Brother MFC6710DW A3 Colour Inkjet Multifunction Printer

I've seen a few varying opinions of this range of printers on Amazon and elsewhere and Brother printers generally get a very mixed reviews. Having taken the plunge and bought one I thought I'd help others who were considering the same decision. I upgraded to this from my trusty but now slightly cranky HP C6180 which has worked fairly well for the last 4 years, using the printer to produce course materials for my training business. I always found the HP colours to be very realistic and whenever I printed photos they were of high quality.

Eventually the C6180 succumbed to the dreaded 'green tint' bug which I could not cure through software re-setting, forcing me to bite the bullet and buy new. I considered the HP 7500A as this has many of the feature I wanted but no duplex. The duplex printing on the C6180 had always been rather temperamental and wasted a lot of time and paper when it went wrong, so I was attracted to the Brother's built in duplexer and the fact that it could handle both A4 and A3.

I didn't buy this from on Amazon as I found it much cheaper elsewhere. It came with all the correct software and leads - bar a USB or network cable to connect to my wireless modem - though I had tons of the later left over from other devices so this wasn't a problem to me. I was also pleased to see it gave me some A3 paper samples so I could try printing at that size - a nice touch. It took about 30 mins to set up fully and wirelessly, and if you have done this before with another printer you'll find this no harder or no easier than that. I use a mac, and once I'd installed the software and drivers from the disc I was prompted to download updates, which I did with ease.

The software provided does a perfectly good job in helping you to scan, fax, copy and print, and offers some creative opportunities for those of you that wish to design your own materials. Again, I didn't think the software was quite as good as that that came with my HP - but I find the design options in Office 2011 Mac to be more than enough for my needs so I don't really have any use for the Brother suite other than to carry out the printing functions I need with the minimum of hassle.

Having used this for a few days now, I would make the following observations. The printer is FAST - much quicker than my old HP, and the double trays mean I can load an entire ream of A4 (half in each) - a big time saver, though you still need to keep an eye on a large print run to make sure things don't get clogged up on the output end. Double sided printing is also fast - and I'm delighted to say - pain free. I have had no issues with jammed paper or misprinting that plagued my old printer. This is proving to be a real time saver. The compromise that I think has been made with this machine is in the image quality, though while more than good enough for my training materials is not quite as sharp or natural when printing photographic images as my HP was - hence the 4 start rating. If this is less of an issue to you, and you want a competent very competitively priced workhorse- this is likely to tick all of your boxes. It does make some rather funky noises when printing and it's not a particularly quiet machine - but so far, for what I am using it for I am very happy with it. If your needs are similar to mine, I would say you can buy it with confidence.

Brother offer one year on site warranty, also useful if like me you run a small business. The inks that came with the printer are 65% filled (I think HP routinely supply half filled ink with their new printers) and I was able to buy a set of compatible high capacity inks, promising 2400 black and 1200 colour A4 pages for a third of the price of the originals. I think this machine will prove to be very cost effective and if you can live with a few foibles and good but not spectacular photo print quality you'll probably be very glad you bought one.

After reading a lot of reviews on brothers printers some bad some good i decided to purchase one of their newer printers. I talked to their advisors on their website, and decided to get the mfc j6710dw. it does everything i want it to plus more. First off this thing is a beast. its very latge piece of kit but fits nicely on table top.
The scanner is fairly good but scanning something glossy like one of your prints or some packaging it brings up a lot of lines on the scan. When i scanned a black and white document the blacks came out a slight grey colour.
After messing around with the printer getting to terms with print trays etc i started printing some of my work. the print quality is quite good on glossy paper but aweful on matte. the problem is though on the glossy my print is plagued with lines running across the print all the way up it. I cleaned the print head several times using up quite a lot of the intial ink cartridges that came with the printer and this did not fix the problem.

Some times the printer gets confused with it self when trying to print an image, it wanted to use tray 2 rather than 1 where my a3 paper was. also tray 2 can only be set to normal paper with all the options limited to the first tray.

Over all im fairly dissapointed with the product. if you dont mind fighting with technology and tinkering with it then this would proberbly be a good purchase but for an artist who does not have time for this and wants to produce good quality prints and scans off the mark id think about looking else where.

I've had this A3 MFD for over a year and used it for printing, copying and occasional scanning.
Having A3 capability has been very handy.
BEWARE - it is heavy on ink if switched on/off regularly as it cleans the print head each ON time.
This can lead to ink build up causing ink splodges on a paper corner (LHS) and the ink well needing cleaning.
Print quality is ok but nothing special in my experience.
Has a few quirks. Powers up into "Turning Off" state! and has to be reset.
Also had a few paper jam issues, but never quite found cause.
Does not support Duplex Copy in all configs - I don't understand why not as it should be possible technically.
Build is a bit weak. Paper trays and tray shelves are weak and could be easily damaged.
Auto Feeder is quite good and the scanner good.
Once the Power Off button is pressed, it takes ages to switch off - like minutes! I usually just kill the power since it does nothing whilst it's waiting.