Brother Work Smart 1360 Review: Office Hardware, Coin-Flip Setup

Updated June 18, 2026

Functions Print, scan, copy, auto-duplex, 20-sheet ADF

Connectivity Wireless or USB (no Ethernet), AirPrint, Mopria

Ink System LC501 series cartridges

Our Verdict

A budget cartridge all-in-one that buys real office hardware — auto-duplex, an ADF, a 150-sheet tray — and lets you run cheap third-party ink. The 3.9 rating is a setup coin flip, not a quality problem. Print in volume and a refillable tank still feeds far cheaper.

Best for: Small-home-office buyers who want an ADF and auto-duplex on a budget and refuse an ink subscription

Pattern Name

NewRenewed (Refurbished)

Style Name

Current Model: MFCJ1360DWPrevious Model: MFCJ1010DWCurrent Model: MFCJ1360DW + High Yield Inks

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Overview

A budget all-in-one with an office résumé

Most owners land on the Brother 1360 after one specific breaking point: an HP machine that quietly stopped taking aftermarket ink. The 1360 is a cheap cartridge all-in-one, yet it carries hardware the price class usually strips out — automatic duplex (2-sided) printing, a 20-sheet document feeder, and a 150-sheet paper tray. That is a small-office spec sheet wearing a budget price tag.

The lens this site puts on every machine is the same one Brother's listing skips: not the sticker, but the cartridge-versus-tank math of what it actually costs to own over time. The 1360 is firmly pole-one ink — cheap to buy, paid for forever at the cartridge shelf — so the verdict turns on how much you print, not how it looks on the desk.

Across the 13 owner reviews, the split is sharp and it is not about output. One end sounds like this:

This is a great printer. Easy to set up, one owner writes. Another cannot make wireless setup finish and returns it the same day. Same machine — the difference is almost never the hardware.

What the spec sheet actually buys

The headline numbers are honest for the class. Brother rates the 1360 for fast speeds of up to 16 pages per minute in black and up to 9 ppm in color — quick for a budget inkjet, slow next to a laser. It runs Uses LC501 Series Inks, a standard two-set cartridge model rather than a refillable tank, which is the single fact that decides its long-term cost.

The on-device side is better equipped than the price suggests. There is a 1.8-inch color display, plus print-to and scan-from cloud apps including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. The companion app adds an ink monitor — Brother tells you to Monitor your ink usage with Page Gauge so the next cartridge isn't a surprise. We weigh exactly this kind of feature against running cost in our inkjet comparison criteria.

One omission matters. Connectivity is on your wireless network or via USB — and that is the whole list. There is no Ethernet port. For a desk on a stable Wi-Fi network that is a non-issue; for anyone who wanted a wired network printer, it is a dealbreaker hiding in the fine print.

Performance & Real-World Testing

When it prints, owners are happy

Print quality is the calm part of the record. One owner sums the machine up plainly: Printer prints great and is loaded with great features. Color output earns praise for a budget machine, and there are no clustered complaints about the pages it produces. The hardware does its job.

The all-in-one half pulls real weight too. Several owners didn't expect to lean on the scanner and ended up using it constantly — one notes the convenience specially when scanning items to be emailed or saved. That pattern shows up over the course of several weeks of ownership, not on day one: for a home office that shuffles forms and receipts, the document feeder plus scan-to-email is the feature that quietly justifies the buy.

Where it goes wrong: the setup coin flip

The 3.9 rating lives almost entirely here. Setup is bimodal. Most owners sail through; a minority hit a hard wall. The most common complaint is blunt — Setup issues is the main reason one buyer immediately returned the printer.

Mobile setup adds its own friction on one platform. The first-time gotcha is Android-specific: owners are told to install the Mopria and iprint&scan apps for android before phone printing works at all — an extra step iPhone owners on AirPrint skip, and the kind of detail that turns a five-minute job into a support search if you miss it. None of this is a hardware fault. It is the path to the hardware, and whether you clear it cleanly is the real gamble with this machine.

Value Analysis

Cheap to buy, cartridge-fed to keep

Here's the thing about a cheap cartridge printer: the sticker is the cheapest part. The 1360 is a cartridge machine, and cartridge machines earn their keep after you have paid for them — the razor-and-blades model, pointed at your desk. The LC501 sets are where the real cost lives.

Brother's real edge is what it does not do: it does not lock you in. One owner who switched specifically because it stopped accepting my aftermarket ink cartridges on an HP found the Brother takes whatever ink they feed it. A long-term owner confirms it's not picky about 3rd party ink cartridges, and that branded LC501 stock is fairly priced either way: Ink cartridges are reasonably priced for Brother branded and cheaper still as knockoffs. After HP's Instant Ink wall, that freedom is the whole pitch.

But freedom from a subscription is not the same as cheap-per-page. Independent testing is clear that cartridge ink costs far more per page than bottle ink — RTINGS' cost-per-print and page-yield testing puts the gap at several times over, and Consumer Reports' inkjet running-cost testing reaches the same verdict. A cartridge model is cheaper to buy and dearer to feed; a supertank is the reverse. We run that fork across the whole catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

The volume test

So the value verdict splits on one number: how much you print. Print regularly in a home office and the 1360 is honestly good value — real office features, no subscription, cheap aftermarket ink. Print every day in true volume and a refillable tank's flat bottle cost wins on the long run. We grade every machine against that running-cost case in our inkjet printers evidence hub.

What to Expect Over Time

Living with it: idle time and the subscription on-ramp

Two things shape life with the 1360 past the first week: idleness, and the subscription Brother slips in the box.

Idleness first, because every inkjet has one failure mode a laser doesn't. Liquid ink hardens in the nozzles when the printer sits unused, and the machine spends ink on automatic cleaning cycles to clear it. One owner is blunt about the cost: this thing burns through half its ink just sitting and cleaning itself on regular intervals. Print something in color about once a week and it rarely bites; leave it dark for weeks and you meet a clog the evening you need a boarding pass. We track that idle-clog risk in our safety and known-risks guidance.

The subscription is the second thread. The 1360 ships with a Includes Refresh Subscription trial — Brother's own answer to HP Instant Ink. It is opt-in, and the whole reason to buy this printer is usually to avoid exactly that kind of ink lock-in, so understand it before you activate it. Cheap third-party LC501 ink already keeps running cost down without signing up for anything, per Brother's own Refresh subscription terms.

The upside owners come back for is the one HP took away. One cable-bound owner frames it as the wireless upgrade with this Brother 1360 Wireless Inkjet that finally cut a USB tether. For the home worker who just wanted a printer without an account or a subscription, that freedom is the entire appeal in one sentence.