Brother MFC-9840CDW Laser Multifunction Center Save 50% off

• Multi-function device offers laser printing, copying, faxing, and scanning
• Built-in wireless 802.11b/g and wired Ethernet connections for easy networking
• Prints at maximum 21 ppm in black and white and color
• Scans at optical resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi at 48-bit color depth
• Measures 20.9 x 20.5 x 21 inches (WxHxD)

I have waited many many years for the perfect all in one COLOR LASER....and this is it + more! I bought mine from a local store and have had it about a week. It comes in a huge box, but don''t worry, this MFC is large but not too large compared to the other Brother mono laser all-in-ones (of which I have owned three over the years). The print quality is EXCELLENT and very fast for full color (21 pages per minute). My only initial concern was that it creased envelopes when printing on envelopes......but after consulting the manual there are fuser tension adjustment switches that solves that for perfect envelope printing (Settings, A, B and Envelope). I had compared many all-in-one color laser machines for many years (including recent ones from Xerox and HP). I was surprised that HP hadn''t come out with a great, feature rich one yet. Brother beat HP to the punch and it is a knockout for sure. I am replacing a higher end Minolta color laser with flatbed scanner, a Brother MFC mono, and an HP mono workhorse with this ONE MFC-9840CDW!!! I am very very picky with print quality but this one is great! Bonus features are built-in duplex scanning, duplex printing, and wireless network capability! The replacement supply costs are also very reasonable and lower than most of the other color laser brands. Brother truly has a winner on its hand with the MFC-9840CDW!!! Thank you Brother....I LOVE IT!

Buy Brother MFC-9840CDW Laser Multifunction Center Now

My wife is an em elementary school teacher, and she gets limited numbers of copies for each term. She also has a great deal of worksheets and other papers that take up a lot of room and make finding a particular worksheet very hard. We came up with a plan: All of her documents would be scanned into a PDF with management software, and she would be able to make copies for her classroom when she ran out at work. We wanted a color laser printer with network scanning and duplexing and had looked at all the different solutions but were bummed to find that many of the scanners only supported printing from Apple computers and not scanning to them. Some had the options to scan to e-mail, but the documentation on these features were very limited.

After looking around at an HP model and a Canon model we decided to look at what Brother had to offer. We were pleased when we saw the specs and features on this model. The best feature was its Mac support which was very extensive. In fact, this was the only model in our search that had equal support for both Mac computers and Windows computers.

I found that the software on the Mac and its Windows counterparts were written fairly well. On the Macs that run 10.5 we had to get an updated TWAIN driver for scanner control, but that was the only small issue we had. You can walk up to the scanner, scan to the computer in the other room over WiFi or even save a scan to your Flash drive by plugging it directly into the front. It is very handy. The scan quality was on par with what I expected. I wouldn''t use it for high-end photo scanning, but an occasional family picture scan here or there, especially for web distribution will be just fine with it.

The print quality was also very nice. Even on cheaper paper the colors were vibrant and not splotchy at all. Text was crisp and print times were more than acceptable. I was getting about 20ppm both in color and black and white once the unit was warmed up. Slightly slower than the 21ppm claim, but the pages were also more than 5% covered which is likely where they get that number.

Faxing is somewhat convoluted compared to other all-in-one devices. After a few blank test faxes though, the steps were easy enough to remember and it does a superb job for those occasional fax jobs that we require.

Pros:

*Great Mac and Windows Support

*Software is easy to use and works well

*Scanning quality is very high

*Many scanning options including direct to flash drive

*Great color printing

*Great B&W printing

*Wireless networking is very nice and works reasonably well

*Toner reasonably priced

*Real duplexing for scanning and printing

Cons:

*Faxing function is slightly convoluted

*Scan to email doesn''t seem to work with Gmail or Google Apps domains and the required authentication schemes

*Software and drivers don''t appear to be downloadable from Brother''s website, so hold onto those CDs that come with it

*All networking functions are off by default

*Some features lack thorough documentation and require a certain level of trial and error mixed with technical skill to complete successfully

*Color scanning can be slightly time consuming, especially over the wireless network to a computer

Overall thoughts:

Overall this printer was worth every penny. Hundreds cheaper than similar models, and it provides great Mac support. For simple printing from a Mac, no software or drivers needed to be installed. The software was only for scanning and other advanced features. My wife has scanned in hundreds of pages already. I must say, I truly love this printer.

Read Best Reviews of Brother MFC-9840CDW Laser Multifunction Center Here

I just got this machine to replace two others a month ago in my home office an HP inkjet all-in-one 6310xi, and a Brother laser printer HL-1870n.

This new unit is superior in just about every way.

The print quality is much higher than on the HP. In B&W it is similar to the old brother laser.

The print speed is out of this world, especially for color. The inkjet could take minutes per page for letter-size photo prints. This one doesn''t seem to take any longer than for other prints, amazingly ! This is no doubt thanks to its 128 MB of memory. I was thinking about upgrading the RAM, but there just isn''t any need to do that at all !

Copies are also spectacular, just as fast as any photocopier. The HP all-in-one could take several minutes per page in the highest quality in color, and typically at least a minute even for high-quality black & white. And of course the quality is much better.

Scanning speed is also great. It is really measured in pages per minute, not minutes per page.

The ADF duplex scanning is invaluable.

The bundled software (Paperport) is also very reliable and far superior to the bloated crap that came with the HP.

Despite its size, this unit actually saves office space compared to having two separate inkjet color and black & white laser units.

Photo prints are very good. I have noticed some yellowing compared to the inkjet prints. But I am confident it''s possible to adjust this in software and make the photo prints just as good as the inkjet. I just haven''t had time to fiddle with it yet.

The unit is not perfect, but nearly so. There are a couple things that I wish were improved :

The ADF is limited to A4/letter size. For legal size documents, you must use the glass scanner. This is my biggest regret about the machine. If I could I would give 4.99 stars because of it instead of 5.

It weighs 85 lbs, actually 115 lbs with all the packaging. With the packaging, it was too large to fit through my stairs. I had to remove it all first. And if I didn''t have a roommate, I would not have been able to bring it to the 2nd floor. I wish there was a printer with all these features at less than 50 lbs packaged. Or perhaps Brother could deliver it in 2 separate parts to assembler (let''s say, printer unit and scanner unit) in 2 smaller boxes, so one person alone could move it and set it up.

It doesn''t work with glossy inkjet photo paper. That paper just melts and half the sheets come out pink. I had to sell all my Costco photo paper with the HP inkjet, and buy new special laser photo paper (HP branded) that worked great. I wish I had known about this requirement before the purchase.

Want Brother MFC-9840CDW Laser Multifunction Center Discount?

So many good things were already said. I just want to add a few things I learned while using the product over the last few months:

Only one job can happen at the same time. While you print you cannot scan or fax no matter how much memory you have.

Reviews often state that the printer has only medium color printing quality. The printer is great but the PCL driver is not. Use the Postscript driver instead, which is a little bit slower, and you get results, which I would say are similar to HP. The difference is amazing.

Scanning works perfectly. I use it to do editing on print-outs and then scan it in, and send it back to the publisher. I also use it to archive hardcopy documents. It is very fast with 400 DPI b/w scanning. The feeder pulls the paper sometimes not totally straight.

You can use standard notebook memory to increase memory. It eats old 100 Mhz SO-DIMM in up to 512MB size.

It takes a while to warm-up. Both when printing and scanning. It makes the light flicker when it warms up. It works well on a shared 15A circuit so.

I love the iFAX feature. I can send a fax, have the printer convert it to a TIFF, and send it directly out via a SMTP server without needing a extra computer. I use for sending stuff to an Oracle ERP archiving system. (It can also convert to PDF.)

It also can scan and send a document to FTP or via the Control Center to a PC or save to local USB flash. You can remote control the functions of the printer via pre-sets on the Control Center app.

It faxes and copies in b/w and color. Quality of copies is good and very fast when you use the document feeder. It appears to be faster then the small copy machines at my local copy shop.

I love that the printer both has a duplex document feeder and can also prints duplex (or scans, faxs, copies duplex).

Consumables are more expensive than for instance in a HP laser printer. However, the purchasing price of the Brother is unbeatable.

Bottom line is that this product is as good as it gets in a multi-functional printer. After using it for a couple of months I am asking myself how I ever could have lived with out it. No more trips to the copy shop and savings for express mail.

Save 50% off

These seem to be great machines when they work. Unfortunately, ours doesn''t. The machine generates random vertical streaks of yellow and cyan across printed pages. Solid colors are often printed as blotchy and uneven. Brother tech support has acknowledged that they are having these type of problems with this particular model. We''ve tried changing print cartridges (twice) and the problem still exists.

It''s now been 6 weeks since we first reported the problem and still no resolution from Brother. Escalations have been met with promises of call backs followed by silence. Emails to support go unanswered. It appears that Brother products and support are hits and misses. In this particular case, all misses.