Brother iPrint&Scan Reviews

I would rate the user interface as “fine” by 2009 standards, and just not up to date compared to today, but BrotheriPrintScan works shockingly well for faxing out, scanning to Files app (big one for me), printing (though I usually just use AirPrint natively in files), and machine/ink status for my 7 year old Brother MFC J480DW on my iPad Pro 3 11” running 15.4.1. The fact that I can do this stuff relatively smoothly from my iPad to my ancient printer on a different VLAN’d subnet is insanely cool*.

Four stars for doing the job reliably and in some cases above expectations (for the most part), but not five because boy it hurts to look at.

*Since mDNS and therefor Bonjour is a multicast service, the printer is only “visible” to things on its own subnet; you need to get Avahi Reflector running somewhere on your network to cheat and bounce the mDNS Bonjour packets between the subnets for interVLAN routing, EVEN if your interVLAN firewall is set up correctly, or BrotheriPrintScan won’t see the printer advertising and therefor won’t know where to find it; same with Airplay and AirPrint and Roku across subnets. Once Avahi is reflecting packets between the subnets, you’re home free. Make sure to set Avahi’s cache size to 0 or the printer and device names start to get real funky after a few weeks.

I decided to update my printer from my 8+ year old HP work-horse to the brother INKvestment. The printer itself has superior printing/scanning features compared to my last printer, but I LOVED the HP app. I scan almost all of the paper documents in my home and print a lot for work. The HP app’s scan function is so awesome and I do it all on my phone. Even the interface on the old HP LCD screen on my prior printer was somewhat modern and very intuitive. Why is brother a) so outdated looking and b) so insanely complicated! Updating firmware was automated and easy with my HP and I’m still having issues getting my new brother to update it’s firmware. Sadly, BrotheriPrintScan and brother’s website for changing the printer’s features, is so awful, that I think I’ll be returning this, despite how awesome the hardware is. Why isn’t the website that controls how to edit printer features integrated into BrotheriPrintScan ?! Why do I need to go into 2 different things to get settings changed? So disappointing. Great machine, but if I can’t use it simply and easily when I need it, what’s the point.

BrotheriPrintScan does what I need but it would be way better if the save as pdf feature were more discoverable. 9 times out of 10 when I scan something I want to save it to pdf. It can done, but you have to open the share sheet to get to it. I doubt everyone is finding it. Move the save as pdf feature into BrotheriPrintScan and make it obvious.

Also, I don’t like the Done/Scan alert view that pops up after you scan a page. It’s too easy to tap Done instead of Scan when you want to scan another page.

Well, it’s easy for me to figure out how to set it up manually since it won’t recognize my printer in the first place. Neither in the same network, nor with BrotheriPrintScan. If you have people coming to this place to download BrotheriPrintScan . And have only one wish.... FIND MY PRINTER WITHIN THE SAME NETWORK.... and what’s happening? It can’t find it, that’s why we came here for. We are no computer tec.
1. So now I have to find out in the settings of the printer itself what’s the IP address is of my printer. Nobody tells you this, when you download BrotheriPrintScan . Ok, I’m on my printer located the error button until machine info comes up,pressed ok, print settings , hit ok again searching for IP ADdRESS type this in the iprint app by manual and finally it finds the printer. I like to ask the developer of BrotheriPrintScan. HOW ON EARTH does a normal person could know all this? Thank you guys for reading this. It was just a prospective from a nobody who like to have an easygoing life.

About a year and many tears ago i purchased this printer. I installed BrotheriPrintScan and controlled it from my phone mainly ! But in the last four months the printer doesn't recognize any commands from BrotheriPrintScan , or it cant find the printer and i have to manually re enter my wi fi password every single print job which is really time consuming, then it shoots out blank pages until only one sheet of paper is left in the printer that it choses to use to finally start printing on and it completely jams and by the time i un jam it, the machine has once again lost connection with my wifi and i have to manually re enter my password ! And usually by this time i am now late for work AND i don't have the copies i need for work making it necessary for me to stop and pay to print them and now I'm even later for work then ever ! Totally frustrating ! Since I'm missing work hours its taking me longer to save up to buy another expensive printer, definitely NOT a Brother !

BrotheriPrintScan no longer allows you to use multiple Brother printers. The automatic printer configuration invoked by the connect to new machine button has never worked smoothly. It almost never discovers my two printers:
HL-L3270CDW (a color laser) and
HL-L2350DW (a B/W laser)
If it does discover one, when you discover the other one the replaces the first one.
I should be able define multiple printers, then when I want to print something, I should be able to select which printer use. I assume BrotheriPrintScan tries to use some form of Bonjour to automatically discover and configure a new printer without overwriting a previous printer definition. Also the printer should not need to be connected directly to WiFi. It should be acceptable to connect your printer over a wired connection to a WiFi access point via a hub or switch as long as there is no firewall blocking the ports used by Bonjour to discover and use the printer.

I love the fact that I can scan and print documents from my iPhone with BrotheriPrintScan. The scans and prints are good quality and I’m able to send them to gmail or save them on the cloud or directly onto my phone. But, BrotheriPrintScan offers me the option to send scanned documents to Google Drive, but when I try, the uploading window just shuts down every time. I can work around this by emailing them to myself via gmail, but then I have to send a separate email for ever scan sequence and then have my inbox full of scan emails that I then have to touch again and send over to Drive. Please just make BrotheriPrintScan send scans directly to Drive.
I would give 5 stars if it could do this!!

I’d love it if the third button “Machine Settings” did something useful. As it is, it weirdly opens up a web page in Safari using the router numbers, which then returns a 404 unknown error. It appears my 10 year old printer simply doesn't support wifi settings adjustments- so it seems there’s no selecting different trays... or turning the printer on with my iPad.
Can’t set landscape/portrait orientation manually, or adjust size by exact number. My landscape oriented photo was automatically turned 90 degrees. Does print and scan things rapidly from my iPad. It works. If there’s any bells or whistles from machine settings, I can’t imagine what I’m missing.

In the most optimistic, bare bones interpretation- it does what it says it can do. It does it so poorly though that you will probably rarely, if ever, use BrotheriPrintScan.

To scan from BrotheriPrintScan you literally can only control color or b&w, no resolution, no auto-crop...it can scan directly to a cloud service...if you go and manually save it and using iOS’s file system save options choose your cloud destination there. Also, it creates and saves in your scan destination a text file that says “From Brother iPrint&Scan” for EACH SCAN! Also from BrotheriPrintScan it just saves everything as .png format and with the name “image.” I’m mentioning all these because scanning from the device direct to cloud lets you pick the resolution (though the files scanned from app appear to be much higher resolution based on file size??) and names them with the time scanned, and gives some other good options.

It’s like the people who did BrotheriPrintScan and the people who did the commands directly on the printer didn’t even talk to each other or attempt in any way to have similar features at both interfaces.

Very frustrating.

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I have several older Brother laser printers and have a number of spare toner cartridges, so I didn’t want to buy a newer model so that I could use AirPrint.... then I came across BrotheriPrintScan. Within seconds after installing BrotheriPrintScan , I was easily able to connect to my network Brother printers and it was simple to scan and print. Easy to use, highly recommended for anyone with Brother network printers (do not need to be wireless network printers, can be ethernet). I have two models that are working well with BrotheriPrintScan - MFC 7440n and HL 5250DN

I’m using the model HL-L2325DW. Nothing fancy ; however needed something that would be able to handle my printing demands while in Nursing school. I noticed when trying to print power-points to make my note taking easier , that it wouldn’t allow me to print a file that had more than 50 pages. It wouldn’t be a 50 page document if I was able to format 4 slides per page and print double sided. I ultimately had to download another app ($7.00 ) in order to get my information to print. Annoying yes , but wouldn’t need to print this type of volume ordinarily. I hope they fix this , and take my review into strong consideration. It would kind of be nice as well if they had a document scanner to implement with this model.

Update: I figured out after scanning, there is an option to email as PDF. Click the little up arrow, slide to the left, click more then select “email as PDF” I had an error saying the file size may be too large but it sent anyway.

Would still be nice to have an option to save as PDF from BrotheriPrintScan . I believe this workaround is an iPhone feature.

Original review: App works as intended. Hoping for an update to save scanned documents to PDF instead of PNG.

Two days ago i had to reinstall printer & software with all its updates. I have an MFC9340CW that BrotheriPrintScan no longer can find & I now have to put the printer in manually. OK, but 2 days ago I had the settings option so could print in duplex, 1 hour ago I had the settings option to print in duplex (this is a duplex printer & all settings in machine & its properties are set to utilize duplex), BUT NOW the settings lost the option for duplex & keeps spitting out single pages. Its bad enough that I cannot find the fix to use my Apple AirPrint which also disappeared 8 or so months ago, now I cannot get your app to function as it had been. This is the 4th Brother printer & I was happy with them. This is the LAST BROTHER PRINTER unless it gets a lot better fast!

My PC has been broken for months and I was afraid I'd never be able to scan from my home printer again. Until I had the bright idea to look for an app. Even my 3 year old wireless model worked perfectly! I scanned a 19 page document, converted it to a PDF, and emailed it along with saving it to my phone. No more having to scan sensitive personal info at work! I'm so happy. I can't vouch for the power of BrotheriPrintScan besides simple set up and pushing the "scan" button then following on screen directions, but I'm thrilled with it.

while the basic print & scan functions are adequate for a mobile end device for occasional printing, there are 2 very fundamental loopholes:

1. I found BrotheriPrintScan only works, i.e. finds the printer on the network, if and when the printer is active (i.e. not asleep).
Once the printer is in sleep mode (after a certain time idling), BrotheriPrintScan just claims it cannot find it. Regardless if the correct IP address is configured. the only way to print is to powercycle it. Which defeats the purpose of a mobile device printing app.

Why am I so sure this is a "bug"?
if I use another app such "Fing" to LAN wake-up the printer, it all of a sudden works!

2. the printer can not configured like a regular network printer using its WiFi interface. Or, should I say, it can be configured but simply does not work! I spent hours trying to fix it, to no avail.
The "support" info by Brother is basically of no help beyond the most basic of problems.
So I relocated the printer to a place near a LAN outlet. Just why did i spring for the wireless feature?!?

If I want to send a PDF to my professor quickly during office hours, I have to scan it to BrotheriPrintScan , save the photo to my camera roll, use another app to convert that photo file to a PDF, then upload it to our online student portal.

Yes it has to be PDF. PDF is the only format my professors want to see, because ya know, you don’t submit any form of document as .png or .jpg when you enter the professional world. Hint, hint ;)

Otherwise BrotheriPrintScan is pretty useful.

I have two Brother printers, the MFC-9970CDW and the HL-L6200DW. I needed BrotheriPrintScan because the 9970 doesn't have AirPrint and then I like that I can print remotely using Google Cloud Print. However even though you can duplex a print job using Google Drive and you can duplex using BrotheriPrintScan locally, YOU CANNOT DUPLEX REMOTELY. I'm pretty sure this is a Brother problem and not a Google problem. You also cannot set duplex as the default. It isn't truly terrible, but since you don't need it with the 6200 locally since it has AirPrint and you can't use it remotely because I don't print hundred page document is one sided, it basically represents a total failure on their part to do the simplest upkeep on their app and that earns one star.

BrotheriPrintScan has been more or less the same since the beginning of time. But it does the job. And because of it your old Brother laser printer gets a new life as you print to it from your phone. Here’s how: select print from an app. The preview shows up. Now you can’t print like you can to an AirPrint printer. But if you long press or hard press the preview, it opens like a PDF. Now you can share it to the brother print app and voila!

BrotheriPrintScan is great. We have a Brother MFC-L2710DW in our home office. We can both work together and print and scan directly from our phones without getting in each other’s way. Scans can be sent directly to my work email address. It’s a seamless process. BrotheriPrintScan even prompts you to update the firmware on your printer when necessary and does it over the phone via WiFi.

Have a Brother network color laser printer. The AppStore features show a Machine Status button. Nothing there in BrotheriPrintScan ... Very awkward to print from a browser. The intuitive way would be to select options in the browser. Then there would be a Brother print button. Not there. Lame...If try to use the iOS Print get no Air printers. So have to copy the URL. Then goto the Brother app click Print then paste URL... May not work since URL doesn’t have session data necessarily if trying to print like a confirmation page in a website that are logged into. So worthless and difficult to use just deleted BrotheriPrintScan .

BrotheriPrintScan enables me to print from my iPhone and I love that, especially for basic print-only models. However, it would be great to see more options for manipulating output (margins, orientation, background graphics, etc.). Also, I would love to see the web browser in BrotheriPrintScan use the print-friendly format of a page if the site has made that option available. Other than that it’s a great app.

This utility provides basic print and scan functions. I scan a lot of magazines and documents with 4 different MFC models and most of the time the operation is good.

Like many functions on Brother MFCs, simple every day operations are made extremely complex. An example is scanning in Landscape mode. BrotheriPrintScan always scans in portrait mode. After experimenting,, without documentation, you can develop a 5 step edit that will convert each image to landscape. This is a lot of work when scanning multiple images. It should be a simple option selection like color versus b/w or single sided versus duplex.

When I do have a problem It is usually a software problem and there is no place to get help. BrotheriPrintScan support link points to a generic page on their web site. As most of the site is dedicated to marketing with a few device specific support pages. There does not appear to be any support for the mobile apps.

Scanning works fine on an iPad. I like that the doc can be edited before exporting BUT, once done, there is no “back” button. Pro-tip: hit the scan button. Also, on other pages where there is a back button in the top left of the screen, hit the < character by a couple of chars to the right, rather than tapping the < character bang on. Finally, when selecting photos it would be good to preview the image BEFORE selecting it, Facebook style, for printing, rather than afterwards.