Brother MFC-J497DW Inkjet Multifunction Printer

Always wanted a decent Brother Printer Didn't want a run of the mill Epson, Canon or HP printer, products which I loathe Only problem was finding the required Brother printer in stock anywhere as they seem to have been in short supply since lockdown and most supppliers availability only on back order.

As a result of the pandemic, many working from home have purchased all reasonably priced printers/copiers. By purchasing online I was able to obtain a basic 4-in-1 unit that will work for my home office needs. While this unit wasn't the cheapest that I was able to purchase, the features that it provides will handle all of my needs. It arrived sooner than I had anticipated.

Easy to setup good intuitive software. Sits discretely in our home lights off, wakes up completes its task and falls asleep again. Brilliant no fuss great prints, copies etc. Such a tremendous improvement over the printer it replaced, looks better too!

Just comparing to the last multi-purpose copier scanner color printer I had this one is 1000x easier to run, setup and print out of the box but it would be unfair to compare the two because the other one is older by 7-8 years. What I can say is my laser and older multi-printers were from HP and connecting them, keeping them connected and re-connecting them to wifi is and was always a nightmare. The Brother was intuitive and easy to connect out of the box. The color prints are decent but nothing special. The duplex feature is awesome, copy feature, ease of printing from my iPhone or iPad also awesome. The printer sleeps between uses, wakes-up appropriately, transfers bigger PDFs quickly. I'm not printing much but more often so it serves those purposes (intermittent printing). Loading the cartridges was easy. I'm impressed how easy out of the box this printer was to setup. My family prints to this printer and I hate always having to be the local IT guy for everything tech in the house, this printer alleviates some of those duties.

Just recently purchased, so I have not used all the features. However, so far it has met or exceeded all my requirements, particularly based on the price. Very simple, easy to follow setup. My only criticism is that it is a little bigger than I would have liked, though it still fits where I wanted it.

I got this printer a few weeks ago. The set-up was so easy, the machine walks you through all the steps. It has printed reliably and immediately so far. The only thing that is a minus is that I noticed the letters when I print text aren't quite as sharp as my other printer. But, this Brother printer still beats my other one because print jobs go through fast every time, whereas the other printer might take hours or never print. This printer does exactly what I need it to do, print documents and graphics with acceptable to good quality right away! I haven't tried scanning or copying yet, but also like that it has all these functions and is compact for having a scanning/copying bed.

From the beginning, if I printed anything in colour, it would drain the ink and then stop working. It got expensive to replace ink. Now 5 years later even when I replaced all the ink, it either doesn't print at all or I get a very faded printout.

This printer is great when it works but we have had some issues. Recently I wanted to scan a document, It seemingly won't print or scan without a firmware update, and it won't complete the firmware update until we replace one of the ink cartridges, meaning it is now a useless brick until I can find time to replace an ink cartridge, even though the scanner doesn't require ink... It also won't print in black and white unless you have purchased all the colour cartridges as well, even though we only really ever need to print in black and white. We have also run into issues printing over Wi-Fi, and have had to reconnect it a few times. A few disappointments and has not been the easiest experience.

You can't print at ALL whenever one colour runs out of ink! For example, I can't even print black and white text if I'm out of blue ink. Then, the printer's wifi keeps disconnecting, causing me to reenter all the information again. Half the time, the printer tells me that my wifi password is wrong when I input it correctly. Overall, save your money and your time on a better printer than this one.

I gave it one star because I couldn't give it 0 stars. I have had this printer or over a year and every time I try to use it there is an issue. I have been trying to cancel a print job for over an hour and it won't cancel. It will not let me print in black and white because the yellow cartridge is empty. There is absolutely nothing good about this machine. Save you money and buy anything but Brother.