Brother MFC9325CW Wireless Color Printer Save 16% off

Brother MFC9325CW Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax
  • Print, Copy, Scan & Fax
  • Prints up to 19ppm in color and black
  • Wireless (802.11b/g) and Ethernet network interfaces
  • High-quality output at up to 600 x 2400 dpi
  • USB Direct Interface

The Positives:

1The machine appears solid and well-built.

2Networking set-up was easy and all of the machine''s functions can be accessed from any networked computer.

3The machine can work as a stand alone Fax without having a computer on.

4Printed text is very crip even in small print.

5The quality of the copies are very good.

6The printing cartridges are very easy to replace.

7The machine is relatively quiet.

8The machine came with great instuctions.

9The software that came with the machine is intuitive to use.

The Negatives:

1Fairly frequently, the machine indictates that there is a paper jam when one tries to use the manual feed. Upon checking the machine, one finds no paper jam.

2In order to remove a paper jam, all 4 toner cartridges need to be removed. They come out pretty easily, but nevertheless it is an unnecessary hassle. (The top has to be opened completely in order for one to be able to pull out a cartridge.)

3There has been an issue in the reviews that the printer could potentially cause a fire by paper jammed in the machine reaching a high temprature and burning.

4Even if one opens the back flap to "prevent" paper folds when feeding and printing envelopes, they come out wrinkled.

5Accessing and opening the back flap and putting a couple of tabs down in the back of the machine in order to print envelopes is a hassle. If you print a lot of envelopes you might want to look at other printers.

5The machine cannot print to the edge of the paper in any direction.

6The instructions do not show any photo papers being recommended for use whereas they show other paper types.

7Photos come out looking a bit coarse.

8No duplex printing.

OVERALL:

A good machine for a good price that has its limitations.

Buy Brother MFC9325CW Wireless Color Printer Now

My printer arrived today via UPS (free shipping, courtesy of Amazon). I lucked out and bought the unit when it was on sale at $329! Actully, Brother, HP and other manufacturers should give these machines away for free because the cost of replacing the toners and drums will far exceed by several multiples the purchase price of the machine over the life of the machine.

It was very easy to set up the machine and "pair" it to my wireless network - you do need a USB cable to "pair" the machine to your computer and the network; the pairing took less than a minute.

I''ve always had HP machines; oh, how I miss my HP color AIO that died after seven (7) years of use. The specs of this Brother is better than my departed HP but the color on the HP seemed better (but the unit cost nearly $800 back then). I''ll have to play with the color setting and use color laser paper going forward.

Printing from my iPhone 4 was a breeze and the photos I printed came out pretty good.

I''m amazed at being able to print from my laptop wirelessly. I have Vonage so I have to keep the machine close to the Vonage adepter for faxing. My home office is actually upstairs and the printer is hidden next to couch in the living room downstairs. I''m going to use my HP LaserJet P1006 for everyday black and white printing.

The HP printers no longer look good; they look bulky and plain ugly. This Brother machine looks attractive and elegant -like the new BMW 3 series :-)

It looks like the price for this Brother went back up close to the MSRP. Even at that price, this machine is worth it.

Setting the time/date on the machine (for faxing) is not as easy as my departed HP AIO. I have to read the user''s guide to figure that out.

I hope the scanner works well and easily -that''s next on my to do list: learn to use that function.

Update February 29, 2012

I ordered 512 MB of additional memory from 1 Arch Computer through Amazon; I should get it in a few days. I wish the machine came with more than 64 MB of memory.

The user''s guides do not do an adequate job of explaining how to use the scannner; I may have to call Brother customer service for this (as I had to for my departed AIO HP). I couldn''t find an option to turn scanned documents into PDF docs that would go straight to my laptop.

Maybe it''s Vonage but I could not fax a 20 page document; I got an insufficient memory error message even though I used the "color copy" to send the fax.

I''m hoping the additional 512 MB of memory will solve my faxing problem.

On the plus side, the color photos I printed came out very nice.

Update March 10, 2012

The fax works very nicely even on Vonage. The extra RAM I added helps a lot. The machine scans the documents into memory and then sends the entire document -very fast. Great for large document faxing.

As for printing photos, the quality of the print depends on the camera that was used to take the photo. Photos that were taken with high quality digital cameras come out very nice; while photos taken with my iPhone 4 come out a shade dark and not as crisp.

Next task to master -learning to use the scanner.

I love it that I can print wirelessly from my laptop, iPhone and iPad 2 -this novelty has not worn off yet.

Update: June 2012

I''m happy with the fax, print and copy functions. I''m still trying to figure out how to get the scan function to scan in PDF mode; I followed the MFG''s instructions and set it to PDF but it still scans in JPG mode and the PDF image/file shows up as blank files.

Read Best Reviews of Brother MFC9325CW Wireless Color Printer Here

This color laser printer was a new model on the market at the time (January 2012) and only one sample (at full retail price) was available locally at one of the three office supplies stores around. I remember that I could not find it as "available" in other stores'' websites. But somehow, Amazon did have it --with a $100 discount! Plus 2-day shipping (through Amazon Prime membership)! I ordered it and a FedEx van delivered it on time as promised. Impressive service from Amazon and FedEx!

This Brother printer MFC9325CW is working flawlessly so far in our small office after one month of use, and everyone just seems to be happy with it and expects it to print each time! The initial setup was easy, the performance is excellent, the colors are great, the finished output of printed reports are admired by user/recipients. No paper jam yet. It is a very good replacement to our last laser printer (from another manufacturer) that lasted more than 5 years.

Want Brother MFC9325CW Wireless Color Printer Discount?

We all know how the usual printer scam works. Printer companies offer a low price for their hardware to lock you into buying their highly profitable ink and toner cartridges. Then, their printers complain about low ink and toner levels long before the cartridge is really empty to try to encourage even greater use of expensive consumables. Thus, a savvy user waits until printer quality noticeably degrades. Usually, pulling out the cartridge and shaking it a bit improves performance for a little while, extending the cartridge lifetime. Finally, the cartridge is well and truly empty and it''s time for a replacement.

Brother has developed an innovative and extortionate wrinkle. Not content to let the user decide when the cartridge actually needs replacement, my Brother MFC-9325CW printer locks up and refuses to print until the allegedly empty cartridge is replaced. To add insult to injury, the printer even refuses to print black and white until the user replaces a reportedly empty color cartridge.

After much online searching, I found a write-up at helpowl.com that explains how to reset the toner indicator:

"Push the button on the front of the printer to open the cartridge door.

Don''t remove the cartridges.

Push the Clear/Back button to bring up a reset menu. There are 9 different toner functions (for simplicity, three K''s, three C''s, three M''s, and three Y''s).

For each of these nine functions in turn, push the O.K. button and then push it again to indicate `Reset''. After a few seconds, it will say `Accepted'' and will then display a message that the cover is open.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each of the 9 toner functions.

When finished, close the door and the status bar will be reset to normal with no error message."

By resetting the toner alert in this manner, you can squeeze the last bit of life out of the toner cartridge. Brother sure works hard to make you replace cartridges before they''re actually dead.

Overall, the Brother printer has worked well, and I am otherwise satisfied with its performance. However, I am outraged at the extent to which this Brother printer that refuses to print unless you buy a new toner cartridge, even when there''s life left in the old one. The reset process was hard to find and seemingly designed to deter all but the most determined user. I''m further appalled that the printer refuses to print black and white when the black toner level is fine and it''s a color toner cartridge that is allegedly low.

Thus I''m awarding only one star, and I will be avoiding Brother products in the future.

Save 16% off

I''ve only owned the printer for a total of 6 hours, so my review of the printer''s abilities will be short...

Print quality: Excellent (for what I need). Its quick, the quality of the images/text is wonderful (better than my 3 year old Lexmark Inkjet)

Scan quality: Excellent (again, for what I''m looking for). I scanned some artwork from my 2 year old and it looks great. The colors are vibrant and the scanned image looks true to the original.

I haven''t used the fax... and probably won''t anytime soon.

Now, on to setup. Geeze. I am so thankful that I have some system admin experience otherwise there is no way I would have made it through the process. It took nearly two hours! I ran through the Quick Start guide with no issues. The printer showed that it connected via wireless and should be good to go so I installed the drivers (from the CD) and attempted to run my first print job. Printer Status: Offline. Huh?

So, I did some digging. I had to change my IP (manually using the printer controls) from Auto to Static. I then had to create a new Port using the IP address (rather than the name) and change the protocol to raw. I had to set the scanner to use the IP rather than the printer name as well.

Really? This is expected out of the box. I have a simple home network this should not have been so difficult.

Bottom line, I''m still glad I got this machine but I would warn others that you might have to dig deeper than you''re used to and/or comfortable with in order to bring the printer on-line.

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