Brother MFC-J615W

The Brother MFC-J615W is a colour inkjet, 4-in-1, which prints, copies, scans and faxes, designed for small companies. 40 MB of memory mean small groups of up to 7 people can share it. It promises simplicity of use and a full range of features.

Hardware

Though it does it all, the MFC-J615W remains nevertheless compact and light (8Kg). Space can easily be found for it on top of a desk. Thanks to the wi-fi and network connectivity, you can share it across a work group. The 8.2 cm colour screen offers good legibility and, as long as you're not particularly attached to touch functionality, the buttons are pretty clear and easy to use. Another practical point, the media card reader and PictBridge port allow you to print without turning the computer on.

There are four separate cartridges and you access them at the front of the machine: simple, practical efficient.


                          4 separate cartridges

On the down side, there's no double-sided feature. Generally speaking, the machine doesn't look all that robust and the document loader is low capacity (100 pages). Inserting pages into the loader isn't always that easy: compactness doesn't necessarily equate to practicality!


Speeds

We're a long way from the print speeds announced by Brother: 28 pages per minute for colour and 35 ppm black & white. With our test documents it managed 5 ppm in colour and black & white. This is too long! In comparison, the latest HP printers (tested under the same conditions), print at 12 ppm in colour and 29 ppm in black & white.

Things don't get any better when it comes to photo prints! With this Brother model you need about 1mn30 for a 10x15 cm print or 4mn for an A4. The Canon Pixma MG5250 (mid range) is three times as fast.
Quality: saved by photo quality

Like certain older models, the MFC-J615W a bit better in black and white but, overall, office document print quality gets just 2 stars. Print lines stand out so much that it looks as if it's snowing in our graphs. Sharpness is poor, the ink splodgy and shaded areas all come out the same. The colours lack brightness and there's no precision to the contours. You can see the horizontal print head lines in the blue bars on the graph. To sum up, the standard setting looks more like a draft. There's really no point going for the draft and ink economy modes as your prints are then almost unusable.

The photo prints are pretty good. They get a 4 from us (2 stars for office docs and 4 for photos gives an overall rating of 3 stars). Black & white photos show a tendency towards green but overall the results are pretty good.




Scanner and copier


The scanner resolution is 1200 dpi. The results are pretty average and there's a lack of precision and colour accuracy. Average colour difference is rather high (over 7%). For scanning text, this is fine however and it's pretty fast. It'll take you around 12 seconds to scan a page at 300 dpi.


Although copy speed is okay (19 seconds for a black & white and 20 seconds for colour), the quality leaves a lot to be desired. Once again, for text it's fine, but our graph is illegible. The yellow characters get lost in the washed out green and the result is really poor.

Energy consumption & Noise levels

Energy Star (a label concentrating on energy efficiency) and Blue Angel certified, this machine draws 4 watts in standby and 18 watts when printing, which is pretty good. What's more, it's quiet with an average noise level of 49 dB(A).


Cost per page: 7.1 pence

There's just one capacity format (standard) and cost per page is higher than average at 7.1 pence per page. In comparison the HP Envy is at 8.5 pence per page, the Epson Stylus Office BX625FWD at 5.6 pence per page or the unbeatable Kodak ESP7250 at 4.2 pence.

ISO text lifespan