What is the Brother INKvestment 1365?

Updated June 18, 2026

The Brother INKvestment 1365 is a wireless colour all-in-one built on Brother's INKvestment system: high-yield cartridges, not refillable bottle tanks. The cartridges hold far more ink than standard ones — the 1365 Includes one 1,200-page yield black cartridge and one 500-page yield cartridge for each color — so cost-per-page lands between a cheap cartridge printer and a true supertank, with roughly a year of ink in the box and full third-party-ink freedom.

The whole idea behind INKvestment is one word: yield. A normal cartridge printer hides a low sticker price and then charges you at the cartridge shelf; a supertank front-loads the savings into a higher purchase price and bottle ink. INKvestment is Brother's third path — a cartridge machine whose cartridges are simply much bigger, holding close to a year of ink for a light home. You keep the convenience of dropping in a cartridge, but you visit the shelf far less often.

The 1,200-page INKvestment cartridge is the hybrid in the middle, and the middle is the point.

Set it against a true supertank and the gap is clear. An Epson EcoTank is cartridge-free, feeding the head from refillable bottles instead of cartridges, and those bottles deliver the lowest cost per page in the catalog — High-capacity ink bottles provide a high page yield, allowing you to print thousands of pages per fill. RTINGS lab-tests printer cost-per-print and page yield across 182 models, and puts bottle ink many times cheaper per page than cartridge ink — so the 1365 will not match a supertank on pure pence per page. What it offers instead is no tank-filling, no higher up-front tank price, and a cartridge you swap in seconds. We break the cartridge-versus-tank math down across the catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

INKvestment 1365

High-yield cartridges

Set it against the cheaper Brother instead and the trade flips the other way. The plain Work Smart 1360 runs standard cartridges — it Uses LC501 Series Inks — so it costs less up front but visits the shelf sooner. The 1365's high-yield INKvestment cartridges are the reason a community recommender steers light users to it: the inkvestment cartridges last much longer for your occasional printing. Both Brothers share the one freedom HP refuses to give — A huge advantage of Brother is that it's not picky about 3rd party ink cartridges.

That freedom is the quiet half of the INKvestment value. According to Brother's own product page for the MFC-J1365DW, the machine carries auto-duplex, a document feeder and Wi-Fi in a small footprint — and unlike an HP "e" model, it never blocks the aftermarket cartridge you choose to buy. We track ink-lock behaviour model by model in our safety and known-risks guidance.

What is the Brother INKvestment 1365?

It is a wireless colour all-in-one — print, scan, copy — sold as the MFC-J1365DW, driven from a 1.8-inch colour display. What makes it an INKvestment machine is the cartridge: a high-yield cartridge holding far more ink than a standard one, so a single set lasts months of light home use. It packs A 150-sheet paper tray(4), 20-page single-sided automatic document feeder (ADF)(4), and automatic duplex (2-sided) printing.

Picture a normal compact colour printer, then make the cartridges oversized. That is the 1365. The hardware is ordinary home-office kit — a small tray, a document feeder for scanning multi-page documents, two-sided printing, and a colour screen to drive it. Connectivity is wireless first: Enhance your workflow with Wi-Fi Direct, which allows you to print wirelessly even without an external network connection, so it pairs with a phone or laptop without a router in the middle.

The difference you feel day to day is how rarely you touch ink. A standard cartridge printer warns you it is low within weeks; the 1365's high-yield cartridges stretch that to months for a light printer, which is the entire reason the line exists. It runs Printer is quiet! on the desk too — a small win, but a real one for a home office. Read how it lines up against the field in our best office inkjet printers roundup.

Is Brother INKvestment worth it?

For a light-but-regular home-office printer, yes. The 1,200-page black cartridge buys cartridge convenience with tank-leaning yields and ink freedom, costing less to run than an HP cartridge unit. It is not worth it for a once-a-year desk, where any inkjet clogs, nor for pure cost-per-page chasers — a true bottle-tank EcoTank rated for thousands of pages per fill still wins there, with owners reporting years from one bottle.

Honestly, the worth-it answer for the MFC-J1365DW turns on how you print, not on the brand.

The case for it is the middle ground done well. You skip the cartridge tax that traps budget-HP buyers, you skip the higher up-front price and the tank-filling of a supertank, and you keep the freedom to buy whatever ink is cheapest. For a household printing schoolwork, labels and the odd photo most weeks, the maths lands in the 1365's favour against a standard cartridge machine — and well clear of a firmware-locked HP.

The case against it is for the extremes. A true bottle tank still beats it on pure pence per page, so a heavy printer chasing the lowest possible running cost should size up. And a desk that prints twice a year should buy neither — the clearest skip signal in the owner record comes from exactly that buyer, an infrequent printer steering toward laser for the next machine. For that household a small laser, not any inkjet, is the honest call. Weigh the bottle-tank alternative in our Epson EcoTank ET-2800 review.

Are Brother All-in-One printers good?

For home-office work, yes — they pack real office hardware cheaply. The 1365 ships scan, copy, auto-duplex, a 150-sheet tray and a 20-page feeder, runs quiet, and lets you source your own ink. The honest catch is idle ink waste — one owner says it this thing burns through half its ink just sitting and cleaning itself on regular intervals.

The value pitch holds across the Brother line, INKvestment and standard alike. The office features — a real document feeder, two-sided printing — usually cost more elsewhere, which is why these turn up as the rage-quit-HP rebound buy. And the ink stays yours to source: even on the cheaper sibling, an owner reports Ink cartridges are reasonably priced for Brother branded and downright cheap for knockoffs. That is the freedom the whole brand is built on.

The honest gap is the one every inkjet shares, and it is worth naming before you buy. A Brother left idle still runs ink-hungry cleaning cycles, so the long-life INKvestment pitch only pays off for someone who actually prints. The fix is a habit, not a different machine — keep the head wet and the all-in-one earns its keep. Let it sit dark and the savings evaporate into maintenance. See who each cheap Brother suits in our full Brother Work Smart 1360 review.

Document feeder

Control panel

Why do Brother printers run out of ink so fast?

Two reasons, and only one is INKvestment’s fault. Every inkjet, Brother included, burns ink on automatic head-cleaning when it sits idle, so a printer used twice a month drains a cartridge on maintenance, not pages. And some 1365 owners report it simply uses too much — one says This printer just uses way too much ink! — undercutting the long-life pitch for heavier users.

Start with the shared cause, because it catches every inkjet owner out. A printhead dries when it sits, so the machine spends ink on cleaning cycles to keep the nozzles clear. Print rarely and almost all your ink goes on maintenance rather than documents — the running-cost catch the hybrid cartridge is meant to soften, not erase. Consumer Reports tests inkjet running cost and reliability over time, and the idle-clog pattern is the failure mode owner threads repeat most. The remedy is the same one that protects lifespan: an owner advises you be sure that you are willing to commit to printing a few color pages every few weeks.

Then there is the 1365-specific complaint, and it is fair to surface it. The biggest knock against this model contradicts its own pitch: one owner found Compared to the last brother printer this one replaced it is almost 10 times more ink used. For a heavier printer, that is a reason to read the reviews closely rather than assume the INKvestment name guarantees frugal running. And the cheaper sibling carries its own warning — Reddit buyers are reminded the cartridge tax is real: Do you really want to be locked into paying for set after set of replacement ink.

What is the average lifespan of a Brother printer?

There is no hard mileage figure, because what kills inkjets is idle clogging, not wear. A Brother printed a few colour pages every 1-2 weeks keeps its head clear and runs for years. One left dark for months clogs past recovery and gets replaced — the single habit that decides a Brother’s lifespan, and the same rule a true bottle-tank EcoTank lives by.

Lifespan here is less about the brand than the habit attached to it. The mechanical parts last; the printhead is the weak link, and it survives on use. A buyer who prints weekly tends to outlast their own patience for the machine before it fails. A buyer who lets it sit through a busy season comes back to a clog the self-cleaning cannot clear, and a printer that feels dead. That single difference explains most of the "Brother died early" reports.

So the durable-printer question loops back to how you print, which is the thread running through this whole page. Print regularly and an INKvestment 1365 gives long, low-cost, low-fuss service. Print rarely and no inkjet is the durable answer — a bottle tank wastes the cleaning ink you bought it to save, and a Brother cartridge machine clogs the same way. For the truly occasional printer — a few pages a month — a small laser is the honest long-life pick, and our best supertank printers roundup covers the bottle-tank route for everyone in between.

So the answer to "what is it" is really an answer about fit.

Add it up and the INKvestment 1365 has a clear shape. It is a capable, quiet colour all-in-one whose oversized high-yield cartridges put its running cost between a cheap cartridge printer and a true supertank, with ink freedom HP refuses to match. It is the right buy for a light-but-regular home office that wants cartridge convenience without the cartridge tax. It is the wrong buy two ways: a once-a-year desk should go laser, and a heavy cost-per-page chaser should go bottle tank. Match the machine to how often you actually print, and what the INKvestment 1365 is becomes whether it is for you.