We’ve looked at a whole bunch of midrange all-in-one (AIO) inkjet printers recently, and many of them have had a few things in common. The most notable one is size, or lack thereof: Some, such as Epson’s Expression Premium XP-800 All-in-One ($279.99 at Best Buy), are much smaller than most full-featured multifunction machines we’ve seen to date. Plus, this recent batch, including the XP-800 and HP’s Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One Printer ($149.99 at HP), are quite high-tech in appearance and even fashionable-looking.
That’s also the case with the subject of this review: Brother’s $199.99-list MFC-J4510DW all-in-one printer ($199.99 at Best Buy). Not only is it—considering all that it does—small, lean, light, and modern-looking, but it also offers something that the two photo-centric models above do not: a fairly low per-page cost of consumables (here, ink cartridges). In fact, we applaud Brother for not following the late-2012 trend of pricing ink off-the-chart high. Also, the product is a departure from the business-oriented inkjets the company has developed in the past, and it’s quite nice-looking. We’ll talk more about this AIO’s cost per page (CPP) in the Design & Features section a bit later on in this review, but know that that’s a big part of its appeal.Aside from looking good and being economical, the MFC-J4510DW has something else big going for it: the ability to print one-off ledger-size (11×17-inch) pages from a manual input tray on the back. That’s a feature totally unheard of in a printer as compact as this one. (Most printers that print to this size of paper are wide-carriage monsters.) And even though the printing is a little sluggish, the output quality is pretty good, especially when printing business documents containing images and graphics. We’ve seen better photo print quality, but this AIO’s image reproduction is way beyond passable.
The MFC-J4510DW features a 20-page ADF for easy copying or scanning of multipage documents.Apart from the wide-format printing, this machine is loaded with other features, including a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and a print engine with duplexing support, for churning out two-sided pages without manual intervention. It also has an updated 3.7-inch display that’s both touch- and gesture-sensitive. The screen helps you when you’re printing straight from several types of memory devices (i.e., printing without a PC) or downloading content from several cloud sites. It’s a big advance in control-panel quality from what we’ve seen on earlier Brother machines.
On the whole, we liked the MFC-J4510DW a bunch. Granted, its print quality with business documents is not quite laser-quality (versus that of, say, HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One—$217.47 at GoComputerSupplies.com), but it’s definitely close enough for most business applications. Apart from that caveat, we had few quibbles with this printer. We recommend it and knighted it with our Editors’ Choice award.
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