Brother MFC-J6910DW

With only a little higher price than the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J6710DW ($300 street, 4 stars), the Brother MFC-J6910DW ($350 street) offers all the same features as its less expensive sibling, plus one key addition: duplex (two-sided) scanning. It's a feature that most offices can do without, which is the only reason why the MFC-J6910DW isn't an Editors' Choice as well. But for those who need it, the ability to scan in duplex is easily worth the additional cost, not even counting the 3.3-inch color touch screen display that makes it easier to give menu commands.

Like the MFC-J6710DW, the MFC-J6910DW is aimed at any micro, small, or home office, although it's obviously of most interest if you need to print at up to tabloid size (11 by 17 inches), and want a single printer for both letter- and tabloid-size output. Two 250-sheet paper trays make it easy to load both paper sizes at once and switch between them. And if you need to print occasionally on different paper stock, the manual feed lets you print without having to swap out the paper in either tray. It also lets you print on thicker paper sizes, up to 76 pound weight.

The Basics, Setup, and Speed
In addition to the way above average paper handling, the MFC-J6910DW offers all the basic features any office needs, and more. For a start, it can print, scan, and fax over a network and work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender. It can also scan at up to tabloid size, using either the 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) or the flatbed.

Duplex scanning lets you fax duplex documents easily, while the combination of duplex printing and duplex scanning also lets you copy both simplex (one-sided) and duplex documents to your choice of either simplex or duplex copies. Note, however, that duplexing for scanning is limited to a maximum of legal-size pages, even though the ADF can handle tabloid size pages for simplex scans.

Setup is standard. The printer offers both Ethernet and WiFi support. For my tests I connected it to a wired network and installed it on a Windows Vista system. Not surprisingly, given the similarity between the printers, the MFC-J6910DW's results were essentially identical, file by file, to those from the MFC-J6710DW, as well the Brother MFC-J6510DW ($250 street, 4 stars), the budget version of essentially the same printer, with only one paper tray.

I clocked all three printers on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 4.1 effective pages per minute (ppm), making them tied for the claim of being the fastest tabloid-capable inkjet we've tested to date.

Among single function inkjets, the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma iX7000 Inkjet Business Printer ($399.99 direct, 4 stars) was notably slower, at 2.8 ppm. And among inkjet MFPs, the previous Editors Choice HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-All-in-One ($299.99 direct, 4 stars), came in at 3.4 ppm.

Output Quality and Other Issues
Overall, the MFC-J6910DW's output quality is equal to or better than most inkjets across the board, and a close match for the MFC-J6710DW and MFC-J6510DW. Text is suitable for most business applications, as long as you don't have an unusual need for small fonts, and photo output on photo paper is roughly a match for drugstore prints, making it more than good enough for most business needs.

Colors in graphics were a little dulled down, but well within the range of reasonable. Here again, the quality is easily good enough for most business needs, including, for example, PowerPoint handouts. I saw some banding in default mode, but depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may consider the graphics good enough for output going to important clients or customers.

Given that the MFC-J6910DW offers all the same capabilities that make MFC-J6710DW an Editors' Choice, including the ability to copy, fax, print and scan at up to tabloid size, and print in duplex, it's easy to recommend. Granted, if you never need to scan two-sided documents, you're better off saving a few dollars and buying the MFC-J6710DW instead. But if duplex scanning is something you need or think you might need, the MFC-J6910DW is the obvious choice, and still a bargain.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Brother MFC-J6910DW with several other MFPs side by side.

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