The Brother DCP-J1140DW offers excellent performance, but sometimes requires specific settings on Windows to get the most out of it. A multifunctional printer has a clear job: print, scan, and copy. The less you have to fiddle with the settings, the better. The Brother DCP-J1140DW largely does this. But sometimes you have to delve into the options to obtain better print quality. The problem isn’t too serious, however, we would have preferred a more standalone printer that handles everything on its own. You can read exactly what we mean by that in this review.
The Brother DCP-J1140DW is an ideal printer for the home office due to its small footprint. The device takes up virtually no space on your desk or in the closet. The sober, black design and the absence of buttons (almost everything is done via the touch screen) make it a neutral printer. Beautiful printers hardly exist: if you want to install a designer piece in your living room, you often cannot find one. Its small footprint makes it an A4 printer. The lack of a top feeder to copy or scan multiple documents simultaneously ensures a flat finish. If you often have to scan or copy several sheets, take a better look at the Brother DCP-J1140DW. Admittedly, it is much less attractive because of its many buttons on the front, but you can’t have everything in the budget range.
Flexible Use
Back to the Brother DCP-J1140DW. Despite the competitive price, you get a lot in return, including wireless connectivity and mobile printing via a Brother app on iOS or Android. Once installed, the application will automatically search for printers on the network. You can then print documents, photos, web pages, emails, and cloud files. Within the app, you can also change a host of settings such as paper size, number of copies, duplex, color, and quality. Scans can be sent directly to your phone via the app. Finally, you can check the ink volume. Simple and clear, that’s all a printer app should be.
Installation on Windows 10 (we didn’t test macOS) goes smoothly by adding the printer to the device list. You can download the entire Brother software suite if you wish. Other than a lot of bloatware, we don’t exactly notice a benefit between installing the standard Windows driver and the software suite. The paper tray can hold 150 sheets and just above you can slide a small flap to collect the printed paper. This initially seems insufficient, but in our test, the media can hold 40 pages without throwing them on the floor. The box contains standard ink cartridges, good for 200 black and white prints and 200 color prints.
Variable Result
We have no comment on print speed. The Brother DCP-J1140DW wakes quickly from sleep mode and after 11 seconds your paper is ready. When the printer is active, the paper unwinds after just 6 seconds. Even extensive printing from our test suite is handled quickly by the printer: printing 10 pages from Microsoft Word takes 46 seconds, and a 17-page PDF file is ready in 69 seconds. The DCP-J1140DW is an entry-level all-in-one printer model produced by Brother Industries, Ltd. It is designed for home or small office use and offers a range of features, including printing, scanning, and copying capabilities.
However, this quick result has a major drawback: the prints are of insufficient quality and have frequent streaks in the text, where the printer did not print anything. It’s only when we dive into the settings and adjust the print quality to “Best” or 600dpi that we get nice quality prints. Only downside: each print takes on average three times longer. Apparently, Brother made a setting error here. Even with the Brother software suite installed, we continue to experience the issue. Complete cleaning of the printer does not change the result. Very annoying: not all print jobs have the problem. Sometimes it comes out flawless. However, we recommend leaving the setting at “Best” by default. Note: When you print something from the Windows Photos app, the highest quality setting is always chosen automatically.
Brother DCP-J1140DW Black and White and Color
The Brother DCP-J1140DW can be classified as a printer with a manual because of the comment above. Once you know them, any print job is good. The black and white prints are of excellent quality. A font size of 5 points is perfectly readable, from 8 points it also looks sharply demarcated. This printer prints text without any problem. With color printing, you notice that is clearly not the focus of this printer. Especially the yellow color looks much too ocher and the red is also very pale. If you want photo prints, it’s best to use an online photo service. This result will be much better. For PowerPoint documents, the performance narrowly passed, and we rank. If you want to impress your customers or other external parties, you should invest in a more expensive model.
The consumption during a print job is on average 15 watts. Sleep mode drops to 2.8 watts, while deep sleep mode draws just 0.6 watts. This makes the Brother DCP-J1140DW better than competing printer brands. A competitively priced printer usually means expensive ink, here’s how the printer market works. As far as we’re concerned, it’s always better to have XL ink when it comes to black ink. The difference in price per page is huge, while the volume you can print with is slightly more than double. The price per page of XL ink is competitive compared to other manufacturers in this price range. For color prints, the situation is different. XL ink isn’t that much cheaper here and the color prints aren’t good enough either. Occasional use is fine, then the classic ink cartridge will suffice.
