Brother DCP-J572DW Review: Great with a high costs!
The Brother DCP-J572DW multifunction printer should be a real all-rounder for the office. The test revealed: The anything but cheap device has many weaknesses!
Brother DCP-J572DW Review
The Brother DCP-J572DW is not a bargain. In contrast to the Epson Expression Photo XP-8600, however, in the test it was very economical with the expensive ink, its printing costs were low.
The print quality, on the other hand, was not entirely convincing; a slight green cast was a problem in photos. He was also really slow when it came to photo printing.
At the time of testing, the Brother DCP-J572DW sold for an average of 170 euros. That’s a confident price for a fax-less machine. We test showed: multi-function devices from counterparties are cheaper, offer more equipment, have lower printing costs and better print quality.
Brother DCP-J572DW: Easy setup
The Brother DCP-J572DW cuts a slim figure after unpacking: Its dimensions of 40x15x47 centimeters are comparatively compact, but the case looks a bit old-fashioned.
But how easy is commissioning? It used to be a test of patience, but with the Brother DCP-J572DW there were no problems: unpack, remove the transport locks, insert the cartridges, connect the PC to the printer, done.
The connection works either via USB cable or wirelessly via WLAN, but it does not have Bluetooth for quick printouts from smartphone or tablet on board.
The menu of the Brother DCP-J572DW on the tiny display looks like something out of a museum. In addition, the Japanese manufacturer did not always fully translate the menu items into Europe.
Brother DCP-J572DW Scanning: Easy to use
A shame: Despite the comparatively high selling price, the Brother DCP-J572DW does not have an automatic document feeder for convenient scanning of documents with multiple pages.
The menu on the small display (no touchscreen) looks dusty and like from a museum. The scan process can be started on the device, but the transfer of the data to the PC did not work in the test.
The Brother DCP-J572DW driver shows a progress bar, but the scanned document never landed on the PC. If the testers started the scanning process from the computer, it worked flawlessly and even with text recognition on request, which proved to be really good in the test. The Brother DCP-J572DW prints photos from SD cards without going through the PC.
Copy with the correct amount of paper
Also good: For copying, users of the Brother DCP-J572DW have to press the black or color button as required to duplicate documents or photos.
But then a lot of patience is required: A DIN A4 photo is only ejected after just under three minutes; the competition managed to do this in around a minute in the test.
Green cast included
Much more important: top print quality. After all, the unforgettable holiday picture with a yellow beach, green palm trees and blue sea should lie true to the original in the paper ejection and not a blurred photo with yellow mud and gray soup.
Or with a slight green cast, as the Brother DCP-J572DW fabricated in the test. All in all, the print quality of the device was at best satisfactory.
Photo print
- color fidelity: high (63.73%)
- grayscale fidelity: very high (96.80%)
- contrast ratio: somewhat low (0.73)
- detail: somewhat low
Graphic print Color
- fidelity: low (47.57%)
- Gray scale fidelity: very high (95.10%)
- Contrast range: very low (0.56)
- Detail accuracy: very low
Text print / photo print (visual test)
- good / slight green cast
Low cost
After all: The Brother DCP-J572DW was very economical with the expensive ink (prices black / color set: 21 euros / 46 euros):
- Text on A4 plain paper (cost per page) / yield with one cartridge: very cheap (2.29 cents) / 916 pages
- Graphics on A4 normal paper (cost per page) / yield with set of color ink: inexpensive (15.24 cents) / 305 pages
- Photo on 10×15 centimeter photo paper (costs per page) / range with set of color ink: inexpensive (27.02 cents) / 172 photos
Photo printing very slowly
A shame: The Brother DCP-J572DW dawdled when copying and printing photos, but it was really fast when printing black texts and colored graphics.
- Photos 18×24 centimeters (cm) / 10×15 cm / 3 photos 10×15 cm / 10×15 cm from stand-by: too slow (7:08 / 3:04 / 9:32 / 3:15)
- Graphic A4 page / 5 A4 pages / 1 A4 page from standby: fast (2:48 / 5:14 / 2:51)
- 1 A4 text page / 6 A4 text pages / 1 A4 text page from stand-by: fast (0:04 / 0:27 / 0:12)
- Copy time of an A4 text page / A4 photo page (min: sec): slow (0:14 / 2:46)
In the current comparison test of five multifunctional devices in the price range around 150 euros, the Brother DCP-J572DW (bottom right) came in last.
Brother DCP-J572DW: Test result
The Brother DCP-J572DW is not a bargain. In contrast to rivals like the Epson Expression Photo XP-8600, however, it was very economical with the expensive ink in the test and its printing costs were low.
The print quality, on the other hand, was not entirely convincing; a slight green cast was annoying in photos. He was also really slow when it came to photo printing
A much better and even cheaper alternative is the Canon Pixma TS8250, currently the best multifunction printer in the price range around 150 euros.
Brother DCP-J572DW Pros:
- Good text printing
- Low printing costs
- Printing from memory card possible
Brother DCP-J572DW Cons:
- Slight green cast and very slow when printing photos
- Very loud
- Touchscreen, bluetooth and fax are missing