Brother Monochrome Laser Printer, Compact Multifun

Brother for dependability and ease of Use
I actually purchased this for my 85 year old father. He does a lot of business even at his age, and wanted a printer and scanner to replace his separate stand alone units. But he’s VERY non-tech savvy. After years of fighting with inkjet All-in-One scams, I bought this until to get him taken care of. First, it’s a Brother Laser printer. It’s going to print for years with the original cartridge, although I did get him a spare. Second, it’s fast, it’s quiet, and it’ll just work.But best of all for him, it comes with a wired connection! I get it, and I know, wireless gives you a lot of options, but it’s also a point failure when networks drop, the printer falls off the network (rare, but happens), or any number of issues that are minor annoyances to the tech friendly, but are nightmares for those who aren’t. And explaining a WLAN setup from 600 miles away is a big no.So something that’s all but plug-and-play in 2024? This thing is the best. Shipped it, sent him the setup video, and he managed it himself and was scanning and printing without problems.

A solid multifunction laser printer
I wanted a multifunction laser printer because I don’t print that frequently, and while inkjet printers are generally less expensive, the total cost increases substantially with the ink you need to buy. I also don’t have a need to print in color or print photos, so this monochrome laser printer was both cost-effective and much better suited for occasional printing (laser toner doesn’t need to be replaced if you haven’t used it in a while). Overall, I think this was a good choice, with some caveats.The things I liked:The total cost of ownership for a laser printer like this is going to be much lower than a less expensive inkjet printer when you factor in the higher cost of the ink.The printer starts up quickly and warms up from its sleep state quickly. Some laser printers I’ve used in the past could take minutes to get back to a state where they’re ready to print.It prints very quickly. It’s probably the fastest printing laser printer I’ve owned, and I’ve had no problems so far with paper jams or the printer pulling multiple pages when printing.It supports full color scanning up to 1200 DPI and the scanner works with both the Brother iPrint&Scan app as well as the standard Windows Scan app (which is what I tend to use).It supports duplex printing which actually works. Over the years I’ve dealt with printers that claimed to support duplex printing, but it would end up being a hassle with frequent paper jams, etc. So far, this printer has handled it well. One thing to note is that duplex printing is the default, so if you want to print only on one side of the page, make sure you adjust the settings.The things to be aware of:If you’ve primarily used inkjet printers, you’ll notice it will be considerably louder. It’s not a particular defect of this printer, it’s just the nature of how they work. Something to be aware of, particularly if you have it sitting near you. That said, when it’s idle, it’s completely quiet.If you’re going to use it as a wireless printer, it’s going to require you to install an app on your phone and go through this entire routine, connecting your phone to the printer to configure the printer so it knows how to connect to your network.It’s likely that your printer will require a firmware update. Whenever you install the software, it will tell you if you need to do this. If so, they make the process more complicated than it needs to be, requiring you to find a “password” printed on a label on the rear of the printer, which they require you to change through a web interface before the update can be installed. This is definitely not a user-friendly experience, particularly for people who are not tech savvy.The things I do not like:None of the following issues are related to the hardware at all or how the printer itself works, or the drivers for the printer. It’s about the iPrint&Scan application and related software.The default installation of their software will inundate you with “special offers” and constant reminders about buying toner cartridges from them. If you pay close attention during the installation process, you can opt-out of some of this, but as we all know, most people just click OK through installers, and you’ll end up getting (very) large popup windows being displayed on your desktop.Installing their software creates a number of completely unnecessary startup and background services, particularly if you use it wirelessly (as most people would). One of those startup apps isn’t even used anymore by their software because its functionality was integrated with their main app, but still, they install it and launch it every time you boot the system.They also install this marketing app called “PowerENGAGE” that is supposed to “engage” with you (in other words, show popups to buy things from them). It’s installed as a background task that runs 4 times a day, and if you try to uninstall it, it will silently try to automatically reinstall itself. This is beyond obnoxious, and Brother needs to remove this completely.Another problem which would probably be invisible to most users, is a defect in their software which will cause the system event logs to be flooded with spurious error messages (at the rate of it reporting an error literally every second that the system is running). The only way to fix/prevent this is to edit the system registry. This is obviously bad and something they really need to fix.All of these software components I’ve mentioned can be disabled/deleted and it will have no negative affect on the actual functionality of the printer itself. It’s really nothing but bloatware which serves no real purpose for the end-user.Final thoughts:Overall, I think it’s a solid multifunction monochrome laser printer, sold for a very reasonable price. If you are comfortable with disabling startup tasks, changing system services and editing the registry, then all of the problems I’ve described above can be mitigated.If you are more of a novice with computers, then configuring the printer may be challenging and the problems I’ve listed above won’t prevent you from using the printer, but it can negatively affect system performance and will definitely annoy you.

ESTOU COM A IMPRESSORA PARADA SEM FUNCIONAR PORQUE A PLACA DE REDE NÃO FUNCIONA

Like all Brother printers, this one installed at my business in 15 minutes or less flawlessy. I really like it when tech works. This printer operates with native windows drivers and can be managed through the brother driver or Windows with no loss of performance. Operating costs are superb. We ordered an extra drum for only $78 good for 15,000 pages. TN30 Toner Cartridges ring in at a penny-pinching $39 a piece good for 1200 pages each so we ordered 4. They are not gonna go obsolete any time soon unlike our old Lexmark which we just retired due to no toner being available at $175 a non existent cartridge. My older HLL3290CDW also works flawlessly being shuttled between Windows and Linux. The DCP picked up our hidden network without effort. There is just a certain tedious nature to inputting network and key but once you get that done, the rest is history. Well done Brother Canada.