Brother MFC-J5720DW A3 Colour Inkjet Multifunction Printer

Had a HP All-in-one for about 8 years and it had given great service so I was looking for another to upgrade, the reviews are so mixed with HP, and there were so many idiosyncrasy's with each model I decided to look around, the previous versions of the Brother all had great reports, maybe the odd one or two where there were delivery issues, and a couple of router problems. So I opted for the MFC-J5720DW A3 Colour Inkjet from Amazon. I am very pleased with the service and machine, it was really simple to install and I now have all my computers wirelessly connected and can print from most usual rooms in the house. I cant say how long the cartridges last, but I can say that the Duplex printing is sharp and neat, the HP had started to skew the paper but this is coming out really well at the moment, haven't needed the scanner or A3 yet but I can't imagine it will be a problem. Quiet printing for me now, and it turns itself off and on - on demand. Robust design and looks great too.

After much debate and checking out reviews from multiple websites I decided on my purchase and choose the Brother MFC-J5720DW A3 Colour Inkjet Multifunction Printer. I have owned both Epson and Canon in the past and always found Canon to be the best when it comes to quality prints whether it be text or photos. Having not owned any Brother products before i was excited to try out my new Brother MFC-J5720DW MFD as it seemed packed full of useful features for a reasonable price £136.89 at time of purchase.Before going further i would like to point out i first bought one from Amazon and after some problems (see full review below) and contact with Brother via Twitter and phone It was deemed DOA so was sent back for a full refund, i then decided to buy another from Amazon and try again incase i had a one off faulty product, however the second one showed exact same problems so sending that one back now for a full refund. I do not and would not recommend the Brother MFC-J5720DW ‘Business Smart Series’ MFD (Multi-Function Device). Please read the full review below for more information.The design is somewhat compact for a device that offers so many features (i.e. duplex print, scan, copy and fax) and i actually like the black and silver finish including the overall shape. It certainly looks apart and far from old fashioned looking like some. The device does look the part but feels somewhat flimsy when using, such as opening up ADF flaps (on top), pulling out both paper trays, you do feel like something is going to break, but you kind of get used to it and after a short while and you no longer get that feeling it's going to break. The 9.3CM colour touch screen LCD display is a nice size with icons and text being of good size so easily readable although my eye sight is good anyway, you do have to press firmly on the touch display to register your finger presses/movements but nothing major or out of the audinary. Two 250 sheet paper trays neatly hidden away (unless using A3) and does not stick out makes it ideal if you print allot or on different size media as you can use two paper sizes without having to switch the paper around yourself. I put 250 sheets of A4 paper in paper tray 1 and 2, you could however have A4 paper in tray 1 and A3 paper in tray 2 for example. I never used the multipurpose manual tray, which if i remember correctly accepts 80 sheets of other special size papers ie.photo/envelopes etc so cannot comment on that, if using A3 paper the paper trays will stick out somewhat to accommodate the larger size but not with A4. When the Brother multi-function device is sleeping one thing I don't like is the 'Home' button on the Brother MFD flashes, some will find this annoying if you have in a bedroom for example and rather have the device sleep than turn it off at the mains (just something to take note of).Printing & Speed:Printing is just ok, nothing special or great even when using high quality 100gsm premium presentation paper and best printer settings with genuine brother ink. If printing using ‘Best’ you will find it very slow to print. Normal and Draft print speeds are acceptable, never checked how much i can print ppm (pages per minute) as i don’t print to much in one go so wasn’t entirely relevant to me but some may find it too slow and quality not quite there especially as this is marketed as a ‘Business Smart Series’ MFD (multi-function device). One example i printed out several different development plan maps and the PDF showed the maps perfectly fine but when printed allot of detail in the finer and lighter areas of the map was almost invisible when printed and you can see the speckles in text/graphics even when using best quality print settings and paper to match. I only ever use 100gsm+ as i find paper below this thickness too thin for my use.I used to own a Canon Pixma MP810 (was manufactured about a decade ago (10 years) and i owned it for a few years until it packed up and never needed one up until now, but to put it politely the Canon MP810 that’s a decade or so old now since being manufactured can print much better quality than this Brother 2014 model. Yes the Canon MP810 is a home multi-function device photo printer and the Brother isn’t but the decade difference just shows even now print quality can be far from superior on newer models, i was rather shocked that after 10 years the print quality is still no better and in my case worse now than it was previously. However my uses have changed so wasn’t looking for a photo printer but a business/office series type but still would expect the same or better quality prints after 10 years, I can only conclude the Brother print heads are in general of poor quality compared to others like Canon.Scanner (flatbed) & Scanner ADF (automatic document feeder):This is where the Brother MFC-J5720DW failed miserably on almost all levels. I can only assume those who have purchased and left reviews on Amazon may have not fully tested their own specifically the ADF/scanner part of the device hence possibly no mention of the following.I purchased the Brother MFC-J5720DW ‘Business Smart Series’ multi-function device simply because of the duplex print, scan, copy. This is where things go down hill.1) When scanning to file using the ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) once the pages have been scanned to pdf i get black horizontal diagonal lines rite at bottom of all scanned pages. This is regardless whether I do it from the machine itself or do it via the brother control centre software or Presto! Scan Buttons. Makes no difference.2) When scanning to file using the ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) once the pages have been scanned and I view the scanned documents many times the text/graphics on pages aren't straight always appear lopsided (quite badly sometimes) even though original document is perfectly straight, lined up correctly in the ADF. This is regardless whether I do it from the machine itself or do it via the brother control centre software or Presto! Scan Buttons. Makes no difference. Using deskew/descreen does not do anything to help.3) When scanning to file via brother machine using ADF, if i place one document on the ADF and choose 2 sided scanning it only ever scans the one side not both sides, making duplex scanning via ADF pointless on brother machine but works to some extent via the software minus the black lines issue as stated above.4) When testing the flatbed scanner i scanned a TV listing magazine front cover seeming as it has plenty of bright colours etc, all looked great except the colour orange, the original has bright colour orange on front cover yet once scanned it's not orange it's a skin tone colour, not what i expected, never had this problem from a scanner before, however the flatbed scanner never had any of the issues that i had with scanning via the ADF.5) Sometimes when scanning via ADF it sometimes skips pages even though i'm watching them and they all feed through correctly via the ADF one at a time, same happens sometimes with duplex scanning via ADF.I would like to point out i did speak with Brother via Twitter and they phoned me back twice. First we entered the Brother MFC-J5720DW ‘Service Menu’ and altered the margins. This did fix the black line at bottom of pages issue but then had a new problem with the ADF that if i was scanning documents with text that is rite at end of document (with little margin) the text would now be cut off. I'd also like to point out i fully reset the machine and fully reset all settings via the Brother MFD including updating to the latest firmware.Brother phoned me back a second time after contacting them again via Twitter and declared it DOA even though it worked to some extent. I asked Brother at this point why we needed to alter the margin(s) in the hidden ‘Service Menu’ in the first place as i find it odd that we had to alter them, secondly it made me think that in the manufacturing process the margins/alignment was not correct and Brother was trying to fix it by software manipulation via the firmwares service menu, when I asked Brother this, i was essentially told that was what they were trying to do, at this point i decided i was sending it back, I felt Brother was not fully telling me the whole truth at this point, it was only when i quizzed the guy on the phone he kind of admitted it and said the margins/alignment on the one I had must be well off and that they was trying to fix it via the Brother MFD firmware, funnily enough the second brother MFD i received also had all the exact same problems as the first one i sent back.Was I just unlucky? with two defected units? or is it a manufacturing issue or bad batch? my answer seeing as this was the second one and with what i mentioned above including the fact all problems was related to the Scanning/ADF i would definitely say it’s a manufacturing issue that Brother is trying to fix via software manipulation by altering the margins via the service menu, that may be ok for some but if you scan via the ADF in the future after adjusting the margin you will then find text rite at bottom of documents get cut off if there's very little margin but ok if there's plenty of margin around text. It also does not solve the problem with many things once scanned via ADF appears totally lop sided/slanted even though paper being scanned is new and aligned correctly etc. Essentially there is no real fix for the issue as Brother failed to rectify my issue.Networking:I wanted to connect to the Brother MFC-J5720DW via my wireless network. I own a Asus RT-AC68U router and between my macbook pro (mid 2014) and router i obtain wireless speeds of around 1000/1300Mbps on 802.11AC, 5GHz band, the Brother MFC-J5720DW only supports the 802.11.b/n/g 2.4GHz band so speed from the Brother MFD to my router was averaging at around 72Mbps quite a bootlekneck. Either way i found i could print/scan quite quickly over my wireless network without much delays etc.One thing i did do to ensure no networking problems, i gave the Brother multi-function device a static IP address on my router and then made the necessary adjustments via the Brother MFD like i do with all my devices, my networking setup is slightly more complex than most peoples needs and you can simply connect the Brother MFD to your Wi-Fi network without any of the above configuration, for most users the Brother MFD will scan and find all networks within range, you simply select which network is yours (SSID) and enter the WPA-PSK key (password) and then it prints out whether it's connected via Wi-Fi or not.When the Brother MFD is connected to your network you can enter the IP address of Brother MFC-J5720DW in your web browser and access the Brother Interface via your Browser which i found must quicker and useful when altering settings rather than doing it via the Brother touch screen menus. I also setup SMTP for email reports, notifications, scan to email etc and found no problems in that respect, same with scan to FTP/Network, Theres so many features built in it would be impossible to list everything here in this review. In terms of features this device is packed full with features that many will find useful i not tried the scan to cloud personally but you can i.e., scan to dropbox, evernote, google drive, onenote, onedrive, box, facebook, picasa, flickr and many advanced features/settings for the more advanced user which i found a delight as i do love my tech and am a pro computer user.Printing from a android device using the dedicated Brother android app:I own a Nexus 5 mobile phone running android marshmallow (6.0.1) as of writing this review, the Brother iPrint & Scan android app worked great when quickly testing, finding the Brother multi-function device without issues and printing relatively quick direct from my mobile phone. Did not experience any issues with the android app although only did three quick tests. There is Wi-Fi Direct built in to the Brother MFD for devices that support it too, my Nexus 5 does support Wi-Fi Direct too but i did not test the WiFi Direct.Software:I use both OS X and Windows, I mainly use OS X for my computer needs so used OS X mainly when testing, i did test once on Windows but can't comment much on the Windows software as not properly used it except once to give a good opinion on it. The Brother ControlCentre software is rather simple to use with plenty of basic and some more slightly advacned features and options even though i find the UI rather outdated looking. You can create custom scan buttons which many would find useful. Nothing much to say as it is what it is, it does what you want and never noticed any problems with using the software.The additional software PageManager is dreadful, very outdated and old looking but seems rather powerful under the hood from quickly glancing at it, anyone on OS X will see what i mean about the UI once they open up PageManagerYou also get Presto! Scan Buttons (part of page manager) this i find more useful but again outdated and ugly but again does seem to do what you want to do without issue.Final Thoughts and Conclusion:The Brother MFC-J5720DW is superb in terms of jammed packed with features and it’s modern sleek looks and rather compact size for what it’s able to do but fails somewhat on print quality and fails miserably on scanning and the ADF (automatic document feeder). I could cope with the print quality for my use but i don’t think many would like it, you really need to print out some test pages i.e. charts, text, development maps or something of that nature and you will notice print quality is only just ok, I don't expect photo quality prints of course, it's not a photo printer but even basic text/presentations etc the print quality is just ok, for small business use i can see this not being acceptable to many but ok for some. The whole point to buying the Brother MFC-J5720DW was because of the (ADF, automatic document feeder) so i could duplex print, scan and copy but the ADF/Scanner on the Brother MFC-J5720DW is pretty much useless as all explained above. I therefore would not recommend the brother MFC-J5720DW. It’s a great shame as if the ADF/Scanner worked as it should it would have been a much better device even though some would still question print quality.

This is a rubbish machine. Customer service is rubbish as well as they won't help you unless you buy very expensive cartridges for the machine first even though the machine is only a few weeks old and any issue has nothing to do with printing. The sensor in the machine is very poor. I now have two brand new machines that don't work both due to sensor problems. Avoid buying Brother products.

Very good, though the sheet feeder would work better with a slight incline - sometimes it refuses to print because it "has no paper" - so you tell it to carry on and then it works. This problem seems to go away if you tilt the machine.

Although this printer is designed for home office or small office, we run a copy shop and I needed a little machine in case the big copier breaks down. We bought this one because we already have a Brother DCP-J4120DW A4 Multifunction inkjet with A3 bypass tray and this one works on the same inks, which are really cheap if you buy XL. The machine is very fast, print quality is good as well, it prints on A4 and A3. The paper drawers extend to fit A3 paper straight in. It takes anything from 80gsm to 200gsm Canon TopColour paper. Photocopying is a bit slower than on massive photocopier which does 65 pages a minute but it's still acceptable. The funny thing is, since we had Brother MFC-J5720DW the big copier stands turned off.Another great thing is that scanner has an ADF and quality of scans in a photo mode are really good quality.The only thing this machine cannot do is scan A3, it will scan A4 and a bit bigger US Letter size.Buy only inks 225XL, on amazon from £11 to £13 each for genuine or compatibile inks £34 for 10 inks http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00WGBCYQE?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A12659ZNFUW47XAnd it's a Brother so cheap to buy, will last forever, when broken it paid for itself, put it in a bin and get another one!