Next Printer Will Be A Brother

[Lucas28]

My Epson printer has passed away so it's time to look for a new office printer.
I am thinking of a Brother printer, because Brother make printers with an A3 scanner on board. And it's a lot of work to scan a newspaper article with an A4 scanner.
Brother is also the brand that still sells printers with chipless cartridges.
Another advantage is the location of the cartridges: not on the printhead but on the front, kind of build in CISS.
Brother uses piezo printheads, as Peter kindly told me, which I find superior to steam printheads.

Now I need to know two things:
-Which Brother cartridges are equipped with a chip, so a can avoid printers using that cartridges.
-Can anyone tell me if it's possible to print photos with the black ink on, like Epson printers do with paper set to 'matte'. Four color photos look much better!

 

[costadinos]

I have a Brother MFC-J6510DW, which is a multifunction machine with A3 scanner.
There are no chips on the catridges, ink levels are monitored with a light beam, so all you have to do is use a piece of black tape to block the light beam and fool the printer into thinking the cartridges are full. The OEM cartridges are very easy to refill.

Yes, you can print using the black ink when you set the media type to Matte, and what's more, the printer has no problem handling all-pigment inks if you like.

My advice though, if you plan on printing lots of photos with it, or intend to use thicker photo paper, skip the Brother and go for an Epson/Canon. Unless you print on plain paper and use the bottom tray, the printer is pretty much useless when it comes to feeding paper through the rear slot. Not only can you load one paper at a time only, most of the times you'll end up with jammed paper or paper not going in straight/skew problems.
You might as well spend a little more and go for the A3 Epson models...

 

[Lucas28]

Thanks for the reaction, Costadinos.
The printer is mainly meant for documents. Occasionally I will print an A3 photo or a photo with pigment ink with the Brother. Normally I use the Canon for (dye) A4 photos.

I'm glad to hear that the Brother handles pigment ink. Also, The possibility of using black ink on matte photos is good news.

The Epson A3 all in ones are expensive and I'm fed up with the chips in the cartridges, which makes each cart €1 to €2 more costly. These chips are used for a war against third party cartridge manufacturers, and we customers have to pay for the chips. These chips are not necessary, a counter on the main board which resets after a cartridge exchange can keep track of the ink levels as well.

 

[Smile]

Brother is the best printer I tried at 150$ that prints A3 at 6000dpi. That has auto cleaning cycles makes printer always ready, zero clogs.

I print documents and photos with it. I have MFC-5895CW, no chips, just fill and use.
Printer is very Linear with ICC profile, BW photos are great.

I printed on 200gsm paper it works fine. To feed glossy photo paper you have to put a plain paper sheet and use sticky tape to glue it to the feeder on the front of the tray so printer would not load this sheet. Then add photo paper usual - this makes photo paper feed without problems.

 

[Smile]

Brother replied to my inquire if they will make 6 color photo printers that it's confidential info they can't share, but if they will make them for sure they will kill any EPSON by far. The reason is superior printhead design, just google how brother MFC printhead looks and how EPSON print head looks.