Bought this because we print a lot and the cost per page is supposedly far lower. It looks as if the Super High yield Black toner will cost us about 1/4 what we used to spend on toner, and the Super High yield color toner cartridges will cost us a little more than 1/2 what we spent on color toner with our old color laser printer. If you dont buy the High yield or Super-High yield cartridges, it uses toner at the same rate as our previous laser printer (Weve tested this because it comes with the lowest yield cartridges). Weve just replaced the 3 color cartridges that came with it but black is still almost 1/2 full. At first, we felt the print quality wasnt quite as bright and bold as we were used to, but either it got better within a couple of weeks, or we got used to (and happy with) the print quality - text, graphs, and photos! Our old laser printer was working just fine; we bought this one just to save money, and were glad we did.
A. Sommer
5
First of all, I own MANY printers, and I have owned about 20 different color laser printerS (HP, Xerox, older Brothers). I am a printer fanatic, and currently have about 8 in operation in my real estate office. I LOVE THIS PRINTER!!! Setup was very easy (for wireless printing), or for USB. The instructions were clear, and the printer set itself up all on its own. The time to 1st page out for full color printing is about 20 seconds, which while not the fastest on the planet is great for me, as I print LONG print jobs (mail merge letters of 1200 pieces at a time). The print quality is superb! I compared it side-by-side to output from a Xerox Versant 80 (a $70,000 printer), and the Brother prints we better! The cost per page is outstanding! Using 3rd party Super High yeild toner (which works great), the cost per page for full color is less than $.02/pg. I have printed a couple of thousand pages so far in the first few days, and everything is working. The rated print speed is 33 pages/minute. On long print jobs the actual was more like 29 pages/minute as the printer stops to cool down from time to time. A couple of minor complaints I have: 1. The output tray only holds about 200 sheets. I wish it were bigger. 2. There is no "tray full" sensor to stop printing when the tray is full (the top of the printer). If you dony keep removing the output as it prints on large jobs, the output pages go all over the floor. 3. The printer produces a slight curl in the printed pages, particularly with heavier stock.. Other than that, I love this printer!
mc
5
After reading all the negative reviews AND living in an area where UPS delivery consists of kicking the package from one end of town to the other (after it is been opened to see if there is anything to steal) I was expecting the worst. That I would have to return it. Sure enough the box was badly mauled and dented as is every package I get from UPS. But I opened it up anyway. No damage to the printer and nothing missing. Yea!! The printer was very heavy. A good sign! And when I plugged it in it worked. The WPS did not work. But not being a novice, I had no difficulty setting it up on WiFi. Really its completely straightforward with no surprises. Once I had an IP address for it I downloaded the Brother Linux driver and it installed perfectly. Zero knowledge needed, the driver works by itself. And it prints beautiful full color pictures that look like photographs (because they were). My hat is off to Brother for supporting Linux just as well as HP does. They had better if they want to sell printers in China! Some people complained about a delay before printing. Yes,,, but the delay is no different from the HP laser jets I have and all the laser jets at work. In fact the longest delay is only after the printer has not been used for a while, lasts for about 30 seconds and then subsequent prints are much quicker. THATS A GOOD THING PEOPLE!! It means that Brother is not burning your electricity keeping the drums warm! In an office environment it would never be an issue because the printer would be constantly in use and the electricity saver would never kick in. The noise is no worse than any Laserjet I have had for the last 20 years and it is a lot quieter than most. The Laserjets at work make much more noise (but at an acceptable level - (the noise is useful because the printer is 20 feet away and thats how you can tell it worked). This printer could sit on your desk without a problem. The color on this printer is every bit as good as my old HP K80 office inkjet and the 2000 dollar commercial HP color laserjet at work. I am deducting one star because the instructions are not adequate for a beginner. There are plastic pieces and tape to be removed deep within the bowels of this beast that are nowhere in the instructions. And the instructions gives no hint that they are incomplete. I suspect the negative reviews are because people had no way to know they needed to take the thing apart to get all the tape and orange plastic gizmos out. Also while it may be Centurylinks and not Brothers fault, the WPS doesnt work at all even for an experienced person. If I run into any problems I will update but I am a very happy camper right now and recommend this printer. I did forget to mention that the printer does slightly curl the paper. My guess is that the drum is too hot. I will contact Brother to see if that can be adjusted. In the meantime the curl is not very bad so I can live wth it. EDIT: A year later still works perfectly. Zero problems. I have been printing almost every day and still have not had to replace the starter toner. Which is annoying because I bought new toner so I would have it on hand and its in the way! I keep hoping the starter toner will run out but it just keeps going. Also works perfectly with the Windows 10 I installed. Works perfectly in LINUX and Windows 10.
marc
5
I just love this printer. I have taken out all the printers in my house and replaced it with this beast. Yes, it is big and weighs about 50lbs or 22.68kg. I have it in my work room and everyone can print directly to this printer by using our WiFi network to print to it. No USB cables to plug into. What took me the longest time was to figure out how to set it all up. But once i figured it out (took about 1.5 hrs) everything runs smoothly. The kids print out their assignments with the option to print in color if needed. Mostly they print in black and white because they are just writing papers or printing worksheets. With electronic documents printing at home is increasing especially for my older daughter who is in college. I highly recommend this printer for any family that just wants one printer in the house that can print quality documents. It even prints on both sides. Just remember to make ample space for it because this is no desktop printer. Take the leap and go wireless. You will not regret it.
Matt T
2
It prints beautifully but has major issues when it comes to: 1. Wireless printing- This printer does not give you the option to disable "Deep Sleep" mode. So if you arent printing every couple of hours you will have to shut down the printer and restart it or remove from wireless network and add it back on, both are time wasters. 2. Poor support for the Brother IOS App- Printing from the app is a hit or miss and mostly miss. I expect a $500 printer to be able to print nice and also to work well on a wireless network. I hope they update the printer with a chance to disable "Deep Sleep" mode. You can adjust the sleep mode by going to printer properties but its set by the minute ( not hour or day option), so if you dont print for 3-4 hours and go back to print again you have to follow the above process.
L. L. Maron
3
I would have given more stars because in high quality print mode , this printer does a good job, but the problem I have has since I purchased it is with wireless printing. After printing one or two pages of a document, it prints out a page which says "Unsupported data for Direct Print: 3020" It will not print out more than two pages at a time. To print a larger document, you have to specify two pages at a time, or just one depending on the printers mood. Basically 50% of your paper is wasted with error code pages. I now have a three inch stack of scratch paper. I went through all the troubleshooting, installed a newly downloaded version of the driver, removed and reinstalled the printer - nothing works. I have not tried using a USB cable because I am trying to reduce all the wires and cables that surround me. One of the reasons I selected this printed was for the "wireless connectivity" - so, three stars...
Christal Davis
1
Prints fast and great for documents. However, the color printing is way off and way too dark. I have spoken with Brother and they could not solve the issue so it is being escalated. When I print anything in color it prints very dark. For example a royal blue color looks navy blue and a bright pink looks maroon. Hopefully they can fix it.
linda faye goss
1
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY. This printer color is awful, I had techs work on it several times with no solution. Colors cannot be corrected.
Davis
4
Update (Most Recent 2019-May-09): ------------------------- With the most recent updates in firmware (the only thing thats changed for me) this printer is now working quite well through my wi -fi network. To quickly recall, my printer is set to a fixed IP address through the printer control panel -- and my router associates that same fixed IP address with the printer based on the printers MAC address. There are no disconnects and the printer remains accessible for as long as we have it powered on. I appreciate greatly that Brother has addressed this issue. With wireless connectivity fixed (at least for me) I think this printer is a very good, even excellent, value. My comments are below in the original review about print quality. The printer interface LCD and software really brings color laser printers up to modern current expectations. Perfect or even just good color matching will require tinkering, but thats going to be an issue at this price point. Of course brand new this printer comes with filled, full sized, toner cartridges - a nice plus. I now fully recommend this machine! Current Review 4.5 stars --- Original Review 2.5 stars Original Review: ------------------ The wi-fi connectivity would not work properly. Through the LCD panel everything seemed to be a go, and I could verify it was connected to my network. Windows recognized the printer. And yet, nothing would print over wi-fi, which makes this printer useless to me, to be frank. The software installed with the printer is essentially dialog boxes that indicate if the printer is not working, then we cant help you: error code -1. Great. Update: --------- So after contacting customer support, their fix was to (in Windows) create a new TCP/IP printer port using the IP address assigned to the printer by the router. Im not sure how long this will work since the IP addresses are assigned through DHCP. So what happens when the printers IP address changes when the lease expires or the router is power cycled? I downloaded the Brother android app on my tablet (my tablet is wi-fi only and was connected to my network). That app couldnt detect the printer and needed me to manually input the printers IP address, so I see a common issue with this printer being glitchy among two different platforms. After the android app connected to the printer, the app worked and I was able to send pictures and documents to the printer. However, on subsequent tries the app did not work. The printer usually acknowledged a print job was incoming, but it would just bomb out. So tonight I havent really been able to evaluate print quality, etc. because the wi-fi connectivity has been obtained (unsatisfactorily) through a stop-gap measure or kludge, and was really an annoying time sink. Upgrade from one star to two. Update (a few days later): --------------------------------- Okay so I tried a number of things, like assigning a static IP address to the printers MAC address in my router -- essentially when my network sees the printer always assuring the printers IP address is fixed, so that applications know where to find it on the network. The Brother LCD panel/menu has settings to do this on the printers end as well. This doesnt make any difference. The problem is the printer goes into a sleep mode, and never wakes up. So if the software driver in concert with my OS cant communicate with the printer, I have to power down the printer and turn it back on. There is no way around this. So when it comes to printing, the Brother is not there waiting for me, it needs a wake up call. Maybe this isnt a wireless issue, maybe the printer goes to sleep and never wakes up with cable connectivity too. Its annoying as all get-out. So in Windows I did a clean install of the latest drivers. Now personally I set the static IP address in the printer and in my router, but I think the normal wireless (WLAN) install of this printer is fine, you just need to power-cycle the printer if your computer cant communicate with it. The Brother android apps as a general rule DID NOT work for me, either through my wireless network or through wi-fi direct. The printer would usually acknowledge a print job was starting, but would bomb out at some point. Occasionally the LCD display would give the cryptic message "Data remaining in memory" and "Push X to stop". Is that a good thing, bad thing? I dont know. The printers print quality is okay for text, and colored text -- certainly acceptable. Photos are meh. It is nice to see pictures print really, really fast, but I wasnt planning on printing a bunch of photos on plain paper or card stock. I can say if you want a really decent picture printed with this printer you need to use color profiles and a program like/similar to Photoshop to manage output. Also, if a picture is black and white, set the printing options to monochrome in the printing properties. The colors in general are off unless corrected in some way. Since this printer uses toner, there are some streaks where rollers push paper through the printer, and the toner lays on top of the paper: it doesnt soak in like ink. Brother says this printer can handle at most 43 pound bond paper, which is about 94 grams per meter square weight. This is VERY thin card stock. Using paper thats too thick might result in toner not sticking and causing problems over time (e.g. a laser printer could run hot and the rubber rollers could soften). This printer does have a nice front and rear tray for printing on special paper and keeping it relatively flat. As an artist, Ive printed line art on some special paper with the intent of using alcohol markers (e.g. Copics, Prismacolor) over the toner and that works great with no smears, as well as printing blue lines over which I would ink. Thick watercolor paper is an absolute no-go since its way too thick, especially Arches paper, or anything of that nature. So I would give this printer maybe two and a half or three stars. The wi-fi/wireless connectivity is very very very very disappointing, and really an ABOMINATION in this day and age where such connectivity is so ubiquitous. I would have thought the Brother engineers would have done a much better job of troubleshooting/fixing wireless issues than releasing the printer as it is to the general public. Maybe theyll fix the go to sleep/dying issue in a firmware update. I dont know.
aquaholic
1
This is the worst printer I have ever had over 30 years. It is supposed to connect to the wifi, but only worked when it was initially plugged in. After any idle time you have to unplug and plug in for it to be recognized, and now even that isnt working even though it says it is connected to the network. Also the direct connect feature does not work at all with Apple products. After trying for hours I just gave up. Finally, when it did connect, it took minutes for each page to download from my computer to the printer. Literally minutes. When finally downloaded it did print fine.
