PRINTING. The Brother MFC-J6925DW prints using inkjet technology, which sprays liquid ink onto the paper from a moving head. Text printing is not a strong point, with noticeably fuzzy edges on letters. Text printing was very quick, 11.5 pages per minute, costing 1 cents per page. It prints color graphics with some obvious defects, but OK for casual use, at 0.3 pages per minute, costing 6.2 cents per page. It has an auto duplex feature that lets you print both on sides of the page, though there's a slight loss of quality. If any color ink runs out, it stops printing -- it can't be set to just use the remaining black ink. If the black ink runs out, it stops printing -- it can't be set to just use the remaining color ink. This printer is a wide format model that can print on 11x17 paper, giving you the ability to create large photographs or spreadsheets. The capacity of the main paper tray is 250 sheets, a generous size. There's a second tray for full-size paper, allowing you to load letterhead paper, for instance.
SCANNING and COPYING. Scanning performance was excellent, suitable for any task including archiving photos. It can scan or copy an area up to 16.4 x 11.5 inches (tabloid size). Copying performance was very good, suitable for most purposes. There's an automatic document feeder to let you copy or scan a stack of pages in one operation. The automatic document feeder can even copy or scan both sides of the pages. Includes OCR (optical character recognition) software, useful for making scanned documents editable in a word processor program.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has a small 1.5-inch display screen with a touchscreen.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. The Brother MFC-J6925DW has a memory-card reader for directly printing documents and images stored on an SD card. It has USB PictBridge for direct printing from cameras. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router either wirelessly with WiFi or with an Ethernet cable. There's a WiFi Auto-connect feature that makes it easy to link to your wireless router. Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print are built-in, to print wirelessly from smartphones, tablets and PCs. You can also install Brother's app on your smart phone or tablet, as another option for printing over your WiFi network. This model has built-in faxing, can store incoming faxes if the paper runs out, and can send faxes from an attached PC. The printer can access the Internet directly using downloadable 'apps', letting you print information from news and entertainment services.
COST OF OWNERSHIP. The purchase price for this printer is about $345, which is expensive for an all-in-one inkjet printer. But printing uses up ink. Over time, as you print, the costs add up. After 2 years of use, we estimate the total cost to be $440, which is typical for an inkjet. The estimated yearly cost is $50 -- that's low for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are about $490, $540 and $590 respectively.
NOTE. The printer takes up a lot of space and might be more suitable for an office than a home. This printer was noisier than most while printing, so you might want to locate it away from sleeping areas. Limited access to the paper path.
