Customer Reviews

Brother DCP-8085dn Digital Copier and Laser Printer w/Full Duplex Capability and Networking

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Contrary to one of the erroneous reviews, the Brother 8085DN DOES support duplex scanning and copying. That is why you pay $50-75 more than the 8080DN, which only does duplex printing.

We have the 8080DN and this series of Brother printers is FANTASTIC -- an amazingly powerful business printer for the price of a personal printer. These things are well built, meant for a busy workgroup/small business setting. My wife runs a small nonprofit and has to print board packets and this thing just cranks them out. It will happily print two-sided packets and collate them -- it will go hours of printing without a hiccup. Duplex printing is much slower than one sided printing -- DUH, that is true of ANY printer. You're not going to get high duplex speed until you get into the corporate printers.

We have also owned the Canon ImageClass duplexing printer. The Canons are terrific, very trouble free personal printer. But there is a HUGE catch -- their $65 toner cartridge will only go about 1,000 pages.

The biggest selling point for this printer -- the Brother 8000 series can use a high yield cartridge (about $85, or less if you feel comfortable using a remanufacture) that is rated at a whopping 8000 pages!!!

We do a lot of printing, so I researched extensively, and Brother is in a class by itself for cartridge capacity and low print costs for this class of printer. I highly recommend anything in the 8000 series.

The only reason you might not want this printer for a home office is that it is BIG. But you can't get performance like this in anything smaller that I know of.

Other good things:

1) Energy Star compliant. In sleep mode this printer only draws 18 watts to keep the drum warm. You'd be surprised how many printers eat 40 or 50 watts in standby mode, which will cost you $30 or $40 over a year's time. Energy Star means first page speed is not quite as good as the little HPs, but it's still only like 12 seconds.

2) This printer has TRUE networking capability -- no need for print server. That means the only connection you need is ethernet from your router to the printer. Install drivers, and every computer on the network can control this printer completely -- that means scanning as well. I can't tell you how much better that is than having a USB printer that has to be shared. Brother seems to have high quality drivers -- we've connected XP, Vista and Win 7 without a hitch.

To sum up, everything about this printer speaks of quality and durability. It is just incredible what you can get for $300-$350 these days.

After reading and re-reading several reviews, I chose to purchase the Brother DCP-8085dn for my home network: 3 macs and 1 vista machine. It works flawlessly: it duplex prints, scans, AND copies. Truly, an all in one. Installation for the macs was easy. I had all three networked (!) within 10 minutes. Total. The Vista machine took considerably longer. (I blame Vista, not Brother).

Word of note for you mac users: double check your CPU usage after you install the software. One of the installed drivers (which isn't necessary for full function - I proved that last night) chews up CPU cycles and battery life on your laptop. Reference this Apple Support Discussion for easy solution (just delete it): [...]

I love this printer. I wish I'd bought it sooner.

I purchased my Digital Copier and Laser Printer for use in my home office. It turned out to be even better than I expected for the price. This is not one of those flimsy built printers that you find connected to home computers. This is a serious piece of office equipment and built quite sturdy. The print quality is excellent; sharp and non-smearing. Most multi-purpose paper seems to work in this machine. I like all the functions and features and this is top-notch equipment and I have used and tried many brands and styles of equipment in my 45 year career working in business offices. I would recommend to anyone. One special note is the multi-purpose feeder tray is at the back of the printer and would not be easily accessible up against a wall.

I have been using the DCP-8085dn at home for about 4 weeks and am extremely happy with its performance. I was mainly looking for a decent scanner with duplexing capability to scan the family records we have to PDF (which is a mountain of paper). I was also fed up with inkjet printers because we don't print much and with our past printers, the ink cartridges (usually nearly full) would dry up between printing. The black&white (gray-scale) laser printer does a great job for home use.

A great additional feature is the networking capability. Since our home was pre-wired for a home network, although I am new to networking of any kind, I found the installation and setup easy to follow and it went pretty much without a hitch. I have a 2 TB Western Digital network storage device (NAS) attached to the network. We use a router that also offers wireless connections. So now the entire family can print directly to the printer from any device (with a printing capability) connected to the home network. Also, the DCP-8085dn can be set up to scan to a folder on the network. I chose to set up a scans folder on the NAS, so I don't have to use a PC to make a scan. I can walk up to the DCP-8085dn and place a stack of papers in the document feeder, hit a few buttons to access presets that I set up, hit the green start button and walk away. When done I can have image files or PDF's waiting for me in the scans folder.

A few notes:

(1) Even though it might look like one from the picture, this isn't one of those huge Ricoh or Canon copier/scanners like one might find in an office setting that can scan 100 sheets front and back in a matter of a couple minutes at a decent DPI. It is smaller and slower. But for home use and for the price, I think it's perfectly acceptable.

(2) The DCP-8085dn does not have a fax capability. But instead you get full duplex capability when copying, scanning and printing. Since I never send or receive faxes at home, this wasn't even a consideration for me.

(3) DUPLEX SCANNING NOTE: ALTHOUGH THE SCANNING GLASS IS LARGE ENOUGH TO SCAN LEGAL DOCUMENTS (8.5" x 14"), WHEN USING THE DOCUMENT FEEDER IN DUPLEX MODE, YOU CAN'T SCAN DOCUMENTS MUCH LARGER THAN LETTER SIZED (8.5" x 11"). IF YOU PLAN TO SCAN A DOCUMENT WITH PAGES LONGER THAN 11", YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES: USE THE DOCUMENT FEEDER BUT ONLY SCAN ONE-SIDED, THEN REDO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOCUMENT ONE-SIDED OR DO IT MANUALLY ON THE FLATBED. THIS WAS ACTUALLY A SLIGHT DISAPPOINTMENT FOR ME, SINCE THE DCP-8085dn CAN HANDLE LENGTHY MULTI-PAGE LEGAL DOCUMENTS WITHOUT A PROBLEM MANUALLY. Although I'm not certain, I suspect that the issue has to do with the available space the document feeder has to flip a page over. Any thing up to 11" in length can be flipped over, but anything longer can't. If you decide to scan a double-sided document one side at a time, you will need software to edit PDF pages to put them in order. This has not been a deal breaker for me, as most documents I have a letter sized or smaller. But it might not be suitable for someone looking to scan loads of legal sized documents.

(4) SCAN QUALITY NOTE: ALTHOUGH THE DOCUMENT FEEDER'S QUALITY IS ACCEPTABLE FOR MY ARCHIVING PURPOSES, IT TENDS TO WARP THE IMAGE SLIGHTLY. SCANNED PAGES (VIA THE DOCUMENT FEEDER) TEND TO HAVE A CURVE OR BOW DOWN THE PAGE. IF I WANT A REALLY GOOD SCAN I HAVE TO MANUALLY SCAN USING THE FLATBED. WHEN USING THE FLATBED, I DON'T GET THE SAME ISSUE WITH THE CURVE/BOW. SO, IF YOU NEED AN EXACT COPY WITHOUT DISTORTION, YOU'LL NEED TO MANUALLY SCAN AND NOT USE THE DOCUMENT FEEDER. For my purposes, the convenience of the document feeder outweighs the acceptable slight distortion it produces over standing at that the DCP-8085dn and manually scanning documents.

Over all, I am extremely pleased with the DCP-8085dn. I have been using the scanner like crazy working on eliminating that mountain of paper. It's slow progress, but I'm getting there thanks to the DCP-8085dn.

I recommend the DCP-8085dn to anyone looking for a home-use scanner with duplexing capabilities (except as noted above). It's a good printer and copier, too. Furthermore, the networking is a bonus that you should take advantage of if you can.

Both myself and my macbook love this printer. Best purchase in quite some time! Part of me wishes I bought the color version, but I just use my color ink jet for those instances.

I love this copier. Maybe my old one, a single page Canon, was just too primitive. Big upgrade for me.

I've had the DCP-8085DN for a couple of days. I'm very pleased with the performance. My only disappointment is with the multipurpose tray which I had anticipated using for envelopes. The multipurpose tray is described has having a capacity of 50 sheets--in use you learn that this is the capacity for plain paper--it only will accept about 3 envelopes. Using the multipurpose tray is also a bit of a hassle--rear & front doors must be lowered while in use. I considered buying the optional 2nd tray for use with envelopes; then discovered in the manual these words, "envelopes can only be fed from the multipurpose tray." By the way, the one #10 envelope that I tried printing, crinkled severely. Otherwise I am more than pleased.

I purchased the DCP-8085DN as a stand alone copier for a church to print bulletins. When deciding to purchase I compared several makes and models. The Brother DCP-8085DN had the features I wanted (primarily direct print and duplex) for a decent price. So far I have printed about 500 pages duplex. Only misfeed was on two occasions the 2nd tray picked up two sheets, I just need to be sure to fan the paper better. Just note that it does not have fax capabilities like many multi-function printers (if you need fax see its near twin the MFC-8480DN similar as this one but 1 yr warranty and auto sheet feeder does not scan duplex).

Pros:
- Copies and prints fast - 32ppm (one catch see below)
- Reduces and enlarges
- Auto duplex - prints both sides
- Direct print from USB thumb drive (only PDF & JPEG files)
- 3 year limited warranty
- High yield toner - rated 8,000 pages at 5% coverage

Cons:
- May need to take to factory service center to add connector for optional 2nd paper tray (see my review on the LT5300)
- When using direct print from USB thumb drive for multiple copies, it processes the document from the drive for each copy. I print 100 copies of 2 pages double sided for bulletins. It takes 20 seconds for each copy to print: 15 seconds to process and 5 to print both sides. For me this is a big design oversight and why it get 4 starts and not 5.

Bottom line: fast copier/printer with many features at a good price. I will recommend to others just be aware of the issues noted since they will not affect everyone.

I bought one of these as a refurb about 3 years ago. What attracted me was the cheap toner, network, and duplex capabilities.

Having owned it for all these years, the only thing that is really bad about it is that it causes the lights to dim when printing. I am still on my original toner that came with it. It jams on occasion as even the most expensive PSC devices do, but it gives you text instructions on the LCD display for how to resolve the jam which are usually pretty good.

On windows, the install is dead easy. This printer works great with CUPS in network mode so you don't have to tie up a computer just to act as a print server. Brother has a dedicated Linux driver and instruction site which is very helpful. However, Linux setup is a bit more involved. I have been scanning and printing over the network to/from this printer using Ubuntu for years, and I couldn't be happier.

This printer needs a name because it's become one of the family. I run a day care out of my home and have a child in college,one starting high school, and one special needs. This copier takes the worry out of all our family printing needs...is it gonna work right? yes! Is it gonna have enough ink? Yes! Is my project gonna come out fast? Yes! If it cleaned my house and cooked our meals we would be rich. Can you tell I like my printer. Wifes sometimes listen to your husbands, I'm so glad I did. Worth every penny you spend on this machine!