Brother MFC-7840W Laser Multifunction Center
by Brother Printer
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List Price: Our Price: $309.99 You Save: $140.00 (31%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $150.00 (click here) Category: Office Product See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Brother MFC-7840W Laser Multifunction Center
Customer Review: Got tired of your Ink drying up in your Ink Jet Printer?
Summary: 5 Stars
I use my home printer very sparingly, at times I even go without using it for months - but when I am in real need of it, the printer either complaints about the Ink cartridge or does a real awful job at printing. So I decided that I had enough with Ink jets and started shopping around for a Laser preferably All-In-Ones (for space saving). This printer came highly recommended by friends/co-workers and the reviews really piqued my interest. I wasn't disappointed when I got it. Very compact in dimensions and elegant looking, my better-half was very much satisfied. Installation was a breeze, I was surprised that even wireless set up was very intuitive. I have a WPA enabled wireless network, the printer immediately found my network and prompted me to select encryption and subsequently the pass-phrase (which I used to generate my PSK(Pre Shared Key)). You have to assign a Node name and an IP address (Static or Auto/DHCP) for it if you plan to use as a network printer (Set up will guide you). I could have used it with a wired connection, since it sits next to my desktop, but I couldn't find any noticeable difference in performance in both the modes and decided against it - why bother with the wire( Again - better-half is very much satisfied). Functionally its amazing for printing, copying and faxing - Neat and crisp print and very fast in churning out pages too (though I didn't clock it), than my previous Ink Jet, where I would have to wait for minutes to get this much quality printout. Copying was fun because of the auto-document feeder, you don't have to stand around swapping the pages - it was like using the copier at work. Though I would have liked a little more optical scanning resolution and scanning speed is a little slower for high resolution setting, but for your personal use its more than enough, at least for me it was. Also since it is on the network, I can connect to the printer from my laptop too - by using the node name that I had earlier setup. I purchased it when the price was $285, but couple of weeks later the price dropped to its current price at $215 - and Amazon readily refunded me the difference when contacted.Customer Review: Excellent AOI
Summary: 4 Stars
I spent months trying to find a good quality all in one at a good price. I had a HP2600n color laser printer that was starting to leak toner onto the page and so I decided rather than trying to fix it, I would be better served replacing. At the same time I wanted a new scanner. The canon scanner I had was excellent, however it did not have a paper feeder so that was a must for me.
During my problems with my old HP laser printer, I had purchased several HP monochrome laser printers (all less than $200) and returned them due to their less than stellar print quality. Consequently, I thought that if I was going to with HP for an AIO, I would be paying around $600 for a quality machine. I then came across this Brother printer on sale through amazon at $225. Based on the good reviews I thought that I would buy it.
The printer itself is light and compact. I have several Macs and installation was quick and easy through the wireless connection. Thus far I have only used the copy, scan and print functions.
Printing - the print quality is excellent. My only complaint is that the paper tends to curl at the top when it comes out of the printer. I do not know if that is a function of cheap paper I am using or the printer itself.
Copying - Very fast, no complaints.
Scanning - The scanner itself is excellent, however the software that comes with it is lousy. The Presto Page Manager 7.18 that comes bundled frequently crashes and is very temperamental. Fortunately, I can get most of what I need done through the Brother Control Center which is far better. However, once in a while it too crashes and I will have to turning everything off and restart in order to get it back on. The Control Center seems to have serious issues doing OCR on documents over 1 page, it causes the computer to hang. The OCR quality, when it works, is very good.
Overall, I would recommend this all in one.
Pros:
Print quality
Copy speed
Easy setup
Good scan quality
Price
Build
Cons:
Scanning software
Customer Review: Very pleased with the operation of this Multi-Function Machine
Summary: 4 Stars
Once setup, this multi-function machine operates flawlessly, turning out excellent hard copy, digital scans, and sending and receiving faxes from both a USB connected PC running XP and a wireless networked iBook running Mac 10.5. The setup is not trivial and the Quick Start Guide, User Manual and keypad interface leave much to be improved upon. Nevertheless, the Brother support is quite good and I found them very helpful when I called with fax issues. I especially like the fact that upon faxing in my product registration, I received an acknowledgement fax which let me troubleshoot the incoming fax issues.
I run with an Ooma Hub, old-style over a cable based ISP and had no troubles sending faxes, provided I ignored Ooma's advice to prefix my call with *99. We have Ooma premier and hence have two phone numbers. I have dedicated one to the fax. To receive a fax on this number, I had to use long-long ring pattern which can be set up from your online Ooma account. With this arrangement, we can receive voice mail as usual and faxes on the second line. Once you make the Ooma setting changes, remember to cycle the power on the hub and scout in order to let the device pull the new settings from the server.
We use an Airport Express to connect our iBook to the internet. I had to download new firmware for the device from the Apple site to get it to print from the Mac wirelessly. I had to change the network security settings using the Mac Airport Utility from WPA to WPA/WPA2 which uses AES encryption. Knowing these simple facts will save you some setup time.
The software accompanying this Brother MFC produces first quality scanned color PDF docs with ease. It is also convenient to be able to fax and copy from the front panel without having to turn on the computer. Likewise, incoming faxes are received and printed when the computers are not powered on.
I highly recommend this monochrome multi-function office suite for the very sweet price of $249 including free shipping and no CA sales tax!
Customer Review: Great multifunction for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
We have two of these units and the larger Brother color multifunction. They are solid, dependable, reasonably fast, fairly inexpensive to operate and we have not have any problems with any of the units. They are used heavily in an office environment.
The best (in my opinion) small laser black and white printer is the HP P2050 which by itself sells for about $275. That printer has a startup time for the first printed page after being idle for 1 hour, of only about 3 seconds. From a cold start, the Brother multifunction takes about 25 seconds. Subsequent pages print very quickly on the Brother, but not quite as quickly as on the HP. The noise during printing is similar for both with the Brother perhaps a bit quieter. During idle, in an office setting, you don't notice the fan noise at all. In a bedroom, the noise is low but definitely noticeable. The fan shuts off after 30 seconds on the HP and after about 10 minutes on the Brother, so if it is in the bedroom and you want to go to sleep, don't print that page. Still, compared to most other printers it is very quiet and reasonably fast.
The scanner part of the Brother multifunction is excellent. It is about half as fast as the Fujitsu scanner but that is the best stand alone scanner you can but and costs almost twice as much as this multifunction. We have never had a jam in the sheet feeder and the flat bed part gives you additional flexibility the Fujitsu does not. Scanned images are very crisp even in low resolution settings and the scanner can factor out color paper backgrounds very effectively. The copy function works with the flatbed or sheet feeder and is quick as well.
The fax works well and we have not had any problems, but have not used this feature very much. Overall, the Brother laser multifunction is not quite as good as best in class stand alone units but is priced lower than these and gives you all the features in one unit. It is easy to use and to live with. We never had to open the manual.
Customer Review: Quiet, fairly fast, cheap plastic, flimsy, slow scan, bad manual feed
Summary: 3 Stars
I replaced a Samsung multi-function laser with very similar specs with this one (Samsung was pretty buggy and the scanner feed gave out after 4 years).
I've been using this printer for about a month.
GOOD: Fast (printing), Quiet. Fast to print first page. Wireless is nice (easy to configure). Easy installation (on Windows XP). Small compared to other MFCs. Flexible scanning options with customizable presets.
BAD: Manual feeding is TERRIBLE. I print checks and envelopes and manual feeding is the pits. It's easy for the paper to go in wrong, so you have to futz with it to get it to feed. Even if you feed it in straight, it often comes out printed askew. The manual feeder has a plastic cover that just snapped off after a couple weeks. Very flimsy.
Scanning is slow. I think it's about half the speed of my Samsung. Even at black and white 200dpi it's slower than a $40 fax machine. I don't know if that's because I'm going wireless instead of wired or ??. Forget about full color scans (even smaller ones). We're talking half an hour or more. I scan most stuff to black and white (not even gray scale) because of the slow scanning speed. I'll have to try it wired. (Of course, there's a cheaper version of this printer that's wired, so then that'd be the better choice).
The LCD display on the printer is impossible to read unless you're at the right height/angle. I put the printer under my desk and cannot read it looking down from a chair. I'm going to get it a little shelf to fix that. I shouldn't have to.
The printing quality is fine so far. The document feeder works smoothly so far. I don't use the fax, so ... no comment.
I can live with the slow scanning. The manual feed issues are going to be a pain in the butt forever. Or as long as this thing lives. If the internals are built to the same quality standard as the exterior, I don't expect that to be too long.