Pros & Cons
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- Low price.
- Very low running costs.
- Above-par overall output quality, led by very good text quality.
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- Modest paper capacity.
- Lacks Ethernet connectivity.
- Can't print from USB thumb drives or memory cards.
- Non-duplex ADF.
Brother MFC-J775DW Specs
| Color or Monochrome | 1-pass color |
| Connection Type | USB |
| Connection Type | Wireless |
| Cost Per Page (Color) | 1 cents |
| Maximum Scan Area | Legal |
| Maximum Standard Paper Size | Legal |
| Number of Ink Colors | 4 |
| Print Duplexing | |
| Rated Speed at Default Settings (Color) | 6 ppm |
| Rated Speed at Default Settings (Mono) | 12 ppm |
| Scanner Type | Flatbed with ADF (Standard or Optional) |
| Standalone Copier and Fax | Copier |
| Standalone Copier and Fax | Fax |
| Type | All-in-one |
The Brother MFC-J775DW ($149.99) color inkjet all-in-one printer is a good choice for light-duty use in a micro or home office. It avails itself of Brother's high-yield INKvestment cartridges to provide substantial savings in ink costs. The MFC-J775DW is even more economical due to its low purchase price, the lowest of any INKvestment printer to date. Its feature set, however, is on the sparse side; you can get more features with equally low ink costs by paying a bit more up front with the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J985DW. The MFC-J775DW is currently a Staples exclusive. It will become widely available starting next February.
A Printer for Small Spaces
The matte-black MFC-J775DW is reasonably compact, as befitting a home-office all-in-one. It measures 6.8 by 16.5 by 13.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 18.3 pounds, so it should be easy enough to find room for it on your desk. Paper capacity is 100 sheets, on the low side for a home-office printer. It has an auto-duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper.
You can copy, scan, and fax, as well as perform setup and administrative tasks, from the MFC-J775DW's front panel, which includes a 1.8-inch non-touch display and four-way controller plus related function buttons and an alphanumeric keypad. Although it is easy enough to control the MFC-J775DW's all-in-one functions through the panel, note that the Brother MFC-J985DW comes with a larger (2.8-inch) screen with touch capabilities.
In addition to a letter-size flatbed for scanning, the MFC-J775DW has a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can hold up to legal-size paper, but is limited to simplex (one-sided) scanning.
Basic Connectivity
Connectivity is typical of a low-price all-in-one. You can connect to a PC via a USB cable, or to a local-area network via Wi-Fi, though the MFC-J775DW lacks Ethernet connectivity. It can connect via a direct peer-to-peer connection to a compatible mobile device via Wi-Fi Direct. I tested it over USB connection with its drivers installed on a PC that runs Windows 10 Professional.
The MFC-J775DW works with the Brother iPrint&Scan app, and supports Google Cloud Print as well as Cortado Workplace. It is both AirPrint- and Mopria-compliant to facilitate printing from iOS and Android devices. By using Brother Web Connect, users can scan and upload images to sites such as Box, Brother Cloud Apps, Dropbox, Evernote, Flickr, Google Docs, OneNote, Picasa Web Albums, and Sharepoint Online.
Unlike the Brother MFC-J985DW, the MFC-J775DW doesn't support printing from, or scanning to, a USB thumb drive or a memory card. This, and its lack of Ethernet capability, make it best for single-person use.
Competitive Speed
Low-priced inkjets are not known for their speed, and that applies to the MFC-J775DW, but it's reasonably fast for an all-in-one printer at its price. I timed it at 10 pages per minute (ppm) in printing the text-only (Word) portion of our business applications suite, reasonably close to its rated black printing speed of 12ppm. The first-page-out time was 12 seconds. In printing our full business suite, which includes PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel files in addition to the aforementioned Word document, the MFC-J775DW averaged a respectable 4.6ppm.
We can't directly compare the MFC-J775DW's speed with the Brother MFC-J985DW, which we tested using our old protocol. The MFC-J985DW has the same 12ppm rated speed for black printing, and has a faster rating for color printing (10ppm, compared with the MFC-J775DW's 6ppm). We tested the Canon Pixma TR8520 Wireless Home Office All-In-One Printer, our Editors' Choice all-in-one printer for dual use as a household or home-office machine, at 12.8ppm on our Word document and 4.7ppm for the full suite, the latter score effectively tying the MFC-J775DW's speed.
Best for Text Printing
Output quality is a plus for the MFC-J775DW, with very good text for an inkjet, slightly below-par graphics, and average photos. Text should be good enough for any business purpose, except for ones requiring unusually small fonts.
Graphics are good enough for most PowerPoint handouts, though perhaps not for printouts going to clients you're trying to impress with your professionalism. Backgrounds tended to look faded, and several showed mild banding (a regular pattern of faint striations). With photos, our monochrome test image showed a tint, and there was a loss of detail in some bright areas. The quality of our test prints is about what we'd expect from drugstore prints.
The MFC-J775DW uses Brother's high-yield, low-price INKvestment cartridges, which provide for a low cost per page (1 cent per black page and 4.7 cents per color page, based on Brother's price and yield figures). They match the running costs of the Brother MFC-J985DW, and are lower than the costs of Brother's non-INKvestment printers such as the MFC-J6930DW (1.7 cents per black page and 8.2 cents per color page).
As is the case with other INKvestment printers, Brother offers the same printer with additional ink cartridges at a higher price. Staples sells the Brother MFC-J775DW XL, with three sets of ink cartridges, for $249.99, $100 more than the MFC-J775DW. You save nearly $40 on the ink by buying it upfront in this manner. However, before shelling out a quarter of a grand, be sure this is the model you really want and won't soon outgrow, considering its basic feature set.
Modest Price, Basic Features
The Brother MFC-J775DW provides decent value in a moderately priced inkjet all-in-one, with a low up-front price, very low running costs, typical speed, solid output quality, and a basic feature set. For a bit more money, the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J985DW adds a larger screen with touch capability, NFC connectivity, and the ability to print from and scan to USB thumb drives and memory cards. If you can do without those features, with the MFC-J775DW you get a capable if basic home-office inkjet all-in-one with a low purchase price and a very low cost of ownership.
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