A3 paper is twice the size of A4 and A3 compatible printers are usually equally larger than their A4 competitors. Fully A3-compatible MFPs are huge, which is a big reason to consider Brother's MFC-J5340DW. An office-focused inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP), it's essentially a compact A3 printer, topped off with a regular A4 scanner.
This bottom-heavy combination has allowed Brother to significantly reduce the overall size of this MFP – it's much easier to live with than most A3-capable MFPs. Of course, the downside is that you can't scan, fax or copy an A3 original, although you can enlarge an A4 document onto A3 paper.
Other highlights of the MFC-J5340DW include a USB host port and a color touch screen, plus support for wired and wireless networks. Its 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) can handle A4, Legal and Letter sizes, although unfortunately it doesn't support two-sided scanning, copying or faxing. And while the printer can print double-sided, it's not available for A3 paper, which could prove limiting in a small number of applications. We should also note that this printer cannot handle larger A3+ paper.
For the price, this MFP's single paper input cassette is acceptable, but it means you'll need to unload your existing stack of paper when you want to switch from A4 to A3, or vice versa. Unusually, it loads A4 paper in landscape orientation and A3 in portrait, but switching to the latter means extending the input and output trays to their maximum, which adds a bit of complexity. If you only need to print one sheet on a different paper format, you can use post bypass. It also accepts paper up to A3, but it's a shame it's not a full multipurpose tray.
Brother ships the MFC-J5340DW with a complete set of standard-capacity cartridges, holding 550 pages each. You'll lose some of this due to the one-time ink preparation process, but it's still pretty generous for a device in this class. The XL cartridges are much more useful and last 3,000 black pages or 1,500 color pages each. Stick to these and running costs work out to an impressive 4.9p (excluding VAT) for a full color page, or just 0.9p in black alone.
Brother MFC-J5340DW Review: Setup
Brother inkjet printers are typically simple to set up, and the MFC-J5340DW is especially so compared to other A3-compatible devices. At 17kg, it's much lighter than you'd expect and easy enough to lift for a capable person to get into place. Unlike laser MFPs, it requires no ventilation space on either side, making it easy to place on a countertop. While it's definitely not a small device, it's just 30% wider and 16% deeper than a typical Brother A4 inkjet MFP, making it just 1.5 times the size. Plus, it's only about five centimeters taller.
There's not too much tape or other packaging to remove from this MFP before it's ready to go. You must install the supplied ink cartridges and wait while the ink system prepares. In the meantime, you can set the date and time, but unfortunately you can't connect the MFC-J5340DW to a wireless network; You must first wait for the priming to finish. If you connect via USB or Ethernet, you'll find the ports hidden beneath the scanner bed, a quirk of Brother's inkjet that in this case swallows up the first 50cm or so of a connected cable.
After preparation, this MFP prints a nozzle check page and prompts you to align the print heads, which is accomplished by printing and scanning a single sheet. Join the network and it will check for firmware updates, after which you are ready to start installing user software. It comes in two main versions: For PC, you can download a complete installation package containing TWAIN print and scan drivers, along with Brother iPrint&Scan. This handy workflow manager helps streamline several frequently used tasks, such as scanning to SharePoint or a cloud service.
Confusingly, Brother appears to have abandoned the iPrint&Scan mobile app and new devices require Brother Mobile Connect. This handles the usual printing and scanning functions and adds copy control, but it's a bit limited: you can't change much more than the size of the document.
Brother MFC-J5340DW Review: Print, Scan and Copy
Brother says the MFC-J5340DW can print up to 28 pages per minute (ppm), a claim we'd normally take with a pinch of salt for an inkjet printer. However, he came very close to this in our tests, achieving a maximum of 26.8ppm when producing 25 copies of a single page of text in Economy mode. Since we included the time required to queue the print job, it is extremely unusual for a printer to come this close to the stated speed.
The MFC-J5340DW was also fast at Normal print quality, delivering a first page of black text in just 11 seconds and hitting 24.2 ppm on 25 pages. Interestingly, it wasn't as fast when printing a single copy of our 50-page document. Momentary pauses between each page reduced the print speed to 13.1 ppm.
However, things were much less impressive when it came to printing color graphics. This MFP achieved 5.0 ppm in our complex test, which included a mix of presentation slides, web pages, and magazines. While that's not terrible for an inkjet printer, it is much slower than a basic color laser printer. By contrast, the MFC-J5340DW printed double-sided at 5.0 ipm, which isn't too bad by affordable inkjet standards.
We tested A3 printing with an enlarged version of our A4 text document and a single color page with lots of graphics. This MFC delivered the first page of text in 16 seconds and only needed 44 seconds to print five copies. It took 36 seconds to complete the first page of graphics and all five emerged after 77 seconds.
This MFP's scanner may be limited to A4, but there's nothing wrong with its speeds. It completed a preview in six seconds and was able to capture an A4 document at 150 dots per inch (dpi) at the same speed. It only took nine seconds to scan A4 at 300 dpi. We used a single 6×4″ (15×10 cm) photo to test the higher resolution scan. The MFC-J5340DW captured it in 11 seconds at 600 dpi and 29 seconds at a maximum of 1200 dpi, both very competitive times.
With a fast printer and scanner, it's no surprise that this multifunction printer is also a fast copier. It took 10 seconds to copy a single page in black and just 11 seconds to repeat the job in color. A 10-page black copy was completed in 34 seconds, while in color this job took 52 seconds, both very good results for an inkjet printer. The ADF copy accounted for the maximum power usage we measured, which was just 37 watts. This MFP used 5W in standby mode, and in sleep mode its power consumption fell below our meter's 1W minimum.
The print quality of this MFP is its biggest weakness. It produced acceptable text, but the character outlines were a bit jagged even to the naked eye, meaning you might not want to use it on formal letters or other materials where a good first impression counts. Color graphics were generally a bit poor, lacking the firm blacks and vivid colors you get with the best office inkjet printers, let alone a laser. Attentive viewers are likely to detect subtle graining in solid color regions, while we also notice some banding in large color fills.
Typically, for most inkjet printers, which must strike a balance between ink density and drying time to avoid smearing, duplex prints were noticeably fainter than single-sided ones. This made the color graphics look even less authoritative on the page.
However, although this is not a photo printer, it did a decent job of printing at the highest quality on coated inkjet paper. Color photos appeared more nuanced than what you'd get with a laser, while our black-and-white test print showed a good amount of contrast except in the darkest areas. However, we were able to distinguish a significant amount of grain in all of our prints, particularly in the lighter regions.
Unfortunately, the photocopies were very disappointing. Although legible, the thin black text appeared jagged and distorted in both monochrome and color copies. This all-in-one reproduced color particularly poorly, with the browns on our test page inheriting a strange purplish bruise; we had to check that none of the ink cartridges had run out halfway through the job.
This all-in-one's printer isn't solely to blame for its disappointing prints: the results of our scanning tests weren't brilliant either. While the photos were captured fairly faithfully, we noticed that details were lost in dark areas of the images and graphics. Overall, Office documents were good enough for archiving, but colors were too dull for more artistic uses. Our Q-60 color lens revealed a scanner with limited dynamic range: it couldn't distinguish the six darkest shades of gray, and the darkest greens in particular were frozen in a murky sludge.
Brother MFC-J5340DW Review: Verdict
Our disappointing results were especially disappointing because this MFP is otherwise very solid. It's affordable, compact and fairly well specified, and its A3 printing capability could be a great feature for small offices that need it, but don't have space for a dedicated printer. It's also impressively fast at everything except color printing.
We can't complain about the value of the MFC-J5340DW either. It's pretty well priced and offers very reasonable printing costs as long as you stick to the larger supplies. This is particularly true in black, as its one-cent-per-page cost makes it suitable even for medium-volume applications.
Unfortunately, all of this is undone by prints, scans and copies that were below the standards we would expect from a good office inkjet. If you're looking for good speeds and features, and can accept poor results, the MFC-J5340DW is still worth a look, but if you can live without A3 printing, consider another of our best all-in-one printers. guide.
Brother MFC-J5340DW Specifications
| Technology | Color Inkjet Multifunction Printer |
| Maximum print resolution | 1,200 x 4,800 dpi |
| Dimensions (H) | 530x398x305mm |
| Weight | 17kg |
| Maximum paper size | A3 (print only) |
| Warranty | one year RTB |
