Brother MFC-J995DW Printer Review

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.

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.

• Fax/Phone cable
• 1x LC3033BKS Black
• 1x LC3033CS Cyan
• 1x LC3033MS Magenta
• 1x LC3033YS Yellow
• User guide
• Installation CD

The MFC-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 MFC-J995DW has impressive scanning features. The scanning resolution and color depth are great for those who need to make larger copies or do some light retouching on photos. Unfortunately, while it has an automatic document feeder, it can't perform two-sided scans.

The MFC-J995DW's cost-per-print is outstanding. The cost remains low even if you're printing a large amount.

Keep in mind that even if you print only in black, most inkjet printers continue using the color cartridge for servicing tasks, so you'll likely still need to replace it eventually.

Printing speed is good. 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.

The MFC-J995DW has mediocre printing color accuracy. Most colors are inaccurate; it's not recommended for tasks that require accurate color reproduction.

Photo printing quality is great. Images are detailed, but there's some fine banding when printing certain colors or shades of gray. Although the printer can perform borderless printing, the pictures are often misaligned and would require manual adjustments.

The MFC-J995DW has an input tray on the front and a rear manual feeder on the back for smaller photo papers. In order to use the rear feeder, you must first remove paper from the front input tray.

The 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.

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 as well as a document from Microsoft Office. 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.