIONS--- The product meets my expectations. This is not the first inkvestment-type printer I own. Being a teacher, I have a lot of printing needs when school printers shut down. These types of printers do live up to their name of saving you money when having to buy ink again. For my needs, it will serve a good purpose. ---VALUE--- The price for the printer in terms of value makes it a good trade-off vs. how much you will save on ink. ---APPROVAL--- I highly recommend this product for people who own a small business, educators, or people who print in large quantities monthly.

About 7 years ago I made the (reluctant) choice to try a Brother AIO printer. I was frustrated that I was wasting money on "the other guys" only to have their printers die after a year or two. I had noticed that we had Brother fax machines at the office that had been used daily and looked like they were manufactured in the 1980s, so I brushed my fear aside and gave Brother a shot. Unfortunately, 7 yrs later my entry-level AIO gave up the ghost. I was more than willing to buy another AIO and was very interested in the INKvestment Tank "technology" used in the MFC-J6545DW. Honestly, I don't know that "bigger ink" equals "technology" but the thought of not replacing a bunch of tiny ink cartridges all the time is quite nice. Regardless, when the printer arrived at my doorstep I was also shocked at how big the printer itself is. That's my fault for just shopping online and not stopping to think that a device that can scan and printer in ledger size has to be twice the size of my 8.5x11 all-in-one. First impression, size aside, is how easy the setup was. I chose to connect to wifi manually, but they offer WPS for anyone who wants the "push button" option for connecting to wifi. The longest part of setup was the 8 minute wait after loading the ink. Apparently the device needs to siphon the ink from the cartridge into internal storage tanks. Regardless, less than 15 minutes from unbox to printing for me. My Windows 10 laptop found the printer without any action on my behalf (other than clicking on "find printers"). I have been impressed with how quick, clean, and crisp the output is. Documents print about twice as fast as my old Brother personal printer...which was still pretty quick. The printer also holds about 5x as many pages of paper than my old printer which is nice. (I was always running out of paper mid-job.) To get the full benefit of the printer, like scanning documents to cloud accounts, you need to install the FULL driver. It comes on a CD in the box. Fortunately it is also available for download on the Brother website. Speaking of scanning, the ADF (auto document feeder) claims to hold 50 sheets. It is important to note that it will NOT scan/copy both sides of a sheet automatically. (You need to step up a model for that option.) Scanning speeds are just average. I tried using the ADF to scan some old 4x6 photos and had mixed results with some photos getting stuck. Additionally, the Brother scanning software isn't the greatest forcing you to set the scan size rather than "auto-detecting." There might be a way around that but I have not spent enough time scanning to know for sure. It would be nice to be able to lay photos on the glass and have the scanner detect the individual images or scan without cutting off the edge because you set the wrong size in the software. I love the scan to cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive, Evernote) options. JPEG, TIFF and PDF are the only options. I am disappointed PNG is not a built-in file format for scans. You can also scan docs with OCR. The scanner can "scan and send via email" if you don't want to save to the cloud, flash drive, or PC folder. The scan quality felt average for photos and good as a copier, and as mentioned previously, scanning is not much faster than my old scanner--but at the same time, it is scanning twice the surface area. The touchscreen is small. Icons for navigating the touch screen are large, but when it comes to selecting items or typing words on the touchscreen, it can get a bit hairy if you have big fingers or an unsteady hand. A larger touchscreen would be nice, but at least it pivots to help with glare and angles. My Android phone, which still had the old Brother printing app on it, found the printer without any effort. I was able to print direct from phone just as fast and easily as printing from the laptop. If I can get the same life out of this Brother AIO as I did my old one, it will be a good investment. There are devices out there that will undoubtedly scan more clearly and maybe even faster, but the Brother MFC-J6545DW has enough features (especially since I can forego automatic double-sided scanning) and a high quality output perfect for my needs at a reasonable price.

The Brother MFC-J6545DW INKvestment Tank all-in-one inkjet printer is a beast of a printer and I mean that literally. This thing is huge, to include the ink cartridges, and requires a two person lift to move it. However, the size is important if you need to be able to scan/print/copy or fax ledger (11x17) size documents. For a small business, this printer has pretty much everything higher end printers have and “1 years worth of ink” in the box. The included ink is listed as 3,000 black and 1,500 color pages, so the 1 year is subjective to use. But, compared to regular inkjet cartridges that tend to max out at 600 pages, this is a huge difference on cost advantage. Comparing to some other Brother Genuine cartridges you can get the ultra yield that has nearly 10 times the ink of regular inkjets (6,000 pages) for about $0.01 a page. While comparing to other inkjet printers the quality on this one is on par with most others I have had but a bit faster on the actual output with a rating of 22ppm. On black, or pages with minimal color, it is noticeable how quick it is. Printing full color or photos does take a while and even comes out kind of damp feeling. Though capable of printing borderless photos, I wouldn’t say it is intended as such as the quality looks flat. As for scanning, the automatic document feeder can hold up to 50 pages, but the 6545 model only supports single sided scanning through the ADF, you can do double sided if you use the bed or get the 6945 model. The copy quality is pretty good, but if comparing copies side by side, you can see the minor differences. The paper tray holds half a ream of paper and expands to hold the ledger size paper. This makes it stick out, but not any further than the paper output tray already is. There is also a multi-purpose tray in the back which makes it easy if you need to print something on card stock, photo paper or a different size than you already have loaded. You can connect this printer using Ethernet, WiFi or USB 2.0 and it is simple to do so. However, once you connect this device to your network, I highly suggest you connect to it through a web browser and change the default password that is listed in the Online User’s Guide, not found in the included Reference Guide. Through the network settings you can enable additional security features such as firewall and external card readers as well as many other advanced configurations that can’t be changed through the touch screen. Printing from any computer and mobile device on my network was simple and worked completely to include double sided printing without additional drivers installed. However, to use other features such as scan to device or send fax from PC/mobile device you need the CD/Downloaded software or the Brother iPrint&Scan app.

Large format printing capabilities in a multi-function machine. It was easy to set up. The large ink tanks boast 300 pages per month for a full year. The bottom tray hold 250 sheets. The rear tray hold 100 sheets of different sizes. The flat bed scans up to ledger sheets. Great for CAD drawings and such. I do a lot of CAD work, so this will be perfect for large drawings. Being a multi-function machine, it FAXes, scans and prints in B&W and color. Very cost effective per page printing. Cloud print via most common apps and cloud drives. No problems printing from my moto e6 cellphone, WIN10 laptop and iPAD. Love the crisp high resolution print quality. I definitely recommend this for a small office where many people can share a great quality printer at a low cost.

Is the best printer for the price when it comes to all the different paper formats it can print in, and features. The INKvestment tank does save money compared to other similarly prices printers as well. Overall a great home office printer for those that need a lot of features for a affordable price.

Really like this printer. Great color prints. Fast print/scan. Large scan plate for legal docs. Love the touch screen control panel. Holds a nice amount of paper. Easy set up and easy to figure out all of the features.

For the price this is probably the best value printer for small businesses. The ink seems to last pretty good... not going to last a year as advertised, it does 11x17 which was a must for me and the quality of prints are pretty decent.

Overall, when able to print it works well (4 stars) – but given the software issues (2 stars) – I have to give it an overall rating of 3 and recommend if it is your only Brother printer. The printer is let down by what I would describe as disastrously buggy software that would not let inkjet work/print properly with a Brother laser model MFC-L3770CDW I already had installed (iPrint&Scan, utilites and update software particularly). I had no problem finding the printer(s) when installing but afterward I kept getting no print driver error and/or printer(s) offline leaving me unable to print from either printer. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling with no luck. So, I contacted Brother but it took over 6 days to get support from them and that was only after I contacted BB TIN network for help. When I finally was contacted by support the person was great but it did take a while for them to uninstall and delete everything out before re-installing both printers’ software/drivers. They accessed my computer remotely, which was fine with me. I don’t know what happened in this instance as I received excellent support last year with a print issue with the laser (wasn’t using laser paper to print pictures – my operator error). Unfortunately, I have several laptops/desktops/phone that I am having same issues as above when trying to add this printer to work in conjunction with the laser. I suspect if this is your only Brother printer it would probably work fine – as my laser did before trying to add this inkjet. The printer itself I think is nice if a tad large (22.5W x 19D and 25.5D with MP open in back and paper collector open in front - x 12.5H inches) and heavy, at around 44lbs. I think this size could make it somewhat impractical for home use as wherever it is placed you really need to be able to access all sides of printer in case of jam, etc. I put it on a rolling metal cart I already had. In the box are; Instructions Power cord about 6 feet. It has NO cumbersome brick. 4 toner cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) Telephone line cord This printer checks a lot of boxes; Grayscale and color printing up to 1200 x 4800 dpi Automated duplex printing Scanner – 19200 x 19200 dpi interpolated 1200 x 2400 dpi (scanner glass) 600 x 600 dpi (from ADF) Copier – 1200x 4800 dpi Fax – I didn’t use this function Wireless/ethernet/usb connections. Ethernet and USB connections require you to flip open under the scanner to access the connections. Does include phone cable but no USB or ethernet cable. Has a 3.5-inch color touchscreen. You can do a lot of adjustments using this and it is pretty intuitive but I found it a tad touchy when trying to scroll. Luckily there are up/down/side arrows which I found easier to use to navigate by. Easily accessed USB 2.0 port in front to allow printing from thumb drives, etc. Main tray has 250 sheet capacity holding up to 11x17. Multi-purpose (MP) tray has 100 sheet capacity up to 11x7 I found the duplex printing to be very fast whether using greyscale or color. Scanning worked well producing very accurate replication. Also has adjustments for resolution, size, etc. But no auto 2-sided scan, you must flip over manually. As such 2-sided cannot be done if using ADF. If using the plate to scan the top expands upward an inch or so to allow for thicker source such as scanning from a book, etc. Can scan up to 11x17 source. Text printing was very crisp and clear with no smudging even if using lowest resolution and ink saving option(s). Pictures came out great except for fast as it left a few lines running across the pic. But wouldn’t normally use this resolution if printing a picture, but wanted to mention. 2-year warranty Dislikes: Software as mentioned above. I am concerned that this unit with its ink “tank”. I have had issues in the past with inkjet printers ink drying up between prints leaving me constantly wasting ink needing to “clean” the heads. Only time will tell if this unit has any of these dry ink issues. Printer is a tad noisy with all of its buzzing and clicks. Although I did not try quiet mode – which lengthens print times. Manual 2-sided copies/scanner.