Brother MFC-J491DW

Got me through my whole uni degree – I never write reviews but i felt compelled to because I love my little printer. I think it is really great, and does everything I need. I selected it due to being a bit higher in price, but lower in ink cost long term!!! I regularly do the maintenance clean function on it to ensure the printing is always clear with no streaks, and it's never jammed printing one sided. It will jam if you print double sided but I don't do that anyway. If you are using it for uni or school or around 40 pages per day, it is very reliable, sturdy and good value. I've never had any technical issues, and can always grab ink online for cheep or order genuine ink into office works for a bit more money. I can see another review says it doesn't print when low on colour ink (when you want black and white) which is true, but ink is like $13 AUD online so it doesn't bother me since I got a colour printer. I suppose if that bothers you, buy a black and white only printer. It also connects to your device using wifi so you don't need cables and stuff, I have one anyway tho because I lived on uni accomodation where I couldn't link up the printer to wifi. Used to use the scan function which I will admit is pretty slow, but with smart phone technology I scan things on my device now so don't really have a need for it anyway. Anyway not a bad printer for basic needs, I hope this helps someone!

Machine completely disabled if even one cartridge needs replacing – OK we all know that printer manufacturers get their income from sales of ink, not hardware. I accept that. However when my printer stops working just because one of the cartridges needs replacing then that is a total con. I want to print in black and white; I have plenty of black ink but my cyan is running low. Now I find that I cannot even use the scanner function. I can't scan because my cyan ink is low - come on Brother, that is plainly duplicitous. I'm sure this applies to other Brother printers but I don't know what other manufacturers do.