The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is a decent printer for home office use. It uses a cartridge system called the INKvestment Tank Ink System, which produces high black and color page yields while also maintaining an outstandingly low cost-per-print ratio. Although it has a somewhat large and bulky design, its build quality is great, and thanks to its flatbed and sheetfed scanner, you can easily transition from saving old film photos to processing work reports. However, it isn't the fastest printer for any kind of document and its color accuracy is disappointing.
Our Verdict
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is good as a family printer. It has a decent photo printing quality and its flatbed scanner can help save more delicate items like film photos. It's also cost-efficient to print off both black and color documents as they have high page yields and their cost-to-print is outstandingly low.
- Extremely low cost-per-print ratio.
- Extremely high page yield for black and color documents.
- Flatbed scanner can raise to support more bulky items like books.
- Decent photo printing quality.
- Mediocre print time for black and color documents.
- Disappointing color accuracy.
- Doesn't support external drives.
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is decent for home office use. This printer can yield a lot of black-text documents before it needs to be replaced and its cost-per-print ratio is exceptionally low. However, it can be slow to print off black-text documents and while its color cartridges allow you to add a nice splash of color to reports, it's also slow to print using the colored cartridges too. Still, there's an automatic document feeder and an integrated fax feature that can help streamline your work process.
- Extremely high page yield for black and color documents.
- Automatic document feeder.
- Mediocre print time for black and color documents.
- No duplex scanning.
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is superb for student use. It has an outstandingly low cost-per-page ratio for black ink and it yields a lot of pages before you need to replace the cartridge. You can also hook it to your Wi-Fi via your router and its flatbed scanner makes it easy to save pages from your textbooks. On the downside, it's not the fastest at printing off black or colored documents.
- Extremely low cost-per-print ratio.
- Extremely high page yield for black and color documents.
- Flatbed scanner can raise to support more bulky items like books.
- Mediocre print time for black and color documents.
- Doesn't support external drives.
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is good for black and white printing. Its black cartridge has an outstandingly low cost-per-print ratio as well as a high page yield, so even if you're constantly printing off black-text documents, you won't run out of ink too quickly. You can even extend the page yield by using Brother's additional XXL ULTRA cartridges. On the downside, while printing the first page of a black-text document is quick, this printer takes its time printing off subsequent pages.
- Extremely low cost-per-print ratio.
- Extremely high page yield for black and color documents.
- Mediocre print time for black and color documents.
The Brother MFC-J805DW is a decent printer for printing photos. Printed photos look decent overall, but there's some graininess and banding throughout the picture. It supports most photo paper sizes and can print on glossy photo paper. Unfortunately, its color accuracy is disappointing.
- Extremely low cost-per-print ratio.
- Decent photo printing quality.
- Disappointing color accuracy.
- Can't print on 2" x 3".
Changelog
- Updated Jul 07, 2020: We previously reported the wrong display screen size. It has been fixed.
- Updated Jun 08, 2020: Converted to Test Bench 0.8.1.
- Updated Jun 01, 2020: Review published.
- Updated May 26, 2020: Early access published.
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Popular Printer Comparisons
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is a high-yielding inkjet printer. Its ink cartridges produce a large number of pages before they need to be replaced, and its cost-per-print is more affordable than that of the Brother MFC-L3770CDW Laser. However, it prints more slowly than the Brother MFC-J995DW, and its photo printing quality isn't as good as dedicated photo printers like the HP ENVY Photo 7855/7858. Check out our recommendations for the best inkjet printers, the best office printers, and the best wireless printers.
The Epson EcoTank ET-2850 is a bit better than the Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank. The Epson prints significantly more pages, and since its ink bottles cost much less than the Brother's cartridges, it has a much lower cost-per-print. On the other hand, if you often need to scan many documents in a row, the Brother is a better choice since it has an automatic document feeder. However, the Brother is discontinued, so it's much harder to find available.
The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 and the Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank are all-in-one color inkjet printers, but the Epson is a much better printer overall. The Epson uses a supertank system for better page yields and a lower cost-per-print. Also, it prints documents and photos much faster. Its automatic document feeder can duplex scan, it has an Ethernet port, and it can print directly from USB flash drives.
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank is an all-in-one color inkjet printer with a proprietary hybrid cartridge-tank system, while the HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw is a color laser printer-only unit. The HP is better-suited for quickly printing documents, with a significantly faster printing speed and much more accurate produced colors, and it has an Ethernet port and can print directly via USB flash drives. On the other hand, the Brother is better-suited for a wide variety of tasks, as it has a flatbed scanner, an automatic document feeder with duplex scanning, and faxing capability. It also has much better page yields and a significantly cheaper cost-per-print, and it prints much better photos.
The Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank and the Canon PIXMA G3260 are both all-in-one color inkjet printers, but the Canon uses a supertank ink system for a far superior page yield and cost-per-print, and the Canon produces much more accurate-looking colors. On the other hand, the Brother has an automatic document feeder, faxing capability, and an automatic duplex print feature. It also prints faster overall.
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