Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-5440CN Network Inkjet Printer, Scanner, Copier, and Fax

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

This is an excellent printer/scanner/fax for the money. I had purchased this as a replacement to an extremely problematic HP 5110.

Install: Installation was extremely easy. Just follow the directions and everything works within about 30 minutes. I really can't stress enough how easy it was to setup this printer. Whether you set it up with a standard USB connection or ethernet/network, the software does everything for you and the software install only takes around 5 minutes.

Software: The software is really simple and easy to use. The downside to this is that it is somewhat too simple. For advanced users that want more options and customizability, they wont find it here. Also, having the preset scan buttons is a little annoying if you like to change your scan options a lot.

I should also note that you can scan/copy things using either your computer or the buttons on the unit. This is very very smooth and allows you do be able to scan things without having to navigate to the ControlCenter on your PC. If you set up the printer on the network it will also even allow you to pick which PC to send the files to.

Printer: Print quality is right on for this price range. This is not a photo printer, but nevertheless printing onto photo quality paper isnt bad. But at the prices you can get digital photos developed at Walmart or Target nowadays, it doesnt really matter.

Scanner: Scan quality is great, scans up to 6000x1200 DPI. Even 300x300 DPI looks great.

Fax: Unfortunately, I cannot comment on this as I have no reason to fax anyone. But if the scan/print quality is any indication, this would work seamlessly as well.

Ink: This printer uses individual C/M/Y/K cartridges. So when one color runs out, you only have to replace that color. The size of the ink cartridges is pretty big, too, so they last longer. The downside to this is that the print head is not replaceable since they are not part of the print cartridges. So you pretty much have to replace the entire printer when it goes out.

Networking: Another GREAT reason to buy this product is that is comes with built-in networking. This is completely unheard of in other brands in this price range and greatly adds to the value of this printer. You can set it up for wireless use or wire it directly to your router/hub. You can also scan images in and send it to any computer on your network ... directly from the printer!

Price: This is in the $ 100-150 price range, which is more or less the low range for AIO printers. In this range, you pretty much have to choose from Lexmark, HP and Brother. Lexmark printers in this range are really cheap and their ink cartridges are overpriced. HP is very problematic, have smaller ink cartridges and are also overpriced. Overall, Brother is the best buy.

Overall: I'm in love. Not only is this the best printer for the money, but this is a GREAT printer/scanner PERIOD. After this experience all my future printers will be Brother brand. I will never buy Lexmark/HP/etc ever again.

First of all, there are few, or maybe no other printers out there that you can just hook up to your network and just start using. Mind you, if you have a print server (Usually if bought separate this is about sixty to seventy dollars) this is not an issue, but many print servers only make the print part of the multifunction machine useful and do not include the scanner for network availability. To me this was a big thing, as I did not want to have this printer in the same room with my computer.

This is a so-so printer. By now you have probably all seen in other reviews that once this printer's head wears out it is toast, there is no replacing it. Even if the printer were shot you would still have a fax and scanner to use. Printers by then will be even cheaper. I had a Brother MFC7150C prior to this and the replaceable head wore out in a about 2 years with really heavy use. This is the oddity with Brother, the head is resident in the printer and not in the replaceable cartridge. They say this makes the cartridges cheaper, but I don't find that it makes that much of a difference in the price, especially, if you have to foot the bill for a a hundred dollar head. Mind you this is probably why they opted not to make this printer have a replaceable one.

Sturdyness of this printer is a bit light, the paper cartridge seems frail and is somewhat prone to jamming.

The software was a bit buggy and I had to get updates on the web right away. I installed this in a network where the computers used Window XP and 2000. There was a little bit of messing around, but it quickly got to working.

Given the price it seems like a good buy and I paid a little more than the current price listed here. The print quality isn't that crisp but okay for reference and college level documents. If you want it for a professional presentation this may not be good enough. However one thing to consider, is given the fact this is not a Picture quality printer, you might also own a picture quality printer and any professional documents could be made on that one, so this printer's quality wouldn't be an issue.

Another reason I bought this printer is that the scanner has both a flatbed and feed option. This is cool if you want to scan an article or recipe in a book as well as copy or fax loose paper. My old Brother had only the feed mechanism and this is not useful if you want to scan a bulkier item. However, if you only have a flat bed and have lets say 10 documents to scan, a flatbed can be a chore. This is the best of both worlds.

All in all a good buy considering the price.

I'm not exactly sure why the "Spotlight" reviews for this printer are so positive. Take everyone else's word for it - This printer sucks. I made the mistake of buying 5440 and the 5840 for my business. I can deal with all the paper jams just fine. But the one thing that makes these printers terrible is how alarmingly often you will have to buy printer cartridges for this machine. Make no mistake - this is a money pit.

Don't fall for that nonsense about "saving money because you can buy each color individually." This printer uses the color cartridges even when you're printing in B&W! AND all the cartridges slowly deplete over time even when you haven't printed anything at all!

And how does Brother add insult to injury? If ANY of the cartridges runs out of ink, it is absolutely impossible to perform any functions until you have purchased a new cartridge and replaced it. Want to send a fax? Too bad, because you're out of Yellow ink! Want to print a single sheet in B&W? Don't even try it until you've bought another Magenta!

My 5840 died on me after about 5 months. The paper feeder just stopped working, and despite the fact that it was well within the warranty period, I didn't even bother getting it fixed. I didn't WANT it to be working. It was costing me that much money. Do not buy this printer.

I got old, first-generation flatbed and sheetfed scanners (6-8 years old) clogging up my desktop, so I started out looking for an inexpensive replacement. After extensive research, I came down on two AIO choices--Brother MFC-5440 and HP Officejet 5510.

I like the Brother better because it's more solidly built. The HP should print better photos, but these days you can just buy a cheap high-quality photo printer. Since I already have a photo printer, so photo printing capability is not my priority. Don't take me wrong. The brother still prints fairly good photos.

As I said, scanning is my priority. I was not disappointed. The Brother scans much faster than my old flatbed and the images are far better than my sheetfed. I like the 35 page ADF; the HP Officejet has only a 20 page ADF. What's more, the Brother comes with PaperPort, which I've been using for a long time. The HP Officejet 5510 doesn't come with it, and I'm not even sure whether PaperPort works with it at all.

Lastly, at this price range, you can't get an AIO with network capability.

In a word, I'm satisfied with the Brother MFC-5440CN. It's well-built and well-designed. This is my second Brother home office product I own. While they might not excel in photo printing, overall I think they make good solid office products.

First off, I'd just like to say that the review by G. Long "letranger66" below shouldn't even be here. It's a MFC-3820CN, NOT a MFC-5440CN; he should write the review for that product, not this one because the inkjet technology is TWO complete generation apart.

The MFC-5440CN uses the latest cartridge design by brother, the LC-51 series, and the ink cartridges fit into a futuristic area on the southeast corner of the printer, completely apart from the actual print head. The printer then sucks the ink through a tubing system to the print head, so the cartridges are always stationary. The LC41 series is similar to the LC31 series of the MFC-3820CN this poor fellow had... DON'T buy any brother inkjets that use the LC-41 or LC-31 cartridge. I had the unfortunate experience of owning a MFC-3220C that used the LC-41 cartridge. The printer broke and was replaced some 6 times. The service depot said that the print heads used in these older printers were very very finicky and will clog up just like that if you use 3rd party inks, and in many cases, even it's own ink! Thankfully, it seems Brother has finally improved their print heads, also increasing their max print resolutions as well.

Anyways... Back to this printer.

It prints with decent quality, not the fastest and not the slowest either. But, it has the ease of use. I've yet to see any other network printer as easy to use as this one, and allow the full multifunction capabilities through the network.

In addition, Brother has excellent drivers for both Windows and Macintosh, both of which run perfectly in my network with this printer (Yes! Brother's drivers are CUPS for Macs!!!). Software included for Windows is my favorite, Scansoft Paperport, which usually costs around 90 dollars retail. Software for mac though is a bit lacking, Presto pagemanager 4 is extremely dated and slow.

In all, this printer won't disappoint for those of you that want a simple to use and setup printer, the installation wizard does everything for you. Ink cartridges are also decently priced and last around 3 months for our family (we print about 5 pages a day). I have been using 3rd party inks with this printer with no problems as well. Photo prints look decent as well, not the best, but passable for the casual printer.

****One gigantic note though! When you're installing the drivers with windows based computer. DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE WHILE THE INSTALLER IS RUNNING!!!! For some strange reason, brother designed the installer to automatically click through those "windows has auto-detected a device" window and fill in the correct values for them. If you run the installer and are doing something else like browsing the internet like I did, the installer will not click on those buttons and the process will just freeze, forcing you to start from square one.

This is probably one of the best values out there in a MFC. It connects to your home network and enables all the functions (scan, print, FAX) through your network and this unit. Most others only will yet you print or require an expensive add on card.

Another important aspect of this uint is the fact that it's multi-platform and works seemlessly with PC's and Mac's (and I beleive there is a Linux driver as well). This was the most important thing for me. Since booting Windows from my house 3 years ago, I have been a 100% Mac household (and not regretted it 1 bit - it's the best thing you can do), I wanted to ensure that I would be able to use all the functions on the Mac. In the past, this has not been an issue with printers, as they pretty much all support Macs. But with MFC's, many support only printing and not the advanced features. Not with Brother - this thing works flawlessly on Macs.

And I have a work supplied Windows laptop and even that works perfectly with this unit.

Installation was very simple - just plug in the Etnernet cord to my hub and install the software. Just a warning to Tiger users - skip the CD and download straight from Brother. The CD in my box was old and did not support Tiger. Apple's Zero-config Bonjour technology found the printer immediately and installed it. After that I was printing immediately. They even have a Dashboard Widget that monitors ink levels and offers you a glimpse of the status panel.

On Windows it was similarly as easy - I used the CD and things just installed. Although it installs an annoying tray icon at startup (as do most Windows programs now), but that was easy to disable without any functionality loss.

The printer on this is of very good quality - maybe a notch or 2 below my previous Canons and Epsons, but it is still a high quality printer. I would suggest using Injket or Multifunction paper with this uint for best results. Prints using regular copy paper were OK, nothing spectacular. The speed, like all injkets is a tad overrated as the printer can bog down when printing graphics or photos. But overall, it does a great job and prints are legibile and look fine.

Scanning is great. The inlcuded Document feeder will let you insert a stack of 20-30 pages and hit scan and pick what computer you want them to go to. Then they will show up in a folder on your computer. It's that simple. You can pick different formats - PDF, TIFF, multipage TIFF, JPEG, etc and have a good scan.

The photocopy function is equally impressive - you can stack 20-30 pages in it and it will copy all them at a decent clip. Works as advertised.

FAXing is cool as well. Since this unit has a built in FAX machine, you can either scan from the ADF or send a FAX from your computer. From the computer it's as simple as setting the Brother printer and telling it to FAX instead of print. Add the phone #'s and you are all set. It will send the FAX to the machine and it will FAX it out to you. I successfully faxed a 75 page document from my Powerbook though this unit and it took 32 minutes to get to the destination.

This unit can also multitask - you can be scanning and print to the printer. It's a little slow, but it works. You can also FAX out and print as well.

Ink usage seems to be great. Cartridges are relatively cheap and last for 500 pages. There is a high yeild black that will give you 900 pages. Their estimates seem to be close to the mark.

Some may complain about the cleaning cycle on this printer. Not sure what the fuss is about if you get the life Brother says (500 pages) who cares? As long as it keeps the printer ready to print, that's all that matters - most inkjets on the market today have this same cleaning ritual. My Epsons did/do it. My previous Canon i560 does it. It's just a fact of life with inkjets. And the cleaning does use all the colors - again, a fact with inkjets. It's not some consperacy among the printer manufacturers or any other nonsense, just the way ink works. They are not like a ballpoint pen where you throw it out when the ink drys up.

Also, the other complaint is if the printer is out of a color it won't print. Don't know what other inkjets the user's have had, but they are all like that - my Canon won't print black text if the colors are out, my Epson won't and I think HP's won't either. Same with Color Lasers - it's a fact of life.

If you primarily need this for a FAX or B&W documents and are bothered by this, there are other Brother MFC's that are black and white only.

All in all, this is an AWESOME machine for the price, and one of those things I'm glad I bought. Like my Macs, it just works all the time.

This would probably be adequate for very low-volume usage. The paper tray doesn't hold very much at a time. The construction is a little flimsy. The machine itself has performed well, but BEWARE... if you have any kind of significant volume, you will pay through the nose on the cartridges because you have to replace the color cartridges whether you use them or not. We are a high-volume department which receives faxes throughout the day. We use this as a black-and-white fax machine only, we do NOT use the color function at all, yet every single time we replace the black cartridge, within the next 3-5 days we have to replace the magenta and cyan!! (We have not yet had to replace the yellow.) In the three months we have had this machine, we have had to replace 10 black, 8 cyan, and 7 magenta cartridges -- almost $400 worth in all -- despite NEVER using the color feature at all. So where's the cyan and magenta ink going??! Apparently, Brother has worked out a way to make it use magenta and cyan along with the black, even if you're not using the color feature.

That's the big caveat of this machine. And you must replace the empty magenta and cyan cartridges when prompted, or else the machine will not work. Based on these figures we will spend $1600 this year on cartridges for this machine. That's not a bargain and I would much rather have our old fax-film fax machine back or a plain b/w one that uses toner.

I have always bought HP printers in the past, because I thought they were the best overall quality.

I had a PSC model which was always problematic connecting to my Mac. Many times it would not recognize my Mac so printing was hit or miss.

My next one i bought was an HP 5110 multifuction (with a sheet feeder, no flatbed). It was pretty good, but had printer errors. the printer kept displaying a paper jam and would not respond to anything i tried. the physical moving parts seemed to still work, but i could no longer use it. That was only 15 mos or so of heavy use, so it was a disappointment but i learned to not invest real money into printers, as they seem to be rather disposable.

I had never before considered Brother; i felt that they were a cheaper line like Lexmark or something, even if they seemed to give more features for the price.

However with this MFC 5440, I think the build quality of the printer is far better than the HP 5510 multifunction which is comparable. The HP seemed flimsy on the flatbed parts. The brother seems sturdier overall.

The software installation was very easy, much faster than installing the large HP software. I have Mac OSX. at first it seemed as if installation didn't quite finish, but the printer was still recognized and everything was set to print. And I was able to print my first pages immediately. That was not the case with HP software.

The only issue i see is that the copy function is super slow, especially if using normal or best quality. the draft mode is decently fast, so you really should stick to that mode for copying. The printing is pretty fast in normal mode. I think paper quality definitely will help the crispness of the print. i mainly print for my own reference, so I'm not picky, but if you need to make more professional documents, you need a quality paperstock. I haven't scanned yet.

And I don't have a home network, but it's nice to know how useful this will prove if i add any computers.

I think for the price, this is a definite YES. even if it breaks in a year or two, it won't seem like such a money drain. all the sales people seem to push brothers at Staples, mainly due to the low cost of replacing the indiv. ink cartridges.

This printer wastes ink and shuts down when ink runs low. You can't even send a fax if you run out of one of the inks. Also, mine shows that the ink is empty when there is actually ink left.

I recommend a printer from a vendor that is working to help you and your business, noe one that *seems* to be focused on getting you to buy un-needed ink.

You can, however, put black electrical tape over part of the cartridge to continue printing and faxing when it claims ink cartridges are empty.

This printer seems great at first, but will annoy you to death in the long term. The main issues are:

1) -NOTHING- on the printer works once the printer is out of ink. You can't send faxes, scan, or print B+W if any one of the ink colors is out.

2) The printer believes ink cartridges are empty long before they are. I have just removed a yellow cartridge with at least 1/3 of the ink left which the printer refuses to use.

3) The printer uses LOTS of ink to clean itself several times a day.

4) Print quality degrades over time- look for choppy/streaky blacks in the first 6 months.

5) Network support is completely undocumented and poorly supported.

6) Technical support, even web-based, is horrible and useless.

Do not buy this printer.