Brother MFC-J625dw

The Brother MFC-J625dw ($130 street) has a good feature set for a low-priced multifunction printer (MFP). It?s geared primarily to business use but with some photo-centric features as well. It?s fast at business printing, with decent if unspectacular output quality. Though other alternatives, like the Brother MFC-J825dw ($150 street, 4 stars), offer additional features for slightly more money, the MFC-J625dw has a lot to offer a home office or micro office for its price.

The MFC-J625dw can print, copy, scan, and fax. It can fax either from a computer (PC Fax), or work as a standalone fax machine. It has media-card slots for SD and Memory Stick formats, and a port for a USB thumb drive or PictBridge-enabled camera. The 1.9-inch color touch screen with touch panel controls can be used for previewing photos as well as for navigating menus.

This MFP is compatible with the Brother iPrint&Scan app, which allows you to print or scan from an Apple, Android, or Windows 7 Phone mobile device on the same wireless network.

The MFC-J625dw, matte black with a glossy black, textured lid, is reasonably compact, measuring 7.1 by 15.9 by 14.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 19.8 pounds. Its 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) lets you copy, scan, or fax multi-page documents unattended. It has a 100-sheet paper tray, a little scanty for home-office use, but it combines it with a 20-sheet tray for holding 4-by-6 photo paper.

The MFC-J625dw connects to a PC via a USB cable, or to a network via WiFi (802.11b/g/n), though it lacks an Ethernet port. I tested it over a USB connection using a computer running Windows Vista.

Print Speed

The Brother MFC-J625dw printed out the latest version of our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic?s hardware and software) at 4.3 effective pages per minute (ppm), edging the Brother MFC-J825dw, which averaged 4.0 ppm on the same tests. The Editors? Choice Epson Stylus NX625 ($149.99 direct, 4 stars) also printed out the suite at a 4-ppm clip.

The MFC-J625dw averaged 1:59 in printing 4-by-6 photos, tying the MFC-J825dw, while the NX625 averaged only 58 seconds per print.

Output Quality

The MFC-J625?s overall output quality was a touch below par compared with inkjet MFPs in its price range. Text quality was average, while graphics and photo quality were slightly sub-par. Text quality was fine for schoolwork or general business use, but not for documents with which you want to create a good impression, such as a resume, or if you have a need for very small fonts.

With graphics, the colors seemed undersaturated, giving the output a slightly pale or faded look. Other issues included dithering (solid areas appearing as fine dot patterns) and minor banding (a regular pattern of faint stripes).The output was suitable for schoolwork or general business use and even PowerPoint handouts, though I?d be hesitant to hand them to potential clients or others who I was trying to impress through their visual appearance.

Photo quality was a tad below par for an inkjet. For the most part, they weren?t quite up to what we?d expect from drugstore prints. Some colors seemed a bit off (for example, in a couple of illustrations flesh tones and other details showed too much red). Detail was generally good in darker areas, but in some cases there was substantial loss of detail in brighter areas.

Other Issues

Two nice touches are the 2-year warranty, and a relatively low claimed running, 3.8 cents per monochrome page and 10.7 cents per color page.

The Brother MFC-J625dw is a well-equipped home-office MFP available for a modest price; it also has some photo-centric features like the ability to print from memory cards and USB thumb drives. It?s fast, and has acceptable if not spectacular output. For $20 more, the Editors? Choice Brother MFC-J825dw offers similar speed and output quality, plus additional features like a larger (3-inch) LCD, Ethernet connectivity, and the ability to print on optical disks. If those aren?t important to you, the MFC-J625dw could well be your home-office MFP of choice.

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