Brother MFC-J995DW Inkjet Printer (Open Box)

After my old Canon inkjet printer broke (loudly and dramatically in the middle of printing a picture) I needed to replace it quickly. I did not have time for a lot of research. After looking over the offerings from HP, Canon and Epson - all with larger percentages of 1 and 2 star ratings, I decided to widen my search. I have a Brother FAX machine that has worked reliably so I researched their inkjet offerings. The lower star ratings were there - but fewer than other brands and I was intrigued by the huge ink cartridges. My Canon had tiny (and expensive) cartridges - and, to add insult to injury, it INSISTED upon cleaning the print heads any time I turned on the printer (wasting ink and delaying my access to the unit by 30-45 seconds) even if all I was doing was scanning. To be fair, the Brother does that too, but since it has a sleep mode it is not necessary to turn it off - and it does NOT clean the heads when being awakened from sleep mode. Being in a hurry I, picked a printer that seemed to have good specs for a reasonable price. I wanted good photo printing, scanning and copying. The J995DW seemed to be a decent choice. Unpacking was very easy - just a few strips of tape to remove - no packing material hidden inside the unit! I connected the printer to my computer with a USB cable and turned it on. It went through a test and did 7 minutes worth of print head alignment/cleaning (or something) and it was ready to print a test page. First problem! The test page printed 4 blocks of dashes (1 for each ink color) - but there was no yellow! I selected the option to clean the print heads again - still no yellow. One more time and again no yellow. I decided to ignore that and do a color copy. The copy printed and there was yellow on the copy. I went back to the test pages and, with a flashlight and holding the paper at just the right angle I could see what appeared to be very faint yellow dashes where they were supposed to be. Turning my attention to my computer I wanted to install the printer software but to my surprise and pleasure the printer was showing up in my printer list and was fully working and accessible from my computer. Similarly, the scanner was also appearing in the appropriate programs! There was NOTHING I needed to do to “install” the printer. Fastest printer installation ever! I unplugged the USB cable and connected an Ethernet cable to the printer. No problem, the printer was now showing up as a network device (though the USB connection was also there as well and could not be deleted). I could probably reconnect the USB cable, delete tha printer and disconnect the cable - but not worth the effort. My original copy output (where I saw there was yellow) was awful. Reds were a dull orange, greens were also dull and white was a light grey. Since photo printing was important to me, I tried printing a photo via my computer (onto plain paper - not photo paper) and it looked pretty good. I discovered that choosing the right paper selections in the printer options (either on my computer or via the touch screen panel on the printer) made a big difference in output quality. Selecting “inkjet paper” instead of “plain paper” automatically ups the print quality to “best”. It also slows down the print speed. When doing a manual copy, selecting “plain” paper (and Normal quality) gets you a fast scan and print that looked decent. Selecting “inkjet paper” gets you a very slow (but I assume higher resolution) scan and slower printing. The quick setup guide leaves much to be desired. But I eventually figured everything out. The manual is OK (not great) and fortunately I have not needed customer service (so far). After only a few days of use, I am happy with my selection of this product. I considered giving the unit only 4 stars because of the initial frustrations with setup. But decided that was partly my fault so I am giving the full 5 stars. I will revisit this review in a month or two (if needed) to supply more info or report more issues.