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Desktop printing is mature enough that it’s hard for printer manufacturers to come up with groundbreaking new features, but the Brother Print & Cut MFC-J1800DW ($199.99) does just that. Brother bills it as a five-function all-in-one (AIO) printer. The fifth function? Cutting. The printer can cut a copied or printed letter-size page in half before spitting out the paper. For anyone who uses half-letter size, whether for business needs or crafting, that’s a lot easier than changing paper in the tray or cutting by hand. And, with the notable exception of running cost, the MFC-J1800DW is otherwise comparable to the Brother MFC-J4335DW, our top recommended AIO for personal to micro office use. In short, it handles the standard AIO functions nicely, and adds its own sharp touch.Print and Cut, Any Way You WantThe cutting capability is not only unusual, it’s also the main reason to consider the MFC-J1800DW, since it’s not hard to find others that can match or beat it otherwise for a lower price—the MFC-J4335DW being a prime example. If the ability to cut pages appeals to you at all, however, the good news is that the feature also comes with more flexibility than you might expect.
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The Windows-compatible printer software lets you shrink everything in a letter-size document to print each page on half the sheet before cutting. You can also set the printer to duplex, which automatically reorders the pages of a multi-page document after shrinking, so the even-numbered pages will be on the opposite side of the sheet from the previous odd-numbered page, and you can clip them together like a book, with the pages in the right order. An additional choice in the Windows print driver and Brother’s Mobile Connect app (for Android and iOS) lets you print and cut, which simply prints the page normally and cuts it into two 8.5-by-5.5-inch sheets.I tried all of these variations in my tests, and all worked as promised, delivering nicely readable text and well-formed graphics at the shrunken sizes, and with as clean a cut from the printer as on the other three edges of the page. Note also that Brother says the cutter can handle up to 58-pound paper, which makes it useful for printing items like menus and invitations.
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(Credit: Brother)
The only option for cutting with copying, labeled Cut Copy in the printer’s 2.7-inch touch-screen control panel, is equivalent to the cut and fit version of the print feature, which also allows printing copies in duplex, and also worked as promised in my tests.Physical setup is both standard and straightforward. The MFC-J1800DW weighs 18.3 pounds and measures 6.8 by 15.7 by 13.5 inches (HWD) with the output tray closed, making it small enough to share a desk with comfortably. Setup consists basically of inserting the four ink cartridges—one each for cyan, yellow, magenta, and black—loading paper, running the mostly automated alignment routine, then downloading and installing the driver and other software. The last step in particular takes a while (the total setup time was over an hour), but requires little effort. Connection options include Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and USB, which I used for testing.Paper handling for printing is limited to a 150-sheet paper tray, but includes support for up to legal-size paper and automatic duplexing (two-sided printing). The lack of a second paper source, even in the form of a single-sheet bypass tray, can be a problem if you need to switch paper type or size frequently. But if the only sizes you use are letter and half-letter, the cutter will take care of that. Note also that the capacity is suitable for only light-to-moderate-duty printing even by home and home office standards. Brother pegs the maximum recommended duty cycle at 1,000 pages, but if you want to keep paper refills down to roughly once a week, the 150-sheet capacity translates to 600 sheets per month.
(Credit: Brother)
For scanning, the MFC-J1800DW offers a letter-size flatbed and a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which can scan at up to legal size, but is limited to single-sided scanning. If you want to scan, copy, or fax both sides of a two-sided document, you have to place each side of each page on the flatbed, one at a time.Running cost is hard to peg down. If you buy ink as needed in the most cost-efficient cartridges, the cost per page comes out to 5.5 cents per standard monochrome page and 14.9 cents per standard color page. However, if you subscribe to the Refresh EZ Print plan, the cost will depend on which of the five tiers you choose, with savings that Brother says are up to 50%. For any tier, the costs are the same for any page, mono or color, and for any amount of ink per page, so you’ll generally save the most using the plan if you print a lot of full-page color graphics and photos. But keep in mind that you will pay the full subscription price each month, even if you don’t print a single page that month. (For more details, check out Brother’s site and our overview of tank printers and ink plans.)Testing the MFC-J1800DW: Solid Performance, Spiffy Output QualityFor performance, I compared the MFC-J1800DW with three tank printers: the MFC-J4335DW, the Canon Maxify GX2020, and the Canon Pixma G4270. Among them, the MFC-4335DW costs less to buy than the MFC-J1800DW, while both Canon printers cost more. However, all offer a lower running cost.On our business applications suite, the two Brother printers delivered essentially identical performance for simplex (one-sided) printing, tying or differing by just one second on all but one file. Where there was a difference, however, the MFC-J4335DW was consistently the fastest, and for the Word text file it was 3 seconds faster. That’s enough to count as slightly faster, but not by enough to matter except possibly on text documents longer than about 30 pages.
Both were significantly faster than either Canon printer for first page out (FPO) time, pages 2 to 12 of the Word text file, and each of the other files in the business applications suite. Between the two Canon printers, the GX2020 was significantly faster on all but one file, putting it in a solid third place overall.
Relative performance was different for duplex printing for the Word file. The MFC-J4335DW was in a convincing first place at 16 seconds for the first sheet (pages 1 and 2) and 10ppm for the full file. The GX2020 was in second place, at 21 seconds for the first sheet and 8ppm for the full file, and the MFC-J1800DW trailed, at 28 seconds and 5ppm. (The G4270 supports manual duplexing only, so we didn’t test its duplex speed.)
For photo printing, the MFC-J1800DW averaged 40 seconds for 4-by-6-inch photos.Text quality was good for an inkjet, but a touch below top tier. All the fonts in our tests that you’d likely use in a business document were readable at 4 points, but lacked the crisp edges typical of lasers and the best inkjets. A loupe revealed a slight raggedness formed from individual dots even at 12 points. The two fonts with heavy strokes tended to fill in white space between characters and in loops, so neither was well formed at any size. However, the one that’s easier to render well was easily readable at 8 points and the other was easily readable at 12 points.For graphics on plain paper using default settings, colors tended more toward pastel than vibrant and well saturated, but were generally more than acceptable for most purposes. I saw some banding in solid fills in full-page graphics, but in most cases it was subtle enough that I had to look carefully to see it. Gradients were nicely shaded, and thin lines on a black background held up well. Photos on Brother’s BP71G glossy photo paper were solidly drugstore-level quality.
(Credit: Brother)
On our water-resistance tests, black ink smudged only slightly on plain paper, while color ink didn’t smudge, but dried to show water stains. On photo paper, I didn’t see any smudging or water stains after drying for black or color ink, and I didn’t see any smudging when using a highlighter with text on plain paper.Verdict: It Makes the CutIf you don’t need the MFC-J1800DW’s cutting feature, be sure to take a look at the other printers mentioned here. The MFC-J4335DW costs a little less and has a lower running cost, while delivering better speed for duplex printing and adding a single-sheet bypass tray, all features that help it keep its spot as our Editors’ Choice winner for the category. Both Canon printers cost more than the MFC-J1800DW, but have a lower running cost than even the MFC-J4335DW, making either one potentially cheaper in the long run if you print enough pages. Between them, the G4270 is less expensive to buy, but is also the slowest of the printers mentioned here and has the least-capable paper handling. Meanwhile, the GX2020 offers the largest paper capacity in the group.That said, if you can make good use of the cutting feature, the MFC-J1800DW is the obvious choice as the only printer we know of that offers it. It also delivers good-looking output, including after shrinking the page image to fit on a half page when using the resize and cut option, and it essentially matches the MFC-J4335DW for performance and paper capacity, at least for simplex printing. In short, if you need its (so far) unique fifth function, the MFC-J1800DW makes the cut.
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