Brother Printer MFC-J6520DW Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready

This is a fairly well engineered printer/scanner, both hardware and software. Because this device is new on the market (Oct 2013), there isn’t any info out there yet and I had to dig through the marketing brochures and play the “spot the difference” game to decide between the 3 sibling models: this MFC-J6520dw, the MFC-J6720dw, and the MFC-J6920dw. Unfortunately Brother did not provide a nice concise “these are the differences” summary so I will do that to perhaps save you the trouble. I have not used the 6720 or 6920 so this is just based on my use of the 6520 and research of Brother’s documentation of the others. As best as I can determine the 3 models are all quite similar with the noted differences:MFC-J6520DW* Scans up to 11×17 with both ADF and glass. For scanning thick items like books, the lid hinge raises up. ADF paper width slider only goes as narrow as 5.8″, so this is not good for things like receipts. You would have to scan small items on the glass. But, the auto page size detection does not work at all for pages/receipts with a white background.* Scans only one side of the document. The software has a checkbox to allow you to scan “continuously” meaning you can scan multiple documents and/or multiple sides of the documents manually (prompts for “Continue” or “Finish” after each page) and they will be collated into one PDF.* There are nice scan options such as scan a 11×17 and turn it into 2 8.5×11 pages, scan 2 8.5×11 pages into one 11×17 page, scan into a secure PDF, OCR, .xps documents.* Prints on both sides nicely (prints one side, sucks the paper back up, and prints the other side)* The manual paper feed in the back for printing can accept most any size paper but you can only insert one page at a time (not a stack). When feeding from manual feed, no matter how carefully you adjust the guides, things often don’t print straight or in precisely the correct location. I have wasted a few sheets of labels because of this. Envelopes cannot print the return address closer than one inch from the left edge (looks weird that far in). When manually feeding things, especially envelopes, it often doesn’t detect that you inserted one. You have to repeatedly jam the envelope in and press ok on the touch screen. Sometimes it takes a few tries. All these manual feed issues deduct one star.* When printing a stack of envelopes from the paper tray rather than the manual feed, it jams about once every 10 envelopes.* Software and drivers installed on Windows 8.1 64 bit with no issues.* I don’t have a landline and do not plan to use faxing capability so I can’t comment on that.————————————–MFC-J6720DW* Same as 6520 but adds a 2nd paper tray. This could be useful if you want more paper capacity or 2 sizes of paper available without using the manual feed.————————————–MFC-J6920DW* Same as 6720 but adds a bigger screen (3.7″ vs 2.7″), Near Field Communication for interaction with mobile phones (though not many phones have NFC yet), and single pass scanning of both sides of the document at once. I failed to notice the single-pass capability was only for the 6920. Because I will do a lot more scanning than printing, knowing this would have made me choose the 6920. This is where Brother could have sold me a higher model with a simple comparison chart.————————————–It took a while (about an hour) to meticulously follow the setup steps, learn how it works and get everything up and running. The instructions are top notch.The feet of the printer will sit on top of a table, night stand, etc with a surface at least 13″ x 19″ (note though the upper portion of the device is larger than this).External physical durability looks to be as expected at this price point- some of the plastic parts (especially paper tray, paper catch extension, ADF lid) could break with abuse from a clumsy and/or impatient person, and you certainly wouldn’t want this unit sitting within reach of a 3-year old wild child.