Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-6800 Laser Multifunction Printer, Scanner, Copier & Fax

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I've used mine for 4 months of constant office use and it's been to the shop once. It provides a good value for the money (and desk space) but has some important and needless annoyances and limitations that simply reflect lack of care on the part of Brother. Too bad.

While the fax, scanning, copying, and printing functions don't offer cutting edge resolution/speed, all are generally adequate for normal small-office needs, in my estimation. While it lacks a color printing capability, this was a good tradeoff for the better speed and economy of a laser for my purposes. It's not a particularly economical laser (due to small drum unit) but still costs a lot less to run than an ink-jet. If you do more than occasional printing/copying, it will quickly make up its slightly higher initial price through lower consumables costs.

Controls are somewhat complex just because it does so many things, but generally fairly logical. The 32-character LCD presents fairly helpful messages.

The printer's paper tray doesn't hold a lot, so you have to refill pretty frequently. This has not been a problem for me but be sure you have it in a place where you can easily reach the paper bin. It is necessary to be careful to remember to press the loading lever, and to be sure the paper stack is straight. Paper can jam in places that are very hard to get to, making it challenging to clear jams. It recovers gracefully from running out of paper.

The print software provides no help for duplexing (printing both sides). It can be done manually from applications such as Word or Acrobat that offer odd-even printing, or with some kinds of add-on software intended for making brochures. You need to be very careful, however, that the sheets have fully cooled from the first pass before inserting them for the second, and you have to anticipate that you may see some misfeeds even so. It's something I do sparingly.

The lid over the copier/scanner platen is hinged at the side and opens only about 60 degrees, which can be restrictive in some cases. You can get it to slide up a bit, but it's something of a trick.

On top of the lid is an automatic document feeder (ADF) so you can put a stack of up to 25 or so sheets in to be copied, faxed, or scanned. This is a useful feature that I use all the time, but it's also pretty frustrating. It's very prone to jamming and if you don't catch a jam instantly it can shred your input. It is also quite tricky to clear a jam, even if the sheet isn't shredded. (If it's not shredded by the mechanism, it may still be impossible to remove it intact.)

Scans and copies are stretched a little lengthwise and compressed just a bit widthwise. Note that even though the printer is strictly monochrome, the scanner is color. The scanning software is extremely basic and not adequate for serious graphics work. For OCR of documents (for which the ADF is nice) the scanner will work fine with the excellent ABBYY FineReader software package. What comes with it, however, is much less capable.

The print manual is useless and the electronic manual not much better. Both focus primarily on the fax functions. There's virtually nothing about the ADF and its tricks -- you're on your own there.

The ADF finally stopped working altogether -- it jammed on every sheet. I looked on the Brother Web site and could find nothing helpful. I sent them an e-mail and got an answer that addressed some of the ADF issues, but not what I was having trouble with. I called their phone help. Hold time was about 25 minutes (late afternoon -- the help operates normal weekday business hours, East Coast time). The person who answered seemed very, very poorly trained. It was apparent that she was entirely unfamiliar with the machine and was reading from a script. From the wrong part of the script (maybe there wasn't a right part) because she did not understand the difference between the printer paper feeder and the ADF. When I tried to point this out she became extremely defensive and unpleasant. No help from her whatever except that I finally got her to tell me where to find an authorized repair shop. They fixed the problem under warranty (and I presume charged Brother a hefty sum to do so). I would bet that I could have fixed it myself if Brother had provided adequate guidance in its manual or Web site, but they didn't.

If they had a decent manual and support I'd rate it 4/5 overall and 5/5 for value. But as it stands I can recommend it only if you are willing and able to put up with some unguided efforts at care and feeding, and have an authorized repair shop nearby for the problems you can't figure out on your own. You probably should figure that it won't last too long after the warranty runs out, since the first problem you can't figure out how to fix will be very costly to get help with. Don't count on Brother for anything at all, if my experience is any guide.

If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't buy this unit, or anything Brother for that matter. I bought it because I began working remotely from the office and needed, well, a fax, copier and scanner. I'm here to say, if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is. I see all of the other gleaming 5-star reviews and think, "wait until they experience their first forced toner change, lose a fax in the process and realize they've got to figure in an additional $90/year in toner expenses, (at least) for MODERATE use." That's the part the teenager at "MaxOfficeDepot" forgot to tell you about.

Fax & Copier: work great.

Laser Printer: reasonable quality for the price, although on the dark side, patterned and often with random dark lining. But my main complaint is that you can only print using the handful of fonts included in the MFC software, which pretty much renders the unit useless for most of my needs. My low-end Lexmark laser printer produces amazing results compared to this thing without the font problems.

Scanner: ever placed your photos on the laser copier at work and gotten those dark, fuzzy results? That's what you get here. Unless you're scanning black and white clip art and text, don't buy this expecting to scan color photos to email or to print on your color inkjet. Scanning takes forever and creates a digital image not far from garbage. I ended up buying a real scanner in the end.

Brother customer service: non-existent. I emailed them in June '02, and asked, "I just bought my MFC in February '02 and the original toner cartridge is still producing solid black, streak-less results, but the unit refuses to print until I change the cartridge." Two weeks later, their response was, "When did you put the cartridge in?" Apparently "February '02 and the original toner cartridge" was so coded and vague that they had to ponder over it for two weeks...

Finally, the whole reason why I'm bitter: the MFC has been programmed to CEASE FUNCTIONING when the unit "believes" it is out of toner--not if it's actually out of toner, only when it believes it is. I've only owned the unit for 10 months and already I'm on cartridge #3. On average, I print about 20 pages per week, extremely moderate office use if you ask me. And yes, if a printer is starting to produce grayed or streaked print outs, then it's time to change the toner cartridge. But this unit has never shown those tell-tale signs. This leads me to believe there is still ample toner left in those "empty" cartridges sitting in my office. Most importantly, I have never worked with a machine that completely CEASES OPERATION UNTIL YOU REPLACE THE CARTRIDGE, which it not only ridiculous, but unethical. I don't appreciate being forced, especially when the "final print out" before final shut-down is as solid and dark as the first. Somehow the unit marks the toner cartridge so that it knows "used" from "new", so don't plan on refilling any cartridges yourself using one of those needle & toner kits. You can coax about 30-40 extra print-outs from the unit by turning in on & off, opening and closing the unit door or removing & replacing the drum. But it'll eventually stop falling for those tricks and you have to replace the cartridge. I realize with laser printers, toner is more expensive than inkjet, but Brother charges on average $30 per replacement, (office depot $29, office max $30, staples, $32), and for a replacement that doesn't last more than 4-5 months. My Lexmark ran for over 2 years before needing a toner cartridge replacement ($60). I've also worked with Xanté, Apple and QMS laser printers with similar results, which is why I find this Brother so deplorable. And no, there aren't any better deals on the internet once you figure in shipping. No refurbished cartridges, either. The only promising lead is at inkfarm.com, where they offer generic-brand cartridges for $18 + $3.85 shipping. But given the attention Brother paid to its "Toner Low" aspect of this unit, I'm not sure I want to put a non-Brother cartridge in this thing. It might self-destruct!

For sale: slightly used MFC 6800.

I just bought the Brother MFC-6800 about two months ago for my mom. It met many of her requirements:

pros:

it has a flatbed scanner AND an automatic document feeder
it's a laser printer
it doesn't take up too much desk space
and at $..., it didn't cost an arm & a leg.

Ink cartridge lifespans are usually measured in hundreds of sheets while laser toner cartridges are measured in thousands. So for a lawyer who doesn't need color printing, a laser printer is both higher quality for black & white and far more cost effective. The Brother MFC-6800 replacement toner cartridges are available for as low as $.. (even cheaper than ink cartridges) and they last 2500 sheets. Laser printers are also generally quieter, and once they start printing a job, a little faster than inkjets.

While there are many multifunction laster printers, the ones with flatbed scanners are few, and even more rare with both the flatbed and auto document feeder. HP sells one for $.., and it's a foot taller than the Brother MFC-6800.

And in response to whoever said it's better to buy these items separately, ok, maybe. But if you're seriously cramped for space, on a budget, and don't really need the best scanner or fax machine, it's good enough. The Brother MFC-6800 is suprisingly compact for all its features. I was impressed.

Oh, and it's also one of the few to support PC faxing from OS 9. In the print dialoge, you can send the document as a print or fax job. That's sweet. Most of the others say "PC Faxing not available on Mac".

cons:

Although, having said all this, the negative of going with Brother is horribly poor documentation. Also, this is connected to a PowerMac 8600 with a VST FW/USB2 card. Communication between the Mac and the printer was painfully slow for both scanning and printing. And after an extension juggling marathon, I pinpointed it down to a conflict with the "Firewire Support" extension. While there aren't any FW devices currently connected to the Mac, this isn't a problem yet. But disabling that extension accellerated scanning & printing significantly, enough so that it convinced my mom not to return the printer.

The scanning software is on the weak and spartan side. Maybe it's because I'm used to more powerful software like Microtek's ScanWizard (great software, horrible support), that allows multiple scan zones each with their own criteria, but the PaperPort software for the MFC-6800 was just plain basic. The scan quality was fine, no problem there.

The scan button on the printer isn't supported on Macs, you have to initiate the scan command from the Mac itself (no big deal really). And I couldn't get the single touch F4 - F8 keys to do anything other than produce a "click" sound.

I'm still not sure if it came with any OCR software, but since the F4 - F8 keys around really doing anything, I have no way of testing that. I wish OCR software let you manually process images... maybe it does, I just haven't spent enough time with it yet.

Bottom line: with all its problems, this is the ONLY option available at its price point. So take it or leave it and pay hundreds more. My mom recently walked into a Staples to compare it to some newer products and the salesman told her to return it because all of the MFC-6800's functionality is on a single PC card. If one feature dies, the whole thing dies. Assuming this were true and the warranty did NOT cover it, again, it's the only option. Good or bad, this is the only Mac-compatible option, at that price, and that small.

I replaced a 7 year old reliable excellent Brother MFC with this machine. From the start I noticed it was missing many great features the ancient machine had: built in fax phone, second paper feeder tray for envelopes,fax auto redial,manuals, PC fax software showing fax status on PC. I was willing to live without these for the low price ($350 including ship from Brothermall.com) in order to upgrade to these features - an automatic document feeder, flatbed scanner/copier, and a working scanner. I think I made a mistake. I should have kept the old machine or bought a different brand. The two things Brother excelled at - laser printing and PC faxing - are missing in this machine. The laser problems are hardware related. The printed paper curls a lot - won't lay flat. The printer drum failed prematurely at 3764 pages - the manual gave a drum life of 8000-20,000 pages. The PC fax problem is with the software. Brother no longer uses its own excellent PC fax software that gave you on-screen transmission status. It replaced it with Paper Port software that provides no way to track the status of PC faxes. Add all that to these other annoying problems. The ADF periodically jams and chews paper (never happened in 7 years on old machine). It was extremely difficult and time consuming to get it to work with Windows XP. It took several calls to Brother, drivers downloaded from its web site that did not work, two mailed CD-rom drivers, and a USB connection to get all features operating again on an XP machine like they did on Windows 98.

In my opinion Brother laser and MFC quality has substantially dropped in the last ten years, except for an improved scanner, and they don't seem to care. On the clearly defective drum unit, which was still within the 1 year machine defect warranty (but 5 months past the drum warranty), Brother would only give me half off a new drum. On the paper curling Brother would not honor the exchange warranty. It's not just my machine. Other web reviewers have noted the paper curl, low drum life, and ADF jams. My advice is dont' buy this model and read all reviews on any other Brother MFC after it's been out a year before buying.

EDIT POSTSCRIPT 11/11/03: A good response from Brother customer service has changed my mind about buying Brother in the future. A complaint letter to Brother manager of customer service within two weeks got me an exchange for a new machine (same model) plus a free toner and print drum. I don't think it's a machine defect - but rather a toner/print drum manufacturing defect. But I took it anyway just to see. So my bottom line has changed. Don't buy this model, but buy Brother if the reviews of that model are good.

We brought this machine because our old Brother MFC4550's drum died and it would have cost about $100+ to replace it. Also, we needed a copy machine for book and other copying (not just flat sheets that can be fed through the MFC4550) and were tired of running out of memory on print jobs. Increasing the 4550's 1/2 mb memory to 2 mb would be another $120. It didn't make sense to spend $250 trying to fix/improve and old machine when another $200 would get us a better one with a flat bed copier!

We had the MFC4550 for over 5 years and were very happy with it, except for the limited memory. The laser copies were sharp and it was incredibly reliable. The new MFC6800 makes sharper copies and the 8 mb of standard memory (vs. 1/2 mb for the 4500) is incredible!

I have a home office so the 6800 is on all the time for faxes. It also serves as our network printer so everyone (4 of us) is printing to it all the time. We've had it for over 6 months and it hasn't fail yet (the MFC4550 performed the same for over 5 years so this one should be just as reliable). Our only complaint would be the small toner cartridges (only 2,000 copies), but you can't beat the 6800's price, copy/print quality, features and reliability.

Note: Because we use this as a network printer, we do not use the machine as a scanner so have no comment on its scanning features.

The product decides when the toner cartridge must be replaced & quits working until it is replaced, although toner is still left in the cartridge & the last print is fine. Most laser printers leave it up to the user to decide when to replace the toner cartridge, which is necessary when non-printed white streaks appear on the prints. A warning that the toner is low would be ok, but forced replacement is frustrating. Brother knows about this & has a topic on the help page that says "how to disable" this. When you eventually wind your way to the answer, it says "disabling is not possible."

Separately, I had a dark blob appear on my prints. Calling the customer support and waiting 30 minutes for someone to help me, I was led thru a complicatd 10 minute process to clean the drum. After that did not work the agent said I needed a new drum. I bought a new drum (about $200) and no difference. I called again and waited another 30 minutes, but got an agent that knew how to fix the problem. I just needed to clean an interior part. 1 minute & it works just fine, except I am out 1 hour of my time and $200. Very frustrating trying to get any customer support.

I bought it last summer. It recently generates white stripes across the document. After trying to troubleshoot myselt with the manual, I contacted Customer Service. Letting me clean some parts inside, they determined that Drum Unit becomes bad and needs to be replaced.
They could print the current usage from my machine. The machine shows that the total number of pages printed from this drum unit is 5,144 pages. The manual says that Drum Unit Life Expectancy is up to 20,000 pages at 20 pages per job and up to 8,000 pages at 1 page per job. I expect that it should be good through at least 15,000 pages. I also feel that this drum unit is defective from production and the problem cannot be detected until 5,144 pages. I think that they should replace the drum unit with a warranty.
They said that drum unit has a warranty of 90 days. They offered 50% credit out of their own full retail price of [$$$], whereas many online store has a selling price of around [$$$]. [...].
Now, my machine works fine with new drum. However, I am feeling deceived out of their manual and warranty policy. This is my first time trying Brother brand and I will not buy their machine again.

I was going to buy this just for the stand alone fax but after I installed and set up the whole package, I've turned it into my default printer. I've had multi function machines before but this is far and away the best. Maybe it's because it's a laser, but it prints and copies fast. The fax setup was a breeze as was installation. Output is very good. In short, a winner. True, it doesn't have color, but I have little need for that. I will admit I haven't tried the scanner yet, but the excellent fax, copy function and printer function make it worth the money.

The following commentary is a review of my experience with the Brother MFC-6800. Your experience may vary depending upon your usage style of electronics products.

I purchased the Brother MFC-6800 and I am impressed by having very good faxing, scanning, copying and printing in a single unit--all for <$300. I'd buy another Brother multi-function product in a heart-beat. It has already paid for itself. This is the first Brother product

The Brother MFC-6800. If you are short on office space this unit replaces a flatbed and sheet-feeding scanner, printer, fax machine, and copier. Toner comes in very compact tube-like units making them easy to store. It takes 90 seconds to change the toner cartridge. The text print quality is very good, and graphics are good. Scanning capability is very good, and the sheet feeding option is a gem of a feature to have. Fax speed is limited at 14.4Kbps, slow by today's standards of 33.6Kbps. Photocopying is good. Printing and copy quality get you within 95% of the high priced HP units.

I have also been at companies using HP all-in-one laser solutions with good results. HP LaserJet 3030 does a fine job, but it will cost you more to buy it and operate it over time IMHO.

Economy: Very good quality given the price (<$300). Drum allegedly needs replacement at 20,000 sheets but only $115. Toner lasts me over 2,000 sheets at $24.51. That's 1.1 cents per sheet for toner versus an HP which costs $75 but lasts perhaps 3,000 sheets. Even factoring in a drum change for the Brother every 20,000 sheets, you would save $100 to $150 with the Brother versus an HP. So anyone wanting to eek out another 100 pages of printing is really being a piker when they are already getting a good deal. Look at PC Mag, PC World, and Consumer Reports, each confirms the cost per page. Do the math, it's not fuzzy math, but the real deal. The Brother MFC-6800 will cost you far less to purchase up-front, and cost you far less to operate over its lifetime versus an HP.

Build quality: Excellent for home office use. If you break anything on this it's likely you may not take care of your equipment. I found this printer ot be rock-solid and quite sturdy for a home office user.

Laser printer: Very good quality for text, good for graphics. I am my own duplexer, flipping over the paper and passing it through a 2nd time.

Scanner: You'll spend more with HP just to get a sheet-feeding scanner. It's very handy to have both flatbed and sheet-fed scanning capability in the same unit. Scan all your tax documents and store them electronically. That pays for itself right there.

Fax: The quality is very good, and the ability to scan so much into memory saves time during the transmission process. However, the latest fax machines deploy a 33.6Kbps data transmission rate, far faster than the Brother's 14.4Kbps.

Photocopying: Expect very good photocopy quality. I've had good results both with half-tone and text copying.

Duty cycle: The most I have printed on the printer is 100 pages, so I cannot assert the duty cycle of the product beyond that. Others may have comments more fulfilling for this attribute.

Summing it up: If you want great bang for the buck, buy the Brother MFC-6800. I'd buy this printer all over again given the same criteria.

More economical than an inkjet, but do a price comparison of other machines, factoring in the separate costs of both the toner and drum. Brother's own specs. are deceiving, leading one to believe that a 20,000 page count for the drum means that one actually can print approx. 20,000 pages, when in fact that estimate is based on triple spacing -- when was the last time you did triple space printing? I also had the expectation that the toner would last for somewhat longer than it does - Brother should consider manufacturing high yield toners. Over the long run, if one is doing relatively large output printing, it is more cost efficient to purchase an HP.

Approx. halfway into the life of the toner, the "toner low indication" light appears, so there is obviously a problem with the toner sensor.

Sometimes the machine does not pick up faxes (I use the distinctive ring feature), although clearly people are trying to fax a document to me. I am not sure if this is a failing of the distinctive ring feature or the machine generally.

The automatic feeder function is generally unreliable if you try to fax or copy more than one page at a time; for instance, I have tried faxing/copying upwards of 10 pages at a time, and sometimes it will only fax/copy 5-6 of the 10 pages.

Sometimes the print command is unresponsive, and it will involve either re-sending the print command, or shutting off the MFC altogether. Considering the time required for warm-up, this can be annoying.

I could never get the scanner software to work, even after calling in techs to ensure proper installation, so have not used this function.

If the machine is within 5 feet of your work station, you will have difficulty hearing anyone on a phone.

Sometimes it would be useful to have legal (flatbed) photocopying capability.

Also, there must be a defective hinge, because the cover has always felt ready to fall off.

When taking the machine in for repairs, most repair shops will provide you with a courtesy fax machine, without distinctive ring, while the MFC is undergoing the typical 5-days in the repair shop. The problem with that however is you may not have a separate phone line for the courtesy fax. In other words, this defeats the purpose in having the distinctive ring feature in the first place, because you are either going to have to install another phone line or have to rent an MFC - the costs of which will overcome the initial purchase price of the Brother MFC. Unless, of course, you can close your office for a week and don't care if you miss any faxes.

My warranty has yet to expire, but I've already purchased an HP MFC to replace this product. The Brother MFC6800 probably suffices for most home and very small office purposes (overall, the printer works very well and produces quality output), but if you have high demands, don't want to in the long run spend a lot of money on toner, and don't want to stand over the machine feeding paper into the sheet feeder one by one, then keep looking for something more suitable for your needs. (I can't endorse the HP MFC just yet as I have not put it to the test, but I've done the cost comparison and it will be less costly for supplies.)