20.2.2018

Having recently set up a business from home I found that my usually Canon A4 AIO printer was slow, heavy on ink and the obvious of course...only for A4!So having gone shopping I ended up with this little beauty. I have always preferred HP and Brother printers, they go on forever on the whole.INKS: Although largish, this printer was not too heavy to carry. It came with starter inks which I was told would only last a short while as they were intended only to get me 'up and running'. So I duly purchased a replacement pack at a cost of £99 (before you bawk at that price - they supposedly last for something like 3000 black and white pages and around 2000 colour pages which for most home based businesses should last a while.I have printed approximately 100 pages in both colour and B&W so far with my start cartridges and the print utility tells me I have barely scratched the surface so I imagine I will get around 500 pages at least from those.SETUP: It originally seemed straightforward and it actually is, the touch screen menu is easy to navigate and the menu items make sense. My printer is in the same room as my router so I expected wifi connection to be easy and good. So I thought. I first tried using WPS, but the printer could not find the network for some reason?!? So then I tried connecting using the Wizard settings, it found my network after only a couple of seconds and I entered the password and it told me it was connected. I then installed the Brother driver/utility software on my Mac and whoopee it found the printer. 'Ok', I thought, 'good to go'. At least until I tried to print something. I was told the printer was online and when I sent something to print, it went into 'in use' mode but nothing would come out. I tried reinstalling and reinstalling, resetting and resetting the wifi connection but no joy. So I ended up using the USB cable provided and connecting it directly to my Mac. Now it works like a dream and although can be seen on the network also via wifi we cannot seem to print to it that way. This is something i will have to spend time on later.SCANNING: I have documents I need to scan fairly often, and usually with multiple pages. There is a facility to continuously scan multiple pages to one folder as image files or one PDF combined file either from the touch screen or from the PC utility. First of all though, you have to setup the folder connection via a browser. No matter how I tried I could not get this to connect. So I ended up rushing back and forth between the printer and my Mac to press 'continue' for the successive pages. Another thing on my to do list. By now, you are probably getting the picture that the user manual that comes with the printer is not that informative. You can get most of the 'how tos' online from the Brother website but it would be nice to have a decent manual with a not-so-basic printer.A3 PRINTING: this is predominantly an A4 printer so it only has an A4 tray and no additional trays for A3 can be added. A3 printing has to be done by hand though the rear sheetfeed tray. This tray is also used for envelope and label printing. (more on that in a mo). The print drivers allow you to set up multiple pages per sheet, duplex printing etc so if you intend to create A4 mutiple page brochures etc like I do, the facility works well and it prints the pages in the correct order as expected.LABELS ETC: I print on Avery 4 per sheet address/parcel labels but do not always have a full sheet to print. This seems to cause a problem for the printer. As it cannot detect the sheet correctly if it is too thin (where one or more label may be missing) and just pulls it through and spits it out. It simply refuses to print on the label elsewhere on the sheet unless I place it upside down in the usual A4 paper tray which can be a bit of a pain. If you are using envelopes of various sizes it seems to accept these ok and even has a little diagram to explain which way to put the envelope in to ensure it prints correctly.PRINT QUALITY: compared to my old Pixma, the prints are clear and crisp and the colours great. I am not printing on photo paper but would imagine that as the pics tend to look un-pixelated and not grainy, that photos should print just fine at least on A4 unless you have a very fine quality photo file.Print speed is amazing, at least after being used to the Canon for the last 6 years. I heard it grab the paper, heard the printheads move a couple of times and expected to hear more but suddenly it 'spat' out the paper, all nicely printed and done! Duplex printing (which is a always a deffo with me when choosing any printer) is equally as fast.I have not used the fax facility but it appears it is happy to work with fixed line and VOIP connections.All in all, I am more than happy with the printer and it works great and does everything I need. I only gave 4 stars because there seems to be setup issues which could be helped with a better manual or explanation online.

9.12.2017

.I purchased this printer a little overzealously in hindsight, as it's just a half a fridge too large for my home office setup that i use for my photography and design business, my previous (Brother) printer had 1 paper tray inlet, this has 3 main inputs, 2 x A3 one of which holds 500 sheets and is your daily letter & draft grinder, then 1 main tray which can switch between Glossy A4 and Satin A3 card all day long, then there is a rear inlet which sits nicely out the way at the back , this is ideal for keeping stacked with your favoured small photo or postcard scale glossy Paper and works a dream with the App that enables 1 button printing of all those cards, images, icons and nephews that have sat stagnant too long..So, overzealous? unnecessary for my requirements? should i have bought it? Abso-ruddy-lootly I Should've!! ..... Why?Well, the printer came with a pack of 'start-up inks' - So that doesn't bode well for longevity of those cartridges right? ... Sooo Wrong! ... My 1st job right outta the box was 4x 16 A4 glossy B&W prints for a tiled -or 'Block' poster- of Mr.Bowie in a darkened room smoking a Gitanes Cigarette which is about as fat as he is; you'd think it a fairly run of the mill job -oh , there are also 6 x 16 A3 Satin of the same subject - So 170 sheets of high quality output, and when i say high, i need speckless and true to the very room the image was shot in, the subtle gradients between dark, light & smoke puffed out across satin sleeves, It is deffo NOT run of the Mill !, the finishes are absolutely what they need to be, the grainy gradients are perfect whilst the silky smoke is lux, Yup, the printer worked at business speeds and turned out Pro results.Ok, So, the ink , That 79 uk pound (as of Dec '17 (my pound sign is awol apologies!) XL Innobella Brother Replacement ink pack was purchased at the time of printer purchase and good job too, as my Yellow lasted about 18 draft quality Rasterized sheets of A4 plus approx 5-8 10x15cm photos with yellow content and it was gone!, but hey!, Starter Pack it was eh? then the Magenta, followed by blue, i have now inserted all XL colour cartridges, and of course the Black did that massive glossy gray scale run, so how many cartridges? - I'm Still Using the 'Starter Pack' unit! with my thick as a NY Sandwich XL Cart sitting , waiting , watching, with its expected 3000 sheet of heavy black print scribed on its side; And after what ive seen.... ? I cannot Wait to see whats next in the Satin A3 poster run schedule! .. I know one thing, it'l be fast, smooth and Professional in Quality .a Great Purchase.BUT!! - yerp, there is one, ... now if i could give 4.75 stars i would, because when i pay this much (although i inadvertently caught Black Friday and seemingly did pretty well as all units i see are 60-150 higher than the amazing 199(uk!) i paid ) , Still, this is a big outlay - oh yeah, check sizes!, its bigger than your last printer i assure you!, and it took 2 of us to lift it safely out of the box and up onto my workmate as nowt else will hold it right now! -- and for a printer with such a hefty RRP, we are back to the BUT! , and for me its a real biggy... Ok, Roller Markings!!!! , because on A4 & A3 glossy's that are in a print run, if you leave the printer to build any kind of stack, firstly it struggles and pushes paper upwards, but even if you print one high gloss image alone sometimes, you get 2 not instantly distinct, but they are there and remain there , two 1cm long 3mm thick & 8cm apart topside roller skid or stick marks, and as a Photographer i just Cannot have that, ..Fortunately on 96% of the B&W run they dissapeared after drying, but on cartoon and vector graphic prints they showed , especially in the orange zones even when dry. .Dont let this put you off unless you are and absolute perfectionist, in which case go spend more Cash!!the marks really do take a finicity eye to pick up, so for almost all purposes other that high gloss sunsets that require perfection , forget i mentioned the BUT! ,.......But it IS there!!! ...On the whole, Top Notch Kit!

14.10.2018

The Brother MFC-J6930DW is a ‘proper’ multi function printer. It is for a busy home office, a small business or a large business workgroup. It is physically quite large and heavy but the build quality is superb. Mine is loaded with A4 in tray 1, A3 in tray 2 and the rear feeder contains envelopes. There is absolutely nothing this model can’t do, it will scan, copy and print all paper sizes up to A3+ and all paper inputs have a built in duplexer for double sided printing and scanning. What I like best about this model is the speed it starts up and shuts down, my previous printer was an Epson and it drove me insane, whenever you turned the Epson on from cold, woke it from sleep or turned it off,it went through some strange calibration/cleaning ritual that could take up to two minutes. The Brother on the other hand just gives a little audible jingle and then sits ready to work. Another nice feature is that this is a front loading ink cartridge system, so no faffing about trying to load the ink onto a moving print head, you just slide the cartridges into the front ink bay and you are good to go. This also means that the standard ink cartridges can be upgraded to very large XL versions for huge printing capability. Also, hats off to Brother for allowing their machines to use third party ink suppliers so that running the machine is good value. I even like the cartridges themselves as they have a little float on the top of the cartridge inside a small clear window to let you know for certain if the ink is used up. The front LCD display is also very well thought out, I have used printers in the past where the LCD is used to give utterly useless and unessessary information, but the Brother display is very business focussed and basically gives you the main machine functions, a set of user programmable shortcuts so you can select your most used features quickly, or choose from a very sensible collection of apps to enhance the printers abilities, so for example, you can add an app to scan any documents to a searchable PDF, a Word document, a PowerPoint project or an Excel spreadsheet, or you can scan and send to an email recipient or a cloud storage service. The supplied software is also worthy of mention because the properties interface is very ‘clean’ and well thought out and again allows the user to add their own quick access shortcuts, the software feels light and not weighed down with unessessary photo editing and labelling features. The only optional software offered during setup was a full version of the Paperport file management suite. The last feature I really like about the MFC-J6930DW is it’s night time ‘quiet mode’. This mode slows the print heads down and lowers the noise and vibration from the printer if for example your home office is next to a child’s bedroom, because in normal print quality this printer is no slouch, it picks up the next sheet of paper before it has even finished printing the second side of the previous sheet. There are smart phone apps that allow air printing direct to the printer, with Android phone users being able to connect to the printer even quicker using the NFC pad on the front left of the machine. The LCD display also swivels up and down in case you are using the printer while stood up rather than sitting down. The machine will also print and scan directly to/from the USB port on the front.

23.6.2018

Slightly larger than my aging Brother MFC I am extremely pleased with this printer. Duplexing for scan, photocopying and printing. Oh joy. No longer will we have to stand at the printer playing manic toasters to get things on two sides of a page. I love the double sided scanning with the auto feed. Sooooo time saving. Okay, this is probably described as somewhere in the middle of the budget printers, but I have no complaints at all. It is printing fast enough to suit us, it's a heck of a lot quieter than our previous printer and very much more so when the "quiet mode" is engaged. The paper trays are deep enough to hold a fair wad of paper which means we don't have to dash over and slot moresheets before printing.The touch screen display is extremely clear and easy to use and I have yet to use the physical keyboard that is next to it. I do think the ink cartridges could have been a tad larger, but our previous printer was extremely economical, I'll see how this one works out over time. Access to the various sections is clear and wide enough to be comfortable in the event of a paper jam and all areas have hinged sections to make it even more simple. Nice touch to provide a maintenance sheet for catching paper shreds, as that hopefully will save frustration trying to use tweezers to catch the little beggars.The only thing that baffled me was all the clunking and whirring that went on when we first switched the thing on, over seven minutes of it. I have no idea what it was doing - assembling the innards perhaps? Whatever, after waiting through the setup time we went through the menus to set up time, date, network etc, which took all of five minutes. The wireless is great, and we've not had a problem connecting things to it, although we have yet to try out the mobile phone facility. While the printing is clear and precise, I'm not sure this would be suitable for printing photographs and I'm not currently tempted to retire our dedicated photo printer. I may try it and compare the results, but this is really a general office use printer.At the end of the day, the really nice thing about this, is being able to sit at the computer and run documents and other stuff through the printer, without having to get up and tend to each individual sheet. For lazy so-and-so's like me, that alone is a godsend.it is worth noting I think that this is a large printer with a large footprint. Even more so if you extend one of the trays for A3 paper, so you're going to need a fair bit of space to sit this thing. Other than that, it's pretty much idiot proof, Most of what it does is automatic, there's plenty of options for manipulating things, the scanner/copier enlarges, shrinks, will stick multiple pages on a single sheet and a whole range of other interesting toys.In my opinion, money well spent, and if it lasts and performs as well as the printer it is replacing, for as long as the old one worked, I am going to be a very happy person.

20.2.2017

This is Genuinely the best printer I have ever used.First impressions are a very smart looking printer, not as big as I thought it would be, but still a bigger than average printer.You receive printer, a full set of inks, you have a black, Cyan, Magenta and yellowSetting the printer up was straight forward, the USB for connecting to the PC is hidden you lift the top which is in two sections and there tucked away, there a cable channel which keeps them tidy and out of the way.Power the printer and you need to set the time, date via the touch screen on front of the printer, then you add the ink, it will then take about 5 minutes to sort it self out.Once done you can load three trays,

16.5.2018

Firstly, it is much bigger and heavier than the Brother A3 printer it replaces, but it is better made and stupidly good value for money.I run my printers from a Mac wirelessly to a router and then wired to each printer (I have 3 for different formats including an A1 plotter). What is not stated on the specification is that this can be hard wired by Ethernet cable - BUT IT CAN. Beneath the scanner bed is the connection point for telephone line (Fax, which is obsolete to me, so not connected) and towards the middle of the machine, an Ethernet port and a USB port.I was printing within 15 minutes and let me tell you, the print quality is in a different league from the old printer.I paid £183 for this on Amazon,

1.8.2017

I purchased this printer, because my J6510 model was faulty and I was advised that Brother had superseded it with the J6530 Model. I was quite chuffed with the improvements such as the touch screen operation and the simple processes to follow. The only drawback was the driver. When I tried to print from a photographic programme I found that the only options available were A4 plain paper. When I checked the driver I found that a "generic" Brother printer driver was installed. When I searched in the control panel for the proper driver it wasn't there. I contacted Brother support, pleading not to be referred to reams of F.A.Q.'s only to be told something along the lines of "We couldn't find the

13.3.2018

This is such a good printer....It prints A3, double sided!It scans A3It has a fax (but who uses one right?)It has a document feeder for scanning, which was one of the big draw cards for me. I can load up tonnes of documents and let it scan away so I can digitise and shred. Gone are the days of home scanning one page at a time - this is so quick and easy that I am quickly reducing the mountain of documents I need to keep in some format.Set up on a mac was quick and painless.It holds the wifi network with out a problem. I previously had canon pixma printers that gave me no end of problem including having to reattach to the network every time I wanted to use it.

18.2.2020

I'm very pleased indeed with this printer, I chose this model as I required the occasional facility of using A3 printing and copying.I also like the large ink tanks. The print quality is excellent. Auto Document Feed for copying documents is an extra bonus, although I may never need this. There are so many great features with this printer, too many to list them all here but I must mention the paper feeds of which there are two.(1) Main paper feed for everyday auto-feed printing including photo size prints etc.(2) Single feed from the back of the machine for specialised printing using A4, A3 and other sizes on thick card or plain paper in landscape or portrait orientation.To begin with I found it a little annoying until I discovered some of the default settings,

2.11.2018

This printer is the business.I am an architect and have worked from home for several years. I need to be able to print in several formats and am constantly processing A4 and A3 documents. I have been plagued by problems with previous printers by another well known manufacturer - usually wifi related and printer driver software issues. The printers have been so unreliable that I had to print the day before a deadliine because they inevitably gave up when I needed them most. So I recently replaced them with the the Brother MFC-J6930DW multi-function printer.Although the machine is bulky, it has replaced two previous HP printers, so overall I have saved space in my small office.

13.7.2018

We bought one of these from Amazon, Spain for our language school in Spain 4 months ago. Ours was a reconditioned unit but it was immaculate and we were even able to register it for the extra 1 year of guarantee.At first, because it had evidently been laid up for a while, it wouldn't print magenta or cyan, so I performed a couple of head cleans, with no luck. I then contacted Amazon and they offered a refund or discount. In the meantime, my wife performed a final head clean and that sorted it completely. Considering the unit was half price, I really can't complain.Apart from that, this has worked perfectly day in and day out. The ADF has proven to be ultra reliable, with no jams and no double feeds (so far!).

26.7.2018

I have used this printer with my Mac, a PC running Windows 10 Home, and a Chromebook. It's very easy to set up and use, much easier than some other printers. None of my computers have a CD/DVD drive so I just downloaded the software from Brother website for the Mac and the PC. The Chromebook just worked!This is a serious business printer, and is ideally suited to an office environment. Best to use genuine inks with this in my opinion, though opinions differ.Its fast, and the paper handling is very good. In the past I have experienced frequent paper jams in other Brother printers (though easy to clear), however on this printer I have yet to experience a paper jam.One thing to consider,

3.3.2017

This is a top notch professional printer. It is large! It fits on my desk but it does take up a lot of room so please look at the dimensions before ordering. The set up is really easy with the Quick Set Up guide - easy to follow and everything worked as described (I was using an iMac as the main computer for set up). The print cartridges are easy to install (the printer comes with an XL black and one each of cyan, magenta and yellow) as long as you follow the instructions to remove the plastic protectors! The paper tray takes a lot of paper, about half a ream at least and the print quality is excellent. I have also used the printer for scanning and this is brilliant (especially with the document feeder).

19.1.2018

So far so good. A bit difficult to remove from box (it's a huge beast) but that was the worst part of the installation. The setup process and the software download were absolutely straightforward, even for me. Once the printer had run through all its initialization procedures it was very simple to print wirelessly, scan to file etc. Paper handling seems easy and versatile with two paper trays and a rear load feed as well. The quality of printing is good and it is very, very fast. Unless it is extremely ink-greedy or mangles paper, this is a great machine for the money. I am sure there are many more features than I am ever likely to use or want - all I ask is swift printing,

9.5.2018

Great printer for a small business where a home printer just doesn’t cut it. These are designed and built with business performance in mind, so expect this to have a large footprint.Easy to setup and use, and has more functionality than I am ever likely to need (ie printing directly from Dropbox seems like it could be useful for some?)The touchscreen display is basic but functional, and the menu very intuitive to use. This comes with a small ink pack (black and colour) to get you started, but worth shelling out for the larger ink pack if you expect to use this a fair bit. Colour cartridges are replaceable individually in this,

Brother MFC-J5730DW - Reviews

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