Brother MFC

The Brother MFC-J5340DW is fast, capable, offers reasonable running costs, and it can be easily controlled and managed from your phone. It's a big unit, so make sure you have the room, and a full set of XL cartridges, while representing good value for money, isn't cheap.

$249.99

Home office A4 all-in-one printers are the most common type you’ll find for sale, but what do you do when you need something that can print on A3 paper as well?

The Brother MFC-J5340DW is the entry-level model of Brother's MFC-J5 range of A4/A3 colour inkjet all-in-ones for 2022, and just might be the one you’re after.

It's the follow-up to the MFC-J55330W that we reviewed back in 2017.

Besides A4 and A3 printing, the MFC-J5340DW is a home office multitasker, offering many of the features you’d expect to see on an all-in-one inkjet – there's an scanner and copier, auto duplexing (automatic double-sided printing), and an ADF (automatic document feeder).

A colour touchscreen control panel means it's easy to operate and run from your desk, and if you’re away, you can remotely queue print jobs from your phone via the Brother Mobile apps.

There's built-in Wi-Fi and Apple AirPrint compatibility, so Mac, iPhone and iPad owners can get set up with relatively little fuss. For those who prefer a reliable wired network connection, there's also an Ethernet port. A USB 2.0 port sits on the front of the MFC-J5340DW, so you’ve got the option to print straight from flash drives.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The Brother MFC-J5340DW looks like a mini version of your typical office photocopier. That's to say it's fairly boxy, but also utilitarian-looking with its no-nonsense straight lines and curved corners. The only thing that's missing is a little tray for paper clips.

It's easy to figure out where most of the key features and functions are. The Type-A USB port, paper tray, and the handle for the ink cartridge cradle are all clearly marked out on the front, and it's easy to see where you need to grip and lift the scanner cover on the sides.

What's less obvious is where the Ethernet and Type-B USB ports are – that's because they’re hidden underneath the scanner bed.

Lift this up and you’ll see that the networking ports have been tucked away inside, with a cable gutter, which terminates at the top right corner of the scanner bed. This might influence where you set this up in your home office, and/or force you to invest in some longer cables.

It is a nice touch, though, as it means those cables don't stick out of the back, requiring even more depth on your desk, and also protects the connectors.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The copier and scanner beds are a little on the heavy side, but slow-close arms mean that they’re easy to operate. And speaking of heavy, the MFC-J5340DW itself weights a not inconsiderable 17kg.

That's quite cumbersome, but considering all of the internal components and the big 250-sheet paper tray, crammed into a 305 x 530 x 398mm cuboid, it's perhaps not surprising that it weighs more than your typical all-in-one, such as the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 and the HP Envy Inspire 7220e, both of which weigh less than 7kg.

Having said that, the DCP-L3510cdw weighs an even heftier 21kg, so this is not the heaviest printer Brother's ever released.

It's worth pointing out that the scanner is A4 size, not A3. There is an automatic document feeder, which holds up to 50 sheets of A4 and allows rapid scanning (and copying) of long documents.

Around the back there's a manual-feed slot which lets you insert single sheets, such as an envelope or other ‘special media’ you want to print on occasionally without removing all the paper from the main tray first.

The paper tray itself can hold up to 250 sheets of A4 or A3. It's not designed to be able to hold two different paper sizes at the same time, and if you load A3 paper, you’ll need to remove the tray and extend it. This makes it poke an extra 20cm (8in) out from the body of the printer. That's not the end of the world, but something to consider if desk space is a factor.

If you need to be able to quickly switch between printing on A4 and A3 paper, then the larger (and, at around £400, more expensive) MFC-J5955DW might be better suited to you, as this features two trays.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Setting up and operating the MFC-J5340DW is made easy thanks to the presence of a touchscreen control panel, and an intelligently laid out user interface.

The interface is very easy to navigate – whichever of the three home screens you’re on, shortcuts to the Wi-Fi menu, ink levels, and general settings menu will always be pinned to the bottom of the screen. You can even create your own shortcuts, and should you ever get lost, there are Back, Home, and Cancel soft keys built in.

The setup process takes about ten minutes, and at first sees you removing the ink container panel, clipping in the cartridges, and dropping in a single sheet of A4 in landscape in the manual feed slot.

Once the nozzle and print alignment tests are completed, you then place the printout on the scanner glass, and the MFC-J5340DW will run a quick test to make sure the scanner's working correctly. After that, you’re then free to connect the printer to your home network.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Even if you’re connecting the MFC-J5340DW to your router via Ethernet, you’ll still probably want to connect to your home network via Wi-Fi as well, to allow for printing via the Brother Mobile apps. This is a simple case of finding your home network's SSID from the list and entering your password.

You’ll then be prompted to enter the default admin password of the MFC-J5340DW, which you can find printed on the back – you’ll be asked to change this as soon as possible. This is a good thing, as it makes your printer inherently more secure, especially if you pick a nice, strong password. With that out of the way, the MFC-J5340DW is then ready to receive printing instructions from your devices.

As the printer supports Apple AirPrint, any MacOS devices automatically recognise the MFC-J5340DW when using the same Wi-Fi network – head to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, and it should be there. Windows users can download the drivers from Brother's website.

You can also connect directly to the MFC-J5340DW with a Type A to Type B USB cable.

Likewise, the Brother Mobile (iOS, Android) apps should instantly connect to the MFC-J5340DW if they’re on the same Wi-Fi network, if not, you can easily search for and add devices from within the app.

The apps let you print documents and images stored locally on your phone or from cloud-based drives using the ‘Document Print’ and ‘Photo Print’ tools. Supported cloud storage options include Box, Dropbox, Evernote, as well as Microsoft OneNote and OneDrive, and Google Drive.

From your phone you can also check ink levels and order more cartridges if you need to, run maintenance cycles.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The MFC-J5340DW prints text and images quickly and results on Normal mode are good, but if you really want to impress, kick the quality up a notch – just keep an eye on your ink levels.

Inkjets are typically slower at printing than lasers, but the MFC-J5340DW managed 20 sheets of plain text on A4 in just under 42 seconds (41.86s), equivalent to 28.66 pages per minute (ppm). That's seriously impressive: the kind of performance you’d traditionally associate with a laser printer.

Text with colour graphics was naturally a bit slower, but not by much, with my 20-page test file emerging after 49.84s (equivalent to 24.07ppm).

Printing 20 pages of plain text on A3 took longer, as you’d expect, at 49.84s (or 24.07ppm), but 20 A3 pages of text and colour images was slower going, taking 1 minute 34.58 seconds (or 12.68ppm).

As for duplex A4 printing, it took just under a minute – 52.50 seconds (or 22.85 ppm) – for the 20 page plain text file to be printed on 10 sheets of A4, and just over – 1 minute 2.23 seconds (or 19.92 ppm).

Considering the quality of the output – well-defined serifs, barely any bleed, sheets virtually dry as they emerge – that's excellent going, good news if you need to print of lots of documents or letters in a hurry. As with the HP Envy Inspire 7220e, there was a slight grainy finish to lighter colours on the pie charts (particularly the blues) on Normal quality, but it's not horribly noticeable.

Photos printed on glossy 10 x 15cm (4 x 6in) photo paper were done in around 55 to 55 seconds, which is standard for inkjet printers.

Quality is also good – darker areas of photos are less exaggerated than on other prints, and so while this might mean your holiday snaps look a little lighter, a little less rich by comparison, more details is visible, on account of dark areas not looking like pools of inky blackness. Colours looked a lot more natural here than they did on the HP Envy Inspire 7200e, which had a tendency to exaggerate blues a bit.

The 1200 x 2400 dpi A4 scanner glass is no slouch either, taking roughly 5 seconds to scan A4 pages (text, images, and a combination thereof) at 300dpi, and 15-20 seconds to scan the same at 600dpi.

The 600 x 600 copier took around 1 minute 3.22 seconds (18.98 ppm) to scan and print a single copy of a 20 page text. Duplex copying is supported as well, albeit from the scanner glass – printing out 20 copies of double-sided plain text took 1 minute 52.78 seconds (10.64 ppm).

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The MFC-J5340DW uses four ink cartridges – black, cyan, magenta, and yellow – which come in two types, the standard-sized LC422 cartridge and the bigger LC422XL variety.

While this suggests higher overheads compared to inkjets printer which take just two cartridges instead of four, that's not the case. Having separate tanks for each colour means if you run out of cyan ink first, but you still have plenty of magenta and yellow, you don't have to replace an entire tri-colour cartridge. It's less wasteful.

As for prices, a standard-capacity LC422 Black cartridge costs £22.79, while the standard colour LC422's cost £16.79 each. In the US, those cartridges are called LC402 and are $24.99 each.

These standard-capacity cartridges have enough ink for around 550 pages, which means that the cost per page works out at roughly 4¢/4p and 10¢/9p, for black and colour pages respectively.

The high-capacity cartridges are naturally more expensive, but work out to be better value for money.

A black LC422XL will set you back £41.99 (LC402XL in the US, at $55.49), but will print 3000 sheets, while all of the colour LC422XL's cost £29.99 each (LC402XL, $35.49), and should give you enough for 1500 prints.

Black-and-white prints work out at around 1¢/1p per page, which is fantastic value for money. Colour pages cost more, of course, as you need three colour cartridges to print those 1500 pages in colour. It works out at 7¢/6p per page (with the usual 5% coverage – it is considerably more for full-colour images).

What's less fantastic is the prospect of forking out for a full set of cartridges – a full set of standard LC422/LC402's comes to £73.16/US$84.96 altogether, while four LC422XL/LC402XL's comes to £131.96/$161.96, which is almost half the RRP of the printer itself. However, that's the cost if you buy all four separately. Buy them together from Brother and you do save: four standard-sized LC422's are £63.59, and four LC422XL's £118.79.

In the US, two standard black LC402 cartridges are US$44.99, and three colour LC402XL's are US$95.99

The MFC-J5340DW isn't currently available for Brother's EcoPro subscription plans, so there's no option to pay a fixed monthly cost for ink.

Cheaper compatible cartridges from third-party manufacturers will no doubt be available soon, but a quick search revealed nothing at the time of review.

The Brother MFC-J5340DW is available to buy now, and costs $249.99 on Brother's website. For those in the UK, it's £274.80 direct from Brother. There's a listing for the printer on Brother's Australian site, but no RRP at the time of writing.

Other places in the UK that sell the MFC-J5340DW include Amazon (£226.80), Cartridge People (£224.90), Printerbase (£238.76), Scan (£244.99), and Viking Direct (£226.80).

It's hard to find the MFC-J5340DW in the US outside of Brother, but Connection was charging $296.91 – more than Brother. Since it had no stock at the time of review, your best bet is to buy directly from Brother.

Likewise, there are presently no vendors in Australia stocking the MFC-J5340DW, so contact Brother directly if you’d like to buy one.

The Brother MFC-J5340DW is a great home office printer which produces good-quality results quickly and is economical to run. The main drawback is the high up-front cost of the ink cartridges.