Wireless All-in-One Inkjet Printer, MFC-J491DW, Multi-function Color Printer, Duplex Printing, Mobile Printing,Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled, Black, 8.5 (MFCJ491DW)

UPDATE: After 4 months, we love this printer. We do have to reset the wi-fi connection once in a while, but that is so easy to do, since our modem has a WPS button. Unlike HP, the ink lasts forever, and is much less expensive than HP. It is also VERY user friendly, despite our initial setup difficulties. It prints double sided with ease. It prints from both our computers. Copies and scans are a breeze. I have not used it to fax anything, but that's because I have had no need to. UPDATE, AS PROMISED: Due to weekend we could not get support from Brother, but we DID from Amazon! Amazon techs actually stuck by us for more than an hour to get the printer up and running the way we needed it to. Solely because of their knowledge and assistance, a one star review became a 5 star. Thank you, Amazon!! We had an HP 6500 connected to a home network. Windows 7 computers. It died. We specifically wanted a printer that we could connect to home network (ethernet to cable modem), and searched for printers that would work. This one popped up. Great idea to get away from overpriced HP ink. BUT! No ethernet connection. Wireless connection might be possible, but instructions are to connect computer to modem via USB cable. Great, except our 1 year old cable modem does not have a USB port. OK, so alternative is to set up manually. Except printer cannot be set up on network before installing ink cartridges, but I don't want to open the ink, in case this does not work for home networking, and I have to return it. Literature all talks about printing from mobile devices, which we never need to do. We want to print from 2 different computers. It is possible this might work, but no way to find out without installing ink; cannot go to "Setup" or "Wifi" or even power off--must install ink FIRST! Tech support only available on weekdays, no Saturdays. Bah. If I solve this problem and it works, I will update.

I am just reviewing my set up experience, which was excellent. Print on everything seems just a tad light, but very crisp and clear. This machine was relatively inexpensive at $59 considering that replacement inks on the internet are about $13 from brother and about half that amount from other suppliers. It is also full featured with 2 sided printing and auto doc feeder. It took me about 15 minutes to get on my WiFi and printing. First time, no glitches. This is a huge advance over my multi day experience years ago with Hp and Half day with Epson. I bought the 4 year extended warranty. Hope I don’t have to use it. *****2/1/2020 update so far performance is almost perfect. Use it very lightly but almost daily for over a year? It’s jammed maybe 3 times but cleared from the back almost instantly. Controls are a bit clunky and hard to figure but the set up was easy and WiFi always works from a number of app,e Devi es. Printer accepts very inexpensive but well rated after market ink cartridges. Prints absolutely perfectly with not a single printer head clog problem. Has not needed a single head cleaning problem. It was about $60 to buy and the least expensive to operate in inks by far. I have owned every brand and this the best by far.

Overall impression, this is a fine printer for the price. Print quality was great for color and normal black and white. Plenty fast for both color photo and black and white. Scanner works fine, copier function works fine, prints from cell phone fine. Haven't tried NFC as I added it to my phone on the LAN and haven't tried the fax machine function using cellphone yet. I don't have a land line to hook it up to either. Printer is very compact and sturdy. Does not feel like thin plastic and nothing sticks out of it when not using scanner to snag or break. A very thoughtful design, it does not look like a big clunky office machine but certainly works aw well. Perfect for an individual or a home office . Only because of the following setup caveats I gave it a four star rating. Overall device, print quality, speed, and other Brother software (scan) rate a five star review. But I can't do that and I do understand the frustration of lots of folks who can only follow instructions for this sort of thing - like me and any sort of plumbing, just not my thing. LAN Setup was super easy, but there was a catch. I didn't mess with supplied CD, just uploaded latest software from the Brother site, which I recommend to get the latest version. Big hint here for setup: It couldn't find the printer via the install software (no surprise, I've never found a new printer right off, and if you think about how security and networks REALLY work, you can't without doing something physical) so I had to do it manually on the printer itself (add SSID and password) and although that would work, there is a printer control panel option for WPS. Choose it, press the WPS button on your router, tell the printer to use it and your done. No finding the SSID, entering the password via the arrows and OK buttons, etc. Then you can complete the installation normally as it sees the printer on the LAN at that point. Other PCs on the LAN will see the printer and all goes fast. I added the printer to remaining four computers in under 30 minutes, and added it to my phone at the same time. Why the quick start doesn't talk about WPS, I have no idea. Alternatively, you can hook up via Ethernet cable to the LAN or hook up via USB once to configure printer for wireless access, but you don't have to at all. Compared to other wireless printers I have (a bit older so not as feature rich I suppose) this was a 10 out of 10 install because I did not have to hook up via USB or RJ45 connection initially. WARNING: USE WPS WITH CAUTION. ONCE YOU PRESS THAT BUTTON, YOU WIFI LAN IS OPEN FOR A BIT AND IF YOU'RE IN SOMETHING LIKE A COLLEGE DORM OR APARTMENT SETTING, YOUR LAN CAN BE ENTERED AT THAT POINT. IF YOU'RE WORRIED, USE USB OR HARDWIRE TO ROUTER TO ADD IT TO YOUR LAN SECURELY. Another LAN downside maybe - i have a slower 2.4 GHz and a fast 5GHz WiFi LAN and it doesn't see the 5GHz SSID, only the 2.4GHz one. All of my other printers only see the 2.4GHz SSID as well, so not unusual, but I'd have expected it to see the faster one. Physical setup was simple. Do what the quick start says to do, period. Put the ink in, put the paper in, took off all the transport tape strips on doors/access panels and it worked. Again, one caveat here - when it auto registered, it prints out a test page to show that everything is aligned - reminded me of the ancient HP500C. Anyhow, see attached photo. It is SUPPOSED to look like six solid blocks as the screen on the printer shows, not the dashed and angular print. But I noticed that the image on the bottom (innobella) was properly aligned black & White and color so I said it was ok, I could always fix it later. It was OK as is. I printed out a picture and it was flawless. So the alignment thing is bogus. Again, because of the way the cartridges are detached from the print head (they're just ink tanks it looks like) it HAS to be aligned. It's not like you can align the cartridges at all so not even sure of why this is tested and part of the install process. Other color ink jets don't. I read other reviews that gave Brother high marks because their printers will use generic cartridges with no problems. My HP (one I replaced with this one - my fault not the printer because I dropped it and it exploded into lots of plastic bits) would only use genuine HP high $$$ cartridges and that stunk. But actual Brother ink cartridges are cheap enough that I'm going to use them and not chance using knock offs. Knock offs are not that much cheaper that it's worth it to chance clogging the printer with inferior ink. I haven't had the printer long enough to comment on ink life or sturdiness of the unit. It does appear to be more solid and feels sturdier than the one I replaced, certainly smaller for sure but not much lighter- one third the size of the monster HP 8710 I dropped. I don't know about the reviews that say it "eats ink". But, I have to say that unless you are a low volume user (like < 10 pages printed a week) and mostly use for scanning, I wouldn't use this as my primary printer - this or any inkjet for that matter - the cost per page is too high and changing cartridges is a pain. if you do print a lot, get a laser and have at it. Make sure it uses knock off cartridges (both my Samsung's, a B&W one and a color one, do just fine with them) and print away. If you have kids who print a lot, definitely get a color laser for the cheapest cost per page.

Don't buy this printer, and I recommend reading up on any other brand, period. It only exists to covertly suck up your unused ink, and disable the entire machine whenever it wants until you feed in another cartridge. This is not just an exaggeration by disgruntled commenters. The reviews on this printer seemed, overall, to be positive when we first bought it. Immediately after purchase, the bad business practices started rolling in hard. There are surely many reviews with this information, but the more the better. 1. This printer periodically sucks up ink as part of its "maintenance schedule." Even if you print nothing, it will be empty in a few months. Where this ink actually goes is a mystery. 2. The printer will not print (!) once it has seemingly arbitrarily decided that it is out of ink to do so. Who knows how many more pages worth of ink are still in the cartridge. Everything still prints solid blacks up until this point. The machine has decided you must now buy more ink. 3. We have printed, maybe, an initial test image with any color ink, and now some months later the cyan and magenta inks are "low", and the yellow is "out." At that point, a B&W-only mode activates, unless of course four weeks goes by, or you unplug the printer (like I did, trying to bypass its belligerence. The machine actually wouldn't even "allow" me to turn it off), or you select the wrong paper type, or drop too many f-bombs in its direction. At that point, you cannot even print in black and white until the color cartridge is replaced. (We don't currently have any, as we never use color prints. We do, however have plenty of black ink on hand, and really need these 20 pages printed out.) This particular episode was the big reminder that I have been forgetting to leave a review on Amazon. I very much wish I had known these quirks before we bought the printer. They are not feature-driven, but indicative of the very worst example I've seen of predatory business practices now infamous and seemingly ubiquitous in the printer market - how to force customers to buy more ink more often. We will not be buying any more Brother products.

Update 2-27-2021 I am so happy with is excellent printer for $80.00 a steal of a deal. update 2-1-2001 I have this three weeks and have used much more than expected. I am very happy with this the performance and uses small amount of ink. If I printed what I have on my old printer I would of need to replace, I still have 3/4 left. Only draw back making endorsement on back of personal checks it cannot print as paper is to small. I really like this printer so far. I received a new one this past Tuesday and so far I am very happy with it I know not enough time to tell. I do like all the features and the quality of the print. I most like that I can and have bought extra large ink 3013 and have been printing a good amount with minimal ink use. I also like that this unit also includes a fax built in. I am not sure what others such Epson no longer have built in fax. For me that was a deal breaker. The wifi seems to work well also. Like I said I like this unit even though not a fast printer but I do not need speed I want a good all in one and so far I am very happy with this unit. I will update in future. PS I will buy the extend warranty that will cover it out 4 years I think that is a no brainier. Thank you hope this helps ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 St old review 12-30-2020 I ordered this with the hope it was as good as the reviews are and wanted to write a good review. I like the printer a lot print quality is very good speed a little slow but that fine for me The problem is when I went to have print on both sides of paper it jammed I un-jammed it only to have it happen over and over again then it would not un jam so I returned. I reordering hoping that one was a bad unit and if the new one is good I will write a good review. My worry is that this is a design flaw as others have complained about unit jamming as well. PS Bother tech support was not helpful at all, many hours on hold to have several BAD reps too good reps

We have had this printer for over 6 years and it has performed exceeding well. When the inevitable paper jams rarely occur, they are easy to clear quickly. Scanning, print quality and speed are all excellent. Previously we have gone through at least six printers, all of which died within six months. Repair is too costly, so they were trashed. This printer does everything I need, and a bunch of things I have not needed to do so far. We use third party ink and have never had any of the problems the OEM ink vendors warn you about. Highly recommended.

Decided to go for this printer since most of the reviews were positive. Most of the negative reviews, I felt people were purchasing this printer which was on sale for $49.99 and thought there were getting a Laser Jet valued at $349.99. This expectation is way too high. My expectations weren't nearly that high. I print typically in a month 10-15 pages. I never print photos with any printer I buy because it eats up way too much inch and never as good as having them print at a store. The cost versus value doesn't make sense. In other words, if you're printing photos, go to Ex. Walgreens, Sams or Staples. So regular Black & White and some color is all I need. Plus I do scan regularly and fax 2-3 times a year. I didn't need a laser jet, or high end ink jet printer. (most of those reviews for those printers were mixed just like this one). So I went for this Brother. It's a very nice printer! Prints Black & White prints very well. (with better resume paper, can be resume quality too). Color is nice too, but not professional photo quality as mentioned earlier where to go. Scans images right to my PC and with my mobile phone, can print and scan. Haven't used the fax yet, but it ready and set up. (get a dial tone). The ink refill for this printer is also very reasonable versus $75 on my previous Canon. Laser Jets range around $179.99 to refill too. This one is about $36.99 for the original ink, not a knock off. Does it all and it's not too big versus my prior Canon. Overall I'm very pleased with this printer. I would recommend to a college student, home office, and to most people. So if you're looking for a great value grab this one!!! More professional business printing and/or commercial use, you have to come out the pocket and spend more. If you're expecting $49.99 to get you a laser ink jet valued at $349.99 keep looking. To me it's a homerun!!!

I got this because I needed a good printer. It works very well in Linux (OpenSUSE LEAP 15.2) over WiFi, which is a huge plus. It also works well in Windows over WiFi. The top feeding scanner only scans one sided, but that's not a huge issue because it scans to PNG JPEG and PDF, so you can either rename the files to match pages (PNG) or get the updated version of Adobe Acrobat to reorganize the pages. The Brother iPrint&Scan will save to PDF and use OCR to make them searchable pages, but you cannot reorganize the pages before printing, unless you want to insert pages one by one to scan double-sided. This is why I recommend saving to PDF and using Adobe to reorganize, or saving to PNG and renaming files in order to input into Adobe. Anyways, it worked right, it worked well, and setup was easy. I've had zero problems with it, and I really like it! EDIT: UNTIL I tried to scan documents using the top feeder. Scanning in a document, it jams once every ten pages, and mutilates your pages in the process. You might as well name this printer BobMarley on your LAN because it's always jamming. So the top feeder is pointless. But have fun scanning large documents into it one page at a time. So much for saving me time. So far every batch of 10 pages one jams and gets trashed, and these pages I'm scanning are pristine. In fact, I need to stop writing this so I can clear yet another jammed page.