Brother MFC J280W Inkjet Printer Review

Brother MFC J280W Inkjet Printer Review

Hi all…this is my Brother MFC-J280 wireless printer review! I have owned this printer for about 5 years.

Industrial printers are big and can run into the 2K and up price range….plus where the heck do you store them? This Brother MFC inkjet printer, was bought by my husband in 2013; we’re happy to report it’s still going strong.

It has the distinction of wireless capability and can handle the four important jobs of printing, copying, scanning and sending faxes. It’s been indispensable for all my artwork – now it can only come out in A4 which means I won’t have the luxury of jumbo-poster sized vector artwork that local sign shops manage everyday.

But for the task of printing artwork to give to friends and family during holidays and birthdays, this fits the bill.

Now onto the Brother MFC Inkjet Printer itself, its defining features, my day to day experiences, and things you can do! As I said previously it’s a compact sized printer that will not take up much real estate in your office or home, and can sync up with any other computers in your home, if any, as well as Android and Apple devices.

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Brother MFC Inkjet Printer Specs and Features

• LCD touchscreen window display is 1.9″ with customizable options
• USB connectivity-other computers in the home or office have the same shared use capabilities
• Printing speeds of 33 ppm for b/w docs, and 26 ppm for color.
• Wireless network interface
• It is also compatible with the iPrint app that enables you to print from your iPhone or Android device.

Dimensions

• Flatbed scanner surface is: 8.5″ wide by 12″ length – I laid one of my smaller paintings on the surface (11 by 14) and seeing it covered the perimeter; I’d have to only scan little bitty paintings like 8 by 10.
• Outside dimensions: 16″ wide, 6″ in height, and 14.25″ in length.

      

Brother All in One Printer Installation

The Brother MFC J280W printer was made to intersperse with your router so that if you have additional computers in the home it can receive print jobs there just as easily. I’m thankful that my husband is a whiz at this stuff as I am clueless(!) He had no difficulty going through the setup process in which you configure (is that the right word?) the router.

Using the Fax

Sometimes its a hassle to go to one of the “big box” office supply stores with a stack of material that needs to be faxed as you’re pretty much on your own, and sometimes it’s a $1 a sheet. I can take matters into my own hands and the Brother Compact inkjet all in one will let me do just that – the fax procedure works independently of my desktop so sending and receiving is a breeze!

However keeping in mind the way it works is just like the step to copy a document….anything I need to fax I lay onto the glass surface and close the lid, choose “Fax” from the left-side menu before I type in the number from the right side key pad. In other words, there isn’t a “feed slot”.

Copying and Scanning

I have the option to select the number of copies and black and white or color. With regard to scanning, I use the PaperPort platform for the procedure; this works great for business-related documents that I can promptly save into the format of my choice.

Printing

This is the main task that my Brother Compact inkjet All in One undertakes. I’m able to modify settings from the Print Setup menu for such things as bleed, layout, and color depth. Plus paper orientation and other elements.
In my own experience, with printing artwork, I always make sure to choose “Best” quality …I’ve had a few pieces in which I left the default setting of “Normal” and the page looked striped or washed out. So I reserve the “Normal” setting for more uh, practical, jobs that don’t have to look “pretty”.

You have the benefit of being able to check your ink levels…since you can remove and insert cartridges individually this is a real boon. The cartridges are easy to insert from the front side opening to the right of the paper feed slot.

       

Accessories

The main one that you would have to spring for is the inkjet cartridges. Now although it was bought from a different supplier, I do buy the refill cartridges periodically on Amazon.

I actually had to switch to a different brand as the one with the penguins on it shown above is no longer carried – the proprietary brand seemed waaaay too expensive so I settled on this brand right here: Abacus 24-7 Ink Cartridge Replacements

They are moderately priced and like every wireless home printer it’s very important to find out what model number you need and once you purchase them, bookmark your order for the next go-around to make it easier.

Price

I think you’ll do pretty good where this is concerned. I cannot remember what my husband paid at the time 4 years ago but as of the time of this writing/update it sounds pretty reasonable; there are various options included and your main out of pocket other expense as I said earlier would be the refill cartridges.

Brother MFC Inkjet Printer Conclusion

I was a little surprised to find that this model didn’t rate very well on Amazon…I tend to take the negative reviews on a case by case basis, as I cannot speak for the people who wrote them not knowing what their goals, intentions or office-related needs were.

It’s important to not neglect to go through the printer head cleaning regimen periodically, as this happened to me once….I thought my ink levels were running low (a glimpse into menu settings did not check out though) and even though I replaced the cartridges my art pieces still looked “washed out” in appearance. Thankfully the other “techie” in the family, Uncle Steve, was able to bring up the head cleaning menu successfully, which enables you to do a test print and make sure that all the CMYK inks are performing as they should.

     

Also I have learned to be sure that the paper slot has at least a mini-stack full….too few sheets and I have had a picture or two that got messed up big-time when it did a partial print on like, 4 sheets of paper, really weird-an isolated incident, but one that can be easily prevented.

Sometimes one of my cats lies atop the top bed area…I try to shoo them off whenever they do as I am super-protective of my electronics. I remedied this by keeping my paper tray sitting on top. Yeah I know that this is not covered in the manual; we cat people know how they always want to lie on the darndest places:)