Brother MFC-J6947DW

Business inkjet with true A3 ability

Brother MFC-J6947DW

£635 | $818 www.brother.com

Brother’s X-Series is a trio of A3 inkjet printers with high paper capacity and print speeds fast enough to make you think twice about buying a laser printer. Positioned at the top of this range, the MFC-J6947DW, appears to have it all. Unlike many A3 printers, it can also scan, fax and duplex print with this size paper, and with three trays to fill you can load up to 750 sheets of varying media. It claims a print speed of 22 ipm (mono) and the fastest FPOT (first page out time) in its class at under six seconds.

The MFC-J6947DW is aimed at the small to medium business looking for a compact four-in-one that can handle lots of paper and deal with tasks ranging from sending a fax to copying tabloid sized colour pages. The bundled inkjet cartridges can’t compete with an equivalent laser printer for capacity or per-page cost, but Brother’s high-yield carts certainly can.

Design and build

The Brother MFC-J6947DW might look a little ungainly, but given its ability to handle A3 paper it’s actually quite compact. In fact, by overhanging a few inches at the front to accommodate its tabloid sized scanner bed, the footprint is more like that of an A4 printer. You can load A3 sheets in any or all of the three drawers, but they won’t push all the way back in when loaded, so it’s never going to look very neat on your desk. Brother supports the X-Series printers with an optional wheeled cabinet, with somewhere to keep consumables, for around £364.