The Brother MFC-J995DW is an excellent all-in-one printer made for home use, but its versatility and performance make it a good choice for a wide range of uses. It features Brother's high-yield INKvestment Tank, allowing you to print many documents while keeping costs low. Photos are printed with great detail; however, its color accuracy may be a bit disappointing for professional graphic designers and the like. Printing speed is good overall and connecting the printer to a mobile device is as easy as a tap thanks to its NFC support.
Our Verdict
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a great family printer. Printed photos look great, and the color accuracy is decent. Cost remains low when printing in large numbers, whether you're printing in black only or in color. Its scan resolution and color depth are great, especially if you need to enlarge pictures or do some light touch up.
- Outstanding cartridge system.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Superb mobile app.
- Great photo printing quality.
- Slow at printing black only documents.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a good printer for home or small offices. It can print a large number of black and white documents at a low cost, but printing speed for such documents is on the slow side. It has a great build quality that feels durable, and its automatic document feeder lets you multitask without hassle. However, there's no duplex scanning.
- Outstanding cartridge system.
- Low cost-per-print.
- No duplex scanning.
- Slow at printing black only documents.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is an excellent printer for students. Its high-yield cartridges help to keep the cost to a minimum, even if you print a lot. There are many wireless connectivity options to choose from; however, it doesn't support Bluetooth. Brother's mobile app is superb, allowing you to perform nearly any task from your smartphone.
- Outstanding cartridge system.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Superb mobile app.
- Slow at printing black only documents.
- No Bluetooth support.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is great for printing black and white documents. It can print a large number at a very low cost, but its printing speed for black only documents is sub-par. The included ink cartridges are high-yield, and you can get even larger ones if they aren't sufficient. The build quality is impressive and the cartridges are easily accessible from the front of the printer when you need to replace them.
- Outstanding cartridge system.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Slow at printing black only documents.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a decent printer for printing photos. Photos are detailed and colors are vibrant, but there's a bit of banding, and there's some color in the grayscale. It can print on glossy photo paper and most sizes are supported, except for 2" x 3". Color accuracy is decent, which shouldn't be an issue for personal use, but it may not be suitable for some professionals.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Great photo printing quality.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Low cost-per-print.
- Low cost-per-print.
Performance Usages
Changelog
- Updated Sep 23, 2022: Converted to Test Bench 1.2.
- Updated Sep 09, 2022: Converted to Test Bench 1.1.
- Updated Feb 03, 2022: Fixed error about the ink type.
- Updated Jan 28, 2022: Reshot and updated the 'In Use Picture'.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Brother MFC-J995DW has a larger variant, the MFC-J995DWXL, which also features their INKvestment Tank cartridges. Brother advertises this printer as lasting up to 2 years of uninterrupted printing with the included cartridges, though we haven't tested it.
Popular Printer Comparisons
The Brother MFC-J995DW is an overall excellent printer for most uses. It performs well compared to other printers in the same price range, particularly for its high page yield, low cost-per-print, and impressive photo printing quality. For other options, you can also check out our recommendations for the best all-in-one printers, the best home printers, and the best inkjet printers.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a better inkjet printer than the Canon PIXMA G7020. While the Brother may not yield as many pages as the Canon per cartridge, you can buy even higher-yielding cartridges if you need them. However, the Canon's cost-per-print is slightly lower, and you can connect to it via Mopria Print Service.
The Brother MFC-J995DW and the Brother MFC-J4335DW both use the proprietary INKvestment Tank hybrid cartridge–tank system for superior page yields compared to traditional cartridges. The J995DW is better for families and casual photo printing thanks to its significantly higher page yields, cheaper cost-per-print, faster photo printing speed, and significantly better-looking photos. It can also print directly from USB flash drives and SD cards. On the other hand, the J4335DW is better for small and home offices and black-and-white printing thanks to its much faster document printing speeds and faster scanning speed.
The Brother MFC-J995DW and the Epson EcoTank ET-2850 are both good home office options. The Brother takes much less time to scan documents thanks to its automatic document feeder, so it's a good choice if you scan often for work. Also, its photos look much nicer since it handles colors much better than the Epson. On the other hand, the Epson yields significantly more pages, so it's a better choice if you primarily only print documents, both in color and black.
The Brother MFC-J995DW is a better printer than the Canon PIXMA TS9520. The Brother's cost-per-print is much more affordable and it has integrated fax. On the other hand, the Canon has Bluetooth support and prints better quality photos with superior color accuracy.
Test Results
The Brother MFC-J995DW has a great design. The overall build feels sturdy and the ink cartridges are easily accessible from the front of the printer. The input tray and scanner lid are well-built, but the power cable isn't removable. The USB and ethernet ports are located inside the printer, below the scanner bed, and there are grooves to route the cables towards the back of the printer. The cable routing will shorten the cable by about a foot, so you may need longer cables if you plan on using these ports.
Update 01/28/2022: We reshot our 'In Use Picture' since the initial one didn't have the input tray extended.
The printer is fairly tall and wide, and will require some clearance on top to open the scanner lid.
There's a display console on the front, which can be tilted upwards for better visibility. The touchscreen is rather small, but it's very responsive and has good viewing angles.
Update 02/03/2022: We initially listed the ink type as pigment only, but this is wrong. While the black ink is pigment, the color ink is dye. We updated the result to include both.
The Brother J995DW has an outstanding cartridge system. It features Brother's INKvestment Tank Ink System, which holds more ink per cartridge. The ink cartridges are easily accessible from the front, and the printer accepts Brother's Ultra High Yield cartridges (LC3035). Third-party ink cartridges are available, but the printer wouldn't recognize the yellow cartridge; your mileage may vary.
During testing, it stopped printing once the yellow ink ran out and prevented us from printing any other color until the yellow ink cartridge is replaced.
The Brother MFC-J995DW has good scanning features, but unfortunately, while it has an automatic document feeder, it can't perform two-sided scans like the Epson WorkForce WF-7720.
- Fax/Phone cable
- 1x LC3033BKS Black
- 1x LC3033CS Cyan
- 1x LC3033MS Magenta
- 1x LC3033YS Yellow
- User guide
- Installation CD
The Brother J995DW's cost-per-print is superb. The cost remains low even if you're printing a large amount. For an even lower cost-per-print, check out the Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 EcoTank. If you want an even lower cost-per-print specifically for color documents and photos, check out the Canon PIXMA G2260.
Keep in mind that even if you print only in black, most inkjet printers continue using the color cartridge for servicing tasks, so you may still need to replace it eventually.
Printing speed is good and it's a bit quicker overall than the Brother MFC-J805DW INKvestment Tank. With black and white documents, the printing speed doesn't vary much between the first page and subsequent pages, and printing color documents is just as fast as black-only documents. If you only print in black and you need a printer with faster printing speed, check out the Brother MFC-L2710DW.
Update 01/05/2022: We initially listed the maximum weight as 80 g/m², but this is incorrect. While it's the maximum for plain copy paper, the user manual advertises the heaviest weight for other types of paper as 220 g/m².
The Brother MFC-J995DW has an input tray on the front and a rear manual feeder on the back for smaller photo papers. To use the rear feeder, you must first remove paper from the front input tray. Unfortunately, unlike the HP OfficeJet Pro 7740, this printer can't print tabloid-sized pages.
The Brother MFC-J995DW has okay printing color accuracy. Most colors are inaccurate; it's not recommended for tasks that require accurate color reproduction.
If color accuracy is important to you, then check out the HP ENVY Photo 7155.
The Brother MFC-J995DW has good connectivity options. The printer has NFC capabilities for quick pairing and using it will launch the Brother app on the mobile device. We were able to establish a connection when using the Mopria app, but we weren't able to perform any printing or scanning. You can also print directly from a USB key or an SD card.
Update 06/19/2020: We've retested the app's ability to print PDFs, it now works as intended. The score has been updated accordingly.
The MFC-J995DW is compatible with the Brother iPrint&Scan mobile app, which allows you to print, scan, or copy directly from the app.
While testing, we experienced an issue when trying to print a PDF file. The print job would remain in 'processing' mode and eventually time out, causing an internal error. We're not sure if this is a temporary bug and we'll try again later when new firmware is available.