Brother DCP-J772DW: amazing results in photo, not in office

Ergonomics

The Brother DCP-J772DW 3-in-1 printer is physically a clone of other models from the manufacturer already in our hands, such as the DCP-J562DW. We are therefore evolving in familiar territory and note once again that the choices made by the manufacturer are sometimes practical, sometimes hazardous.

If we appreciate the easy access to ink cartridges, the presence of a USB host port and an SD card reader, the integration of a good size touch screen (6.8 cm) or still the simplicity of configuration of the product, we tick on the other hand on the placement of the USB connection and the lack of practicality of the paper tray.

USB port that can be found under the main cover of the printer, at the end of a "chute" provided for the passage of the cable. A system which has no interest and causes the loss of around forty centimeters of cable. As for the paper tray, with a capacity of 100 ordinary A4 sheets (80 g / m²), it has a flap on top that can accommodate up to 20 envelopes or sheets of 10 x 15 cm photo paper. A good thing, except that the operation of this drawer is anything but practical, requiring to modify the position of the upper tray according to the paper to be loaded and therefore finally to remove the entire cassette each time you want to add paper.

Add to that the few paper jam problems encountered as soon as we try to use heavyweight paper (greater than 250 g / m²), and you get an overall paper handling that did not convince us. That said, this was an opportunity for us to test the various mechanisms and hatches provided to let the user act in the event of a problem in the drive of the print medium, which have proven to be easy to access and effective.

Compatible with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct, the Brother DCP J772DW can also be controlled from a smartphone application that allows direct access to documents present in the cloud on storage spaces like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox and even Evernote.

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Consumption

The Brother DCP-J772DW is a good student when it comes to power consumption. In standby, it never draws more than 1.8 W from the socket. A value that does not exceed 13 W when printing a photo in A4 format. When tested by our sound level meter, it also showed great sobriety. In photo printing, it turns out to be particularly silent (45 dB recorded at 1 m), when in office automation, it is as often the noise of the paper drive mechanisms that penalizes it (51 dB), while remaining on a acceptable level of nuisance. Activating the silent mode limits the noise made by this printer (44 dB), forcing you to accept a lower print speed in return.

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Cost per page

The least expensive cartridges for this DCP-J772DW are the Brother LC3211 XL, given for 400 pages each. At the prices generally charged by the most aggressive online merchants, they fall under an overall cost per page calculated at 13.2 euro cents (0.132 €), which drops to 3.5 euro cents (0.035 €) in black and white.

This is more than the average of inkjet printers (around 10 euro cents overall), and this clearly penalizes this model. Too bad, because Brother like most of its competitors has become aware of the importance of this criterion and knows how to manufacture printers particularly economical in ink, such as the MFC-J5335DW tested by us, which took advantage of the in-house technology InkBenefit to deliver with an overall cost per page of only 5.8 euro cents.

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Scanner and copies

In copy, the Brother DCP-J772DW is not a lightning bolt. It takes 16 seconds to copy an A4 document in black and white and 24 seconds to perform the same operation in color. The rendering of the copies is correct, nothing more. The scanner is also not very fast, knowing that it takes 12 seconds to scan an A4 document at 100 dpi, and 14 seconds to scan a 10 x 15 cm photo at 300 dpi.

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Photo

It is very clearly the surprise of this test. Historically, Brother had accustomed us to be rather at ease in office automation and in withdrawal in photo. Except that this model can produce beautiful prints. The size of the drops on which the printer works (1.5 picolitre) allows it to display a beautiful sharpness in this exercise and to limit the visible noise on the images, even when revealing a high resolution scan.

In addition to this beautiful sharpness, the printed photos benefit from a surprisingly good colorimetry. Delta E (differences between the reference colors and those obtained on printing) measured with the probe are relatively homogeneous and the average of these is only 6.3. A value that approximates what the best photo inkjet printers are capable of (around 5), knowing that the lower this value, the less marked the color drift, although the eye is able to perceive a difference in color above 3. In short, in a few words as in a hundred, this Brother DCP-J772DW does a good job in photography.

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Office

We would have liked it to be as efficient in office automation. However, renderings that are not always very detailed - especially on solid colors or loaded backgrounds - as well as measured flow rates lower than those announced by the manufacturer, force us to slightly sanction it on this point.

For information, the Brother DCP-J772DW delivers 7.7 and 10.5 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and in color, which is lower than the 10 and 12 ppm advertised, but remains rather solid for a printer of this type. tidy. The contract is however filled in automatic two-sided, this model reaching 3.3 ppm, against 3 announced by the manufacturer.

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Conclusion

Although it does not deserve overall and displays great photo skills, it is difficult to prefer this Brother DCP-J772DW to a Canon TS6150, which surpasses it (almost) everywhere and is cheaper.

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