I switched to the Brother MFC-T780DW printer for 30 days — it’s one of the best INKvestments you can make

The Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW ($340) is an ink-jet all-in-one that offers a range of home and small office features, and solid performance. It offers copying and scanning, has buttons for standalone operation, and offers an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning and copying multipage documents. It does not have fax capability.

The MFC-780DW has four ink tanks for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. This all-in-one comes with two bottles of black ink, each rated to last 7,500 pages. The color inks are rated to last 5,000 pages — easily one of the best printers I've tested.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Design

The control panel hinges upward roughly 45 degrees and has dedicated buttons for color and black-and-white copying. The color LCD is small, at just 1.8 inches. It is not a touch screen. You use the 4-way buttons to navigate the LCD menus.

The MFC-780DW is designed for small office use. Paper handling is modest. The ADF accommodates up to 20 sheets, and the output tray up to 50 sheets. The input tray can hold up to 150 pages.

The ADF atop the all-in-one is lightweight. Its hinges do not offer resistance to hold up the lid, so you will need clearance to lift it 90 degrees in order to use both hands to place documents on the scanner glass.

Where original documents land after being scanned, there is a flip-up catch to prevent the pages from getting pushed over the edge. A specialty media tray sits at the back of the unit; you fold down a door to reveal the tray.

It can accommodate only one sheet at a time, up to 79-pound thickness, versus the 58-pound paper weight maximum for the main 150-sheet input tray that sits below the 50-sheet output tray.

The MFC-T780DW offers scan-to-email, as well as file-sharing options for scans sent to a PC: file, email, image, OCR, and all the major cloud services.

The T780DW is of modest size and weight, measuring 15.4 x 13.5 x 7.2 inches. It weighs 17.2 pounds.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Print Speed

The T780DW performed very well in our tests. On only one test was it slower than the average of our six most recently reviewed ink tank models (hereafter referred to as the category average). And, even on that test, it was barely slower than the average. On four of our tests, it was significantly faster than the category average.

This Brother printed text documents at a rapid 12.4 ppm, taking just 24.2 seconds to print a five-page document. This was the fastest time of our most recently reviewed ink tank models. The category average is 9.6 ppm. By comparison, the Canon G3290 printed text documents at 9.2 ppm, and the HP Smart Tank 706 did so at 8.6 ppm.

Taking 2 minutes and 17 seconds to print our document of mixed text and color graphics, the T780DW printed at a roughly average speed of 2.6 ppm. The HP Smart Tank 706 was moderately quicker, printing the same document at 3.1 ppm. The Canon G3290 printed more slowly, at 2.2 ppm.

Keeping true to its office worthiness, this Brother all-in-one printed two-sided text documents quickly. It printed a 10-page text document onto five double-sided sheets in 1 minute and 29 seconds, or 6.7 ppm. By comparison, the Canon G3290 bested the Brother, making duplex prints at 7.2 ppm. The HP Smart Tank 7602 made duplex text prints at a more modest 5 ppm

The T780DW made duplex prints of a color PDF at 2.4 ppm, taking 2 minutes and 31 seconds to complete the six-page print. By contrast, the HP Smart Tank 760 was quicker, at 2.8 ppm, and the Canon G3290 was slower, at 1.9 ppm.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Copy and Scan Speed

The MFC-T780DW copies quickly in color. It copied a color page in just 19.5 seconds, which was much faster than the average of 26.8 seconds for ink tank models. By comparison, the HP Smart Tank 760 copied a color page at the same speed as the Brother, while the Canon G3290 was slower, at 27.5 seconds.

The Brother MFC-T780DW also copied text pages at a respectable pace. It made a copy in 12.8 seconds, on average, which was slightly slower than the category average of 12.3 seconds. Both the HP 760 and Canon G3290 turned in similar times of 12.7 and 12.5 seconds, respectively.

Using its ADF, the MFC-T780DW made copies of multipage text documents at a good clip of 7.6 ppm. The HP SmartTank 760 was a little slower, at 7 ppm, while the Epson EcoTank ET-4760 lagged behind, at 4.5 ppm. (The Canon G3290 does not have a document feeder.)

Scanning speed was impressive, particularly in color. The MFC-T780DW made a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG format in just over 50 seconds—significantly faster than the category average of 1 minute and 20 seconds. By contrast, the Canon G3290 took 1 minute and 5 seconds to make the same scan. The HP 760 took 1 minute and 25 seconds.

The MFC-T780DW scanned black-and-white documents at 300 dpi at better than average speed. It scanned a page to PDF format in 12.5 seconds, which was one second faster than the category average. The HP 760 was slower, at 16.2 seconds, while the Canon G3290 was slower still, taking 21.8 seconds to capture the same scan.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Print Quality

The MFC-T780DW printed text that looked quite sharp, although it was a little on the light side and not as dark as laser-quality text. Graphics also looked attractive, with sharp details and smooth textures. Mid-tone transitions were gradual and not abrupt. Similarly, copy quality was high.

Glossy photo prints looked very attractive, which was a little of a surprise for an office-oriented all-in-one that doesn’t tout itself as being photo-centric.

Nonetheless, colors were well saturated, details looked sharp, and skin tones appeared natural. Dark shadows did, however, tend to flatten into a dark mass that lost the original photograph’s subtle details.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Ink/Toner Cost and Yield

It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever gripe about the cost of ink with the MFC-T780DW.

A bottle of black ink costs $20.99 and is rated to print 7,500 pages. This comes out to a cost of just 0.3 cent per text page. Plus, you get two bottles of black ink in the box with the printer.

A set of three color ink bottles (cyan, magenta and yellow) costs $32.99 (or, $12.29 individually). These are rated to last 5,000 pages. At this rated yield, printing a color page costs less than a penny—just 0.94 cent. (The MFC-T780DW is not eligible for the company’s Refresh EZ Print subscription plan.)

Brother does not offer any ink subscriptions on ink tank printers.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Setup and Startup Time

This is the only ink tank printer where I’ve gotten ink on my fingers. The bottle nozzles are not symmetrical so you need to make sure you line up the spout to the small opening atop the ink tank.

The printer comes with a basic printed setup guide. You can follow that, or use the QR code to set up the MFC-T870DW with your mobile device. Older iPhones will not work: The Brother Mobile Connect app requires iOS 17 or later, or Android 7.0 and up.

After removing a half dozen pieces of packaging tape and loading paper in the input drawer, I connected the power cord. Using the four-way control buttons, I entered the year, date and time using the four-way buttons; having to navigate to the LCD’s on-screen numbers was a little cumbersome.

Meanwhile, I downloaded the Brother Easy Setup app to my laptop. Setting up the printer on a home network requires that you enter your network administration name and password. This is followed by ink initialization and entering confirmation on the control panel that each ink tank is full. This was followed by a printhead alignment (printing and scanning an alignment sheet), nozzle check, and firmware update.

My first search for the printer from my laptop using WiFi Direct did not succeed. When I tried connecting a USB cable to complete setup, the LCD said “initial setup incomplete”. I could not understand why. This was followed by the LCD displaying a QR code; I was unable to navigate away from the QR code. (I did not use this setup because my iPhone is too old to run the Mobile Connect app).

I resorted to the WPS method, navigating to the wireless setup menu on the printer’s small LCD, using the four-way control buttons. Pressing the WPS on my wireless router put the T870DW on my network. However, after turning off my laptop’s wireless, the printer failed to reconnect over W-Fi when I turned it back on.

I had to go to the printer’s wireless setup menu to reestablish the connection. A few days later, I found that the printer had dropped off my network again and I had to repeat the wireless setup. My MacBook was displaying that the printer was idle and “out of ink”, which was clearly untrue. Hereafter, however, the T870DW remained reliably connected and on my network.

Although the Quick Setup Guide said nothing about the Brother iPrint & Scan software, I chose to download and install it. Doing so resumed the printer’s functioning on my network and my laptop could once again see the device.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Software

Brother’s iPrint & Scan software is basic, but it’s adequate for everyday print and scanning tasks from a Windows or Mac computer. For example, you can save workflows such as scanning at specified settings to a particular folder.

Scanning to the cloud is supported for OneNote, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, SharePoint Online, and corresponding business versions. You can print photos and PDF files from the application, while text files are expected to be printed from their native application.

One drawback, however, is that the software cannot scan automatically detect multiple photos on the scanner glass and save them as separate files. You will need to scan one at a time.

Placing multiple photos on the flatbed results in only one photo being offered by the software for saving. For Windows users, the workaround is to use the TWAIN driver and PaperPort software.

The mobile app for this model is Brother Mobile Connect. The previous mobile app, iPrint & Scan, is not compatible with the MFC-T780DW. Despite sharing the same name, this change in mobile app does not apply to the desktop software, which remains the current supported version.

The T780DW starts up quickly, offering its main menu in just 4 to 5 seconds. However, I couldn’t navigate the menus until about 18 seconds had passed. That’s still very quick. However, I ran into a frustrating anomaly: Even though I had reset the paper type to plain paper, upon restarting the printer, its paper type had reverted to “other glossy”, the setting I’d changed it from.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Bottom line

The MFC-T870DW has a lot to offer, with a couple compromises. It’s a solid performer that will accommodate most small office tasks. Outfitted with a capable ADF, duplexer, and dedicated buttons for copying, this Brother all-in-one will satisfy the needs of many offices.

The 20-sheet capacity of the ADF may be too small for some outfits, as may be the 150-sheet input tray and one-sheet-at-a-time specialty media slot.

The small color LCD isn’t flashy, like a big touchscreen would be. But this ink tank all-in-one isn’t about being glamorous. It’s a performer and a money saver, offering costs per page of just 0.3 cent and 0.94 cent per page, respectively.

The MFC-T780DW performed consistently well in every one of our speed tests, whether printing, copying or scanning. Two-sided printing was above average for text and roughly average for color pages. Image quality was high, even for glossy photo prints. If the specs and speeds meet your needs, this office-oriented all-in-one is unlikely to disappoint.