Brother MFC-3820CN Color Inkjet Multifunction

by Brother

Product Details

Product Manual [3.78mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 17.7 x 14.2 inches ; 26.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 35 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000CA16D
• Item model number: MFC-3820CN
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 1, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Brother MFC-3820CN is an all-in-one color printer, color copier, color fax machine, and color scanner, perfect for the home office or small business where space is at a premium. With a maximum 4,800 x 1,200 optimized print resolution, Micro Piezo ink jet technology, and 5-picoliter ink droplet size, prints are bright, vivid, and true-to-life. Print speeds are as fast as 14 ppm for black and 12 ppm for color. The MFC-3820CN has a standard input capacity of 100 sheets, a 50-sheet output capacity, and also comes with a 20-page automatic document feeder.

The flatbed scanner provides up to 600 x 2,400 dpi maximum resolution and 36-bit color (256 levels of gray), with four one-touch buttons (scan to image, e-mail, OCR, file, and media card--Windows only) to help automate frequent tasks. The included software bundle helps you achieve the best scans and includes an OCR (optical character recognition) tool for scanning documents directly to text files. Copy speeds are as fast as 12 cpm for black and 10 cpm for color, while up to 99 copies can be made at once, freeing up your time for other tasks. Copies can be reduced or enlarged from 25% to 400% in 1% increments.

The fax machine has a 3-second per page transmission speed and is capable of color faxing. It utilizes MH, MR, MMR, and JPEG (for color fax) fax coding methods. A fax memory of up to 480 pages ensures that you don't miss important faxes when you run out of paper, while the 100-entry speed dial, fax forwarding, and paging features provide added convenience. The remote retrieval function allows you to access your fax machine from outside the office, while a 150-location fax broadcasting feature sends multiple faxes from a single original.

The MFC-3820CN has both USB 2.0 and Ethernet ports and also directly accepts Memory Stick, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and Secure Digital memory cards for convenient photo printing. You can access the media cards over a network. The MFC-3829CN has a footprint of 17.6 by 17.8 inches and weighs 23.1 pounds. Compatible with both Mac and PC, it also comes backed by a one-year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
MFC-3820CN, automatic document feeder, user documentation, power cord

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing product for the price, April 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Brother MFC-3820CN Color Inkjet Multifunction (Office Product)

For the money I could not find another MF device that even came close to this unit.

Printing, Fax, Scanning, and copying are all as expected with output quality on par with other units in the $150-$400 range. However, it is its advanced functions that really make it shine.

First, the MFC has a built in 10/100baseT server. Not just a print server but a server that will support both local network and internet based printing, faxing, and even FTP access to memory cards. Want to share your digital photos; just put your CF, SD, etc. card in the printer and have your friends FTP in and copy the files. Or, use a memory card to store other files that you want to make accessable via FTP.

You can also do a lot of other interesting things like auto-forward faxes, store and forward on demand, broadcast, and so on. In all cases a Fax can be sent via normal phone line or via email depending on the 'address' you enter.

One very cool feature if you have broadband is that by opening port 515 on your home router/firewall you can print to the Brother MFC from anyplace you have internet access. Print from a hotel, airport, friends house, work (as long as port 515 is not blocked), etc. Very cool.

Also, the 20 sheet ADF is great for making copies or faxing larger documents while the flat bed scanner allows copy/fax of bound books, etc.

One the down side:
- The unit is not small; allow enough space for it
- The paper tray only holds ~100 sheets; a common issue with consumer printers
- Memory is limited at 16MB; don't expect to store tons of complex documents
- Color faxing ONLY works if you print the Fax when it arrives; you can't store a color fax and print it later or forward it to another Fax
- You have to install all 4 ink carts. for the printer to work and if one cart. is out of ink the printer stops printing; e.g. if your Yellow is out and you want to print a B&W fax you are out of luck
- Unlike HP units, the Bother has fixed print heads so if you have a failure you can't just replace the cart.; your have to replace the printer
- You can't change the IP Ports that the printer uses for its various network functions; e.g. FTP is fixed at 21, printing is fixed at 515. It would have been nice for security reasons to be able to change these to a user-defined value.

All in all this is a great all-in-one unit that has some great features that no other unit it its class has. For the price you can't go wrong!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Value, January 3, 2004

By 

johngalt - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brother MFC-3820CN Color Inkjet Multifunction (Office Product)

I bought this machine about a week ago and have used almost all of its features. I am very impressed with the quality, user interface, and versatility. It's pretty easy to program and the user manual is pretty good, and they also have an 800 number for support which I called. Their support was pretty good, although the person I spoke with seemed to need a different job.

I agree with the previous post that the scanning software could be better, but most programs have scanner acquisition built in so it's not a big deal. But I will say that even though the machine has a special button to press for scanning, there isn't a section in the user's manual about scanning. Must have been an oversight. But it was not that difficult to figure out. I was totally amazed at how great the print quality was when I printed photos from a Kodak CD that I had made when I processed prints. The prints I made were superior to the photographs in that they were much more vibrant and alive than the photos. I used Epson Glossy Photo Paper which I got at a warehouse club.

I have only used the doc feeder a few times. This was one of the reasons why I chose this machine because the feeder was built better than the competition and it's a real time-saver. But it has worked flawlessly in the few times I've used it. Faxing works great and you can even keep the machine off and it will turn itself on when it senses a fax coming in. Copying is very good too. Print quality is very good, but it's not laser quality; it's definitely an inkjet. I have a laser as well, so this does not bother me. I have not used the network feature or the interface for digital camera media.

I did a lot of research on the other products and came very close to buying a similar HP costing about a hundred dollars more. But I am glad I didn't. This is an amazing machine for the very reasonable price. It's well built, has a nice fit and finish and works very well. It could be a little smaller, and I also hear that it's good to cover so that dust doesn't enter through the paper tray, drying the rollers and interfering with paper uptake. And sometimes it can be a little slow in faxing or printing very high quality photos. Don't believe the number of pages per minute either, since that's based on a page with only 5% filled. But those are not deal breakers if you use the machine for what it is intended -- it's not a machine to get if you expect to print a hundred color-saturated pages or photos a day -- it's a light-medium duty machine. Overall, I am extremely happy with my purchase. Hopefully it lasts as long as my last Brother fax of over 12 years -- which is still going strong.

One last thing. Don't underestimate the value to having separate ink cartridges like the Brother. Other companies like HP put all of the colors in one ink cartridge requiring that you buy the entire cartridge when one color runs dry. The Brother has 4 different cartridges assuring that you get your money's worth from each. This is one of the dirty little secrets to color printers -- they sell you the printer cheaply and then you pay through the nose for ink for the printer's lifetime.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buy a Different Machine Than This One!, November 21, 2004

By 

The Scottsdale Observer (the United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brother MFC-3820CN Color Inkjet Multifunction (Office Product)

I had always thought that Brother manufactured good products over the years from what I had seen and heard, so I finally decided to give them a try. But this turned out to be a big mistake...

To begin with, what's good about this machine is that the normal functions it was dsigned to do for you work fine. The machine prints, copies, scans, and faxes at an acceptable level. But the quality of the color when printing is not as good as compared with my $45.00 Epson C40UX printer that someone gave me as a gift.

The real problem with this machine lies in how fast it uses ink and the fact that it shuts down all functions whenever one of the four ink cartridges needs replacing.

I've had the machine for about 8 months now and at most I've printed maybe 100-150 pages with it. And all the pages have been 100% black ink only. Still, over this time I've had to replace the black ink and color ink cartridges two times since I purchased the machine. For some reason this machine goes through its color ink cartridges even when you're printing only requires black ink. I basically use this machine for incoming faxes and occasional copies only, and during most weeks I don't even print a single page with it.

In addition, when the machine indicates that you need to replace one of the ink cartridges, it stops all printing, copying, and fax functions until you replace that particular cartridge! So if people are faxing you something important, the fax will be quietly stored in the machine until you replace the ink cartridge. This is extremely disappointing that you aren't given the option of printing out the fax if you'd like to before you replace the ink cartridge. Plus, you may be waiting for an important fax not even knowing that it's already arrived because you see that no fax paper has been printed out from the machine.

Because of this and the fact that my Epson printer finally stopped working, a few days ago I upgraded to a HP Photosmart 2610 all-in-one, and so far it performs beautifully. But of course, the proof in how it really performs will come in the months ahead after I've had a chance to spend some more time with it.

But with respect to the Brother MFC-3820CN all-in-one, I really recommend that you look around and find a machine that doesn't have the problems that I've just described to you. There are so many other machines on the market in the same price range that don't have these same problems, and you'll easily find a much more reliable machine that will also save you tons of money on replacing your ink cartridges.