Brother MFC-J5335DW: the all-purpose A3 inkjet

Ergonomics

Because of its print format, the J5335DW is obviously a relatively large printer. However, its 53 x 39.8 x 30.4 cm remains acceptable for its category. Even its weight of 16.9 kg remains within the standards. It must still be said that if the general quality of manufacture is not bad, it could still have been of better quality (plastic crimps, cassette and foldable plastic flaps quite cheap ...).

The automatic document feeder on the top is convenient to use even for batch scanning, which is always useful for fax enthusiasts. When you open this cover, you come face to face with the scanner, which is only compatible with A4 format. To scan in A3, it will therefore be necessary to go through a software solution to end up two scanned pages end to end.

Main source of paper supply, the lower cassette can store up to 250 standard sheets (80 g / m²), both in A4 and A3. On the other hand, it is impossible to have in reserve a packet of sheets of each format ready to be printed. It will indeed be necessary to empty the cassette and only fill it with paper of the target size, or use the manual paper feeder located at the rear of the printer. Note that in A4 the paper loads across the width of the tray and is therefore printed in landscape orientation. We will see below if this has a positive impact on the printing speed.

At the bottom left, a small hatch gives access to the four ink cartridges.

At the rear, a flap this time gives access to the paper feed rollers, which makes it possible to intervene in the event of paper jam.

The entire connector part of this printer is located at the center pane. You must therefore open the printer in two to access its USB port, its RJ45 port and its two RJ11 ports. As on the MFC J985DW recently tested, we regret that this system gives rise to the use of preformed troughs to organize the cables, which can be problematic in certain cases, since the space thus left to the cables is not necessarily sufficient and can be annoying if one uses, for example, a cable with a ferrite. In addition, there is a loss in cable length.

The printer is controlled from a very light front panel, in particular at the level of the color and touch screen which is limited to a diagonal of 6.8 cm. It is not much, even if it must be recognized that the menus remain quite legible because well organized. General ergonomics also benefits from the presence of a USB port, compatibility with the main Cloud printing services and the iPrint & Scan application which gives the possibility of printing directly from Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox or Picasa. Wi-Fi Direct is obviously supported.

---

---

Consumption

In terms of power consumption, the J5335DW is quite a good student, especially given its positioning. Pulling 1.5 W on the standby electrical outlet, it consumes up to 14 W during photo work. This is, for example, much less than the HP PageWide MFP-377DW which climbs to 37 W in this exercise.

With regard to noise pollution, the J5335DW also knows how to stand up. Our sound level meter positioned a few tens of centimeters is a nuisance of around 40.3 dB in photo printing and 45.2 dB in standard printing. It is quite good and these emissions can be further reduced by activating the silent mode.

---

---

Cost per page

In terms of cost per page, this Brother inkjet printer from the Business Smart range is strong. Not as much as an Epson EcoTank, slightly worse than the recently tested Brother Ink Benefit (J985DW), but still. With XL cartridges offering autonomy of 3000 pages (black and white) and 1500 pages (color), it comes down to a very attractive cost of € 0.012 per page in grayscale and € 0.058 on average in color. It's excellent.

---

---

Scanner and copies

The Brother J5335DW is an A3 printer, but it only has an A4 scanner, which allows it to fit in a compact format. It works up to 1200 x 2400 dpi and delivers perfectly correct results. It is also quite fast: 10 seconds to scan a 10 x 15 cm photo at 300 dpi and 11 seconds to archive a black and white document at 100 dpi.

In copying, speed is also essential since an A4 photocopy comes out in 10 seconds in black and white and in 12 seconds in color. The rendering of these copies is again correct, without more, with originals visibly washed out while remaining largely acceptable.

---

---

Photo

It's not exactly in the photo that we expected from this Business Smart printer, however, with its inkjet technology, borderless printing and a drop size of 1.5 picoliter, the printing is more than correct. The precision is good. The average delta E which measures the colorimetric drift is far from being catastrophic, at 6.5, despite a poorly rendered cyan and green (delta E greater than 12).

By taking 1 minute and 12 seconds to print a 10 x 15 cm photo and 3 minutes and 10 seconds to print a photo in A4 format, the J5335DW is relatively slow, however. It actually swims in the same waters as an EcoTank ET-4550 from Epson, which is not famous for its speed in photos, far from it.

---

---

Office

As we said above, the particularity of this A3 printer is to print in landscape format when it works in A4. The print heads therefore have more distance to travel to scan the sheet, but also less round trip to perform. Does this allow the J5335DW to be faster than its counterparts? No. It is relatively fast (24 pages / minute in black and white and 21.4 pages / minute in color), but there are better.

Above all, this speed is reached in the printing mode activated by default ("fast" mode). A printing mode which gives less contrasted results and which uses visibly less ink than the "superior" mode. This is enough for drafts or documents that are not intended to be presented, but it will be better to change the mode to print quality documents. In this context, the printing speed drops to around 18 pages / minute.

---

---

Conclusion

We like the Brother MFC-J5335DW for its versatility. Fast, it has the advantage of supporting the A3 format which opens its field of possibilities, especially in photos where it ensures honorable performances. Its cost per page remains its best argument, but we deplore the finishes a little fair in some aspects, a touch screen too small and an ergonomics that deserves some adjustments.

---