Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-7840W Laser Multifunction Center

5 star:		(139)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

I spent about a week researching for just the right multi-function printer for my needs. I own a small business with about 30 employees so I needed more than an inkjet but didn't require a 'corporate' $1000+ version either. I needed fax, scan, copy, and print capability with laser printing and built-in wireless capability. Suprisingly, there are not that many printers on the market that can give you all of these in one package. Originally I was going to purchase the Brother's MFC-8870 for around $500 which all the reviews on the internet recommend, but I found this while browsing around and realized that it had just come out a few weeks ago. Although there were no reviews out yet for this new printer, it was considerably less expensive than the 8870 and the only thing I seemed to be losing was auto-duplexing so I made the purchase. It took about 15 minutes total for me to set up an ad-hoc wireless printer setup and everything works great. The scans are nice, the printing is very crisp and clear even in very small fonts. The only thing I haven't tried yet is the fax which I won't be using much. I really can't say anything bad about this product. Sure it would be nice to have a legal-size flatbed, auto-duplex, and 64mb memory (instead of the default 32mb) but for the money this can't be beat. Overall, this seems to be a really great product at a great price. I highly recommend this if you need a 4-in-1 with wireless capability. Definitely the best on the market for this niche.

I replaced my Brother MFC 7420 with this MFC-7840 and am very happy with the upgrade. It does everything I need and is small and quiet in my small office. It has a straight paper passthrough for envelopes, which works great. Read below for a comparison to other similar models.

I've had a Brother MFC-7240 for 2 or 3 years when the fuser went out last week. A new fuser is $150 + $75-100 to install, so needless to say, I decided to buy a new all-in-one machine. My Konica Minolta 2430DL color laser printer also conked out at the same time and I investigated replacing both with a color laser AIO. After not having much luck finding one of those that could easily print envelopes, I decided to stick with two different machines. In retrospect, I'm glad I did - it's good to have two printers around to back each other up just in case. (If you've got really light duty needs, consider the Samsung CLX-3160FN, which I came across in during this first shop. It's dirt cheap for a color laser AOI. Very small and very quiet, but not solid enough for a small office load.)

After reading up on monochrome laser AOIs for much too long, I narrowed my choices down to about a dozen in the $200-$500 range. I refuse to buy something I can't see and play around with first, so I went shopping at local stores to see the models I chose in action. I went to Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax. Tried for Circuit City and Best Buy also, but believe it or not, they don't carry ANY monochrome laser AIO machines in their stores - only on-line. A manual feed and envelope printing are a must for my use, and reviews I read were conflicting, so I took a big stack of envelopes to test the machines out myself. I also took my own originals (a purchase order and envelope - both with various sizes of text and graphics) so I could compare apples to apples.

Most machines I tested had decent quality copying. There were differences, but all were acceptable for b&w general office work. Of course, copying was the only feature I could really test at the store. They all warmed up quickly and most were quiet enough. Here's what I found...

Brother MFC-8460 is too loud, big and imposing for my small office and took a little longer to warm up.

Canon 4270 has duplexing, which I was in the market for, but a funky half-tray for paper that was hard to load and looked like it could have problems down the road. Other than that, I liked it a lot (my second choice). Printed envelopes well and looked stylish.

Canon 4150 printed the envelope crooked and the coverage was too heavy and "grayed" the white envelope. I imagine this might be improved when changing settings from the print software to adjust for the thicker envelope paper.

HP1522NF printed the envelope uncrinkled, but it made a LOT of noise curling around the paper feed, which worried me. It also "grayed" the white envelope without being able to select a "thick paper" option.

HP M2727 did not print the envelope well at all.

Samsung SCX-4725fn has an easy manual feed, but toner on my graphics flaked off the envelope. It copied very quickly and quietly.

Brother MFC-7840w and MFC-7440n are pretty much the same except the they are different colors and the 7840 is wireless and better for networking. They both have backs that open so labels and envelopes can pass straight through and not wrinkle or curl at all.

I ended up with the Brother MFC-7840W from OfficeMax for $299.00. (It was $249 at Staples and Office Depot with a mail-in rebate - it's a long story why I couldn't get back to one of them and save the $50.) Not only did I like this machine best in my test, but I was happy with my old MFC-7420 and hope this updated version will treat me as well. The one thing I really wish the 7840 had that is does not, is duplex printing. If it had that, it would be the perfect machine.

I did a USB installation to Windows XP, which was simple and took about 45 minutes, but unfortunately the copier and scanner did not work. I called tech support and got through quickly. They couldn't help me, but quickly bumped me up to the next level of tech support. This next level was actually staffed with a real engineer who had the machine in the same room with him. After a few diagnostics he had me run, he determined that the logic board was defective and volunteered to send me a new one. I opted to return it to OfficeMax, who exchanged it with no problem.

I just plugged the new machine in and didn't reinstall the software. Now everything works perfectly and I'm very happy with this machine.

This is a very nice printer and I agree with the other reviewers positive feedback. But there is one problem I have found for those who print forms and envelopes via the manual feeder. When the printer is in sleep mode and you put a piece of paper in the manual feeder the printer wakes up and does a small grab of the paper. Unfortunately this small grab puts the paper off center so if you are printing on form paper it is a real nuisance. A solution may be to wake it up first by printing something else, then put in your form paper and print before it goes to sleep again, but again not the best solution. Also the lack of ability to put multiple envelopes in the manual feeder I find is a weakness. All my older LaserJets could at least handle 5-6 envelopes in the manual feeder. After reading many reviews though I find that trying to find a MFP that can handle envelopes is a major problem in itself and this printer is no different. I also noticed the toner that came with the printer did not last for nearly as long as advertised, it started showing toner low very very soon!

I was looking for a laser multifunction device with network capability that I could use to print from my laptop anywhere in the house. A lot of reviews seemed to point to the Brother MFCs as the best overall brand for laser monochrome devices. The only problem was that there were a LOT of different models to choose from - just going to the Brother website to do some comparison shopping made my head spin.

The MFC-7840W is a recently introduced model which has seemed to get good reviews across the board. A major plus is that it has both wireless and wired network capabilities. I took the plunge and purchased this model. Since I already had a wireless router to plug it into, I didn't need to use the wireless capabilities, but it seemed to be a nice option for future flexibility. The Ethernet connection was easy to set up and worked the first time I tried printing from my laptop.

I've been very pleased with the quality and feature set of the MFC-7840W. Not only does it print high quality output, but it has clearly-labeled buttons for scan, fax, and copy, which makes it a breeze to use any of these functions. Plus, the device is relatively light and doesn't have a very large footprint, so it fits easily on top of a small file cabinet. High marks overall.

As long as you don't need color printing, this might be the perfect solution to your Mac-based home or small office needs! I wanted to be able to scan and fax from across the network from iMac and Macbook, but was worried about the setup.. For both OSX 10.4 and 10.5 the setup was as easy as installing the CD and clicking a button. The printing and scanning worked automatically right out of the box across the network (hard-wired).

I have not yet tried faxing across the network, but the scanning works great and automatically detects the computers on the network that are installed with the brother software. You can scan from either the buttons on the MFC, or initiate the scan/copy operation from the computer on the network.

As is typical, the documentation is incomplete and inaccurate in many places, but since everything worked right out of the box, it wasn't a big deal.

If you scan a document to file, it will stick it in your "Pictures" folder by default. to change the default scanning settings, you will notice a little icon that gets put up on the top right of your screen next to your clock. Click here to adjust preferences. (not in the documentation!)

The Brother MFC-7840W is really a great printer and since it is built by Brother, I wasn't worried about the expectations.

Design:
The design of the printer is great, it is labeled as "compact" but it really isn't THAT small, though since it is an all-in-one I guess there is no way for it to become smaller. The black and grey color scheme really make it looks much more appealing and sitting in my office, it is not an eye sore.

Function:
-Printing: it is standard black and white laser printing, fast and clean, all my prints come out very clear, blacks will be pure black and the way it prints greys is good enough.
-Faxing: i connected my fax line into the printer and setting up was a breeze, I did a test run and there really were no problems here, works as a regular fax machine and that's all i need.
-Scanning: you are given the option through the software on your computer of scanning with different settings(image, OCR, e-mail, file). i haven't tried the OCR feature yet. one thing is that the scanner can be very slow sometimes, depending on your settings(which can be modified). in the end, the outcome was good.
-Copying: this function works fine, works just like any other copy machine out there.
-Wireless: this part can always be a problem since it is a feature that is still in development with most companies. but it seems like Brother really did a great job in making the wireless function easy to use and easy to install. all i had to do was install the software included with the printer on each of the computers in my household, i even have a mac to test out the mac software. the software does everything for you, and once the install is finished, you are ready to use the printer wirelessly.

My Thoughts:
I really enjoy the wireless function, currently the printer is connected to nothing, just the power supply to keep it on, i have 3 computers around the house and they are all connected through it wirelessly, it really is amazing. when scanning a document or image, you can scan it straight from the machine and send the scanned file directly to a certain computer by selecting it on the printer, i though that was cool. i really like the custom scanning features which allow you to scan at different resolutions, colors, and sizes. the big paper tray makes me not worry about running out of paper.

Pros:
-great design
-fast printing/copying
-high-quality prints
-fax, scan, and copy work efficiently
-wireless function easy to setup and use

Cons;
-slow scanning @ different settings
-printer size is to big to be labeled "compact"
-only includes starter toner

I couldn't believe how easy the wireless was to set up and how fast it operated.
On the setup - My mac detected the printer easily and setup was a breeze. My PC had a little trouble for some reason. I was able to input the IP address from the printer test print. The scanning function and fax steps went off w/o a hitch.

On the performance - I figured the scanning performance would be slow over the wireless network, but that wasn't the case at all.

Short term impressions - awesome value for the price. As with printers though, you have to see how they hold up over time - that's why my HP inkjet went in the can.

I was looking for a wireless laser MFC, and this one was one of few that supported these features. The wireless installation was easy (just follow the sequence in the manual). Just one note about entering the WEP security keys: when entering repeating digits like '77', you need to press the -> key after entering the first digit to move to the next position otherwise it enters the second digit in the same position. Also I had to first disable MAC address filtering on my wireless router because the printer's MAC address was not obvious (not written anywhere) for me to add it to my wireless router's "allowed" list. Once the printer connected to the wireless, I was able to see its MAC address and then added it to the "allowed" list and enabled the MAC address filtering. I've only had a chance to print a few pages and they quality seems acceptable (what I would expect at this price). I also tried the scanner from my Windows XP laptop over the wireless and it is real easy to use, just like printer. I can scan and save the file or email it. I have not tried the document to text scan just as yet. Its looking good so far, will update if anything negative comes up...

I am very pleased with this printer. It was very easy to set up. I have printed, copied, scanned and faxed and all was done very well. I need to spend time figuring out the scanning software since it did not work well to scan some documents (that were not dark enough to just fax) and then send them to the printer fax. I ended up printing out the documents and then faxing them directly through the printer fax. I suspect that other reviewers are correct in that the packaged scanning software is not as good as it was a few years ago. Overall, I'm very pleased with the multifunction printer and would buy it again. The only function missing is automatic duplexing.

This printer works great. I had needed a printer with fax/scan/copy and wireless capabilities because I live in a pretty small house and wouldn't have so much room for all these various devices and it needed to be wireless because I don't have enough room for it next to the computer so I had to choose a different location, but this machine here does everything I wanted for it to do.

Setup took about 5 minutes, which includes connecting it wirelessly to my WPA secured router which isn't configured to broadcast an SSID. It was a breeze. Instruction manual seemed just fine. No problems installing the drivers. Packaging when it came in was clean. I've successfully been able to use the drivers on Vista 32-bit, Vista 64-bit, and Server 2003 (even though it's not listed for support). I couldn't have asked for a better product.