To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more

Brother MFC-J4510DW review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £170
inc VAT

An innovative, interesting design, but it's expensive and the results are lacklustre

Specifications

print speed, USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, 186x480x290mm

http://www.currys.co.uk

At a glance, the MFC-J4510DW is clearly a departure for Brother. While hardly gorgeous, it’s a much smarter and more attractive design than is typical of Brother’s MFPs. It’s also the first printer we’ve reviewed that feeds A4 paper in a landscape orientation, the purpose of which is to facilitate A3 printing without consuming more desk space than is necessary.

Brother MFC-J4510DW

Brother stresses that the MFC-J4510DW is an occasional A3 printer, and this is definitely the case. The primary paper tray is A4 only, and A3 sheets must be inserted into the printer one at a time via a slot at the rear. It doesn’t have a proper A3 input tray, so the user must ensure A3 sheets are picked and fed properly. We found the narrow slot made the process difficult, with several misfeeds during our early attempts. With experience, we learned it was best to load the paper and make sure the screen showed “manual feed slot ready” before sending an A3 job.

There’s a similar problem with the output tray which, while fine for A4, isn’t long enough to support an A3 page. The printer is smart enough not to fully eject the printed sheet, however, preventing it falling onto the floor.

Brother MFC-J4510DW

It’s a shame that A3-printing isn’t delivered faultlessly, as this printer doesn’t excel in many other respects. In some areas it seems better made and finished than some other Brother MFPs we’ve reviewed, but the paper input tray was rattled, and the retaining arm for the tilting scanner bed felt as if it needed to be forced back down again, and we had to check that it wasn’t snagged on anything.

This is a fast text printer, peaking at almost 19 pages per minute in draft mode. The results were clear and very legible, but at normal quality the text was still clearly produced by an inkjet, having slightly fuzzy outlines. We were surprised by this printer’s poor colour output, which seemed pale and suffered from a couple of subtle vertical imperfections running down the length of each page. Fortunately, the scanner was also rapid, and its results perfectly good enough for office tasks.

Brother MFC-J4510DW

This printer supports regular and high-capacity ink cartridges, and using the latter should result in reasonable running costs of about 5.3p per page of mixed text and graphics. Text-only prints are likely to be a little less than the 1.8p ISO/IEC 24712 figure suggests. Unfortunately, at £170 the MFC-J4510DW is quite expensive in the first place; it’s own Brother MFC-J5910DW may be bigger and uglier but at £100 it’s a better, cheaper MFP if you need A3 printing.

Basic Specifications

Rating **
Maximum native print resolution 1,200×6,000dpi
Max optical resolution 2,400×2,400dpi
Output bit depth 24-bit

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0 4m 55s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0 21m 7s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless
Optional printer interfaces none
Size 186x480x290mm
Weight 9.3kg
Noise (in normal use) 50dB(A)

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size A3
Maximum paper weight 220gsm
Standard paper inputs 2
Standard paper input capacity 151
Maximum paper inputs 2
Maximum paper input capacity 151
Duplex (code, cost if option) Yes

General

Printer technology piezo inkjet
Supported operating systems Windows XP/Vista/7/8, Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, Linux (via free download)
Other inkjet features 9.3cm colour touchscreen
Other inkjet options none

Buying Information

Price £170
Consumable parts and prices £14 each
Price per colour A4 page 3.5p
Quoted life of supplied photo cartridge(s) N/A
Warranty one year RTB
Supplier http://www.currys.co.uk
Details www.brother.co.uk

Print Quality

Number of ink colours 4
Number of ink cartridges 4
Maximum number of ink colours 4
Maximum number of cartridges 4

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview 11s
A4 document at 150dpi 12s
A4 document at 300dpi 18s
6x4in photo at 600dpi 19s
6x4in photo at 1200dpi 1m 0s

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.0 36s
Time for single A4 colour copy 1.0 37s
Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0 3m 45s

Photo Features

PictBridge support Yes
Borderless printing A4
Direct (PC-less) printing Yes
Supported memory cards SD, MMC, Memory Stick
CD printing No

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies 99
Max mono copy resolution 1,200×1,200dpi
Max colour copy resolution 1,200×1,200dpi

Fax Features

Max mono fax resolution 204x392dpi
Fax memory (maximum mono pages) 200