Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-8460N Network All-in-One Laser Printer

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I also have a problem with the printer creasing envelopes. It appears to shift the flap of the envelope slightly while feeding it through the fuser and the heat and pressure causes another crease about 1/8" offset from the original one.

I returned the first unit that I ordered because of a loud squeaking noise that developed while printing. The second unit also squeaks somewhat (Certainly more than my old mfc-8820D), but it doesn't sound like it's dragging a cat through the manual feed slot.

There's a big difference between this unit and my MFC-8820D in the scanning area. On my old printer, I could input an email address on the screen and it would forward the document to that address. This guy requires you to select a network computer and then sends the document there. A memory resident program needs to be running on the computer to process the received document...which is a worthless waste of memory space about 99.99% of the time when the computer is doing it's normal job. The memory resident process also conflicts with some HP network printer software and crashes on a couple of our systems, thus rendering them unusable with this scanner. Needless to say, the old way of doing it was much better.

In retrospect, and despite the 145,000 pages printed, I probably should have spent the $300 to replace the fuser on my 8820D instead of getting this unit. This one is much faster, but the other trade-offs - the lack of duplexing (known at the time of ordering, but the 8860DN wasn't yet shipping) and the dumbing down of the scanner firmware (unknown until received) are serious handicaps.

Oct 30, 2006 update - After about five month of use and about 20K pages printed, my printer is in the shop being repaired. The printer started making loud snapping sounds, like plastic gears stripping, whenever a page was printed...except that the paper jammed every time. The guy in the service center said that he has another identical printer in for repair and that it's the fuser unit that's shot. That would be easy to fix, except that they're on back-order and won't be available for a while. Sigh. I think my next printer will be an HP.

November 14, 2006 - I have to give Brother Service credit. 1000 pages post-repair and my machine broke again. They're shipping me a new printer. This will be my second replacement unit...hopefully this unit will be more solid as my warranty runs out in April.

November 25, 2006 - update - The replacement unit not only shifts the flap on envelopes, it puts creases all over them, rendering them completely unusable for any purpose. If there was a way to totally unwind this purchase, I would in a second. On the other hand, since design of this unit appears to have all the reliability of an alcoholic after a weekend on the town, I purchased the one year extended warranty.

February 10,2007 - update - Well, the machine is now starting to make loud snapping sounds whenever the paper tray is filled up to the full line. It also jams and refuses to feed paper whenever that happens. The solution (so far) is to only fill the paper tray half-full.

I really dislike this piece of junk...so much so that I bought HP for my new offices.

May 13, 2008 - final update - After limping along in the old office for the last year, the Brother finally died (again). The big question is whether to take it to recycling yard, where they would gently take it apart and salvage the parts, or take it to the local car crusher and watch it receive what it deserves. Alas, my ecological side is coming through and I'll recycle it. Oh well, it would have made a great YouTube video...

I have been unable to get this machine to stop creasing envelopes. It looks quite sloppy and affects the print in places. At times it is better than others but usually I get a big crease across the bottom left corner and a smaller crease across the return address.

I have spent a lot of time on the phone working with Brother technicians to correct the problem. They had me flip up the #1 toggles in the back of the machine, try using many different kinds of envelopes, try changing the paper thickness settings, etc. One even suggested I get 20 pound envelopes but those are quite uncommon. The typical #10 business envelope is 24 pounds. I could not find any 20 pound envelopes in local stores or print shops.

I have had a problem hooking it up through my network with the ethernet connection. It worked for quite a while but stopped working and I could not get it started again, even by reloading the driver or with the new machine. This problem could be my network, not the machine. However, the rest of my network seems to be working fine. I have no problem hooking it up directly using the USB port.

Brother technicians were very nice and sent a second 8460N but it also creases envelopes, plus the automatic feeder does not work at times on this new machine.

Other than these problems, the MFC 8460N machine works well. The copies are clear, the fax works well and the scanner seems to do well.

Brother has told there is nothing more they can do unless they hear of more people having problems with their envelopes on this machine. By that time it will be too late because I am exchanging it for a different brand.

We have been using this printer for a little over a month now at work where we print an average of about 100 pages a day and this little guy chugs through it like it was nothing. The best part of it all is the speed. It is quick to warm up and prints 30ppm, which is a billion times faster than our previous Brother printer (or so it seems). The print quality is excellent but so are most laser printers so that's not really a stand-out. As mentioned by everyone else here, the envelopes do get a little crinkled when they are printed through the printer but that beats our last brother printer that seemed to jam more often than not when printing envelopes. I have yet to have an envelope jam. A trade off (crinkled envelope to jammed envelope) we are willing to take any day. To print an enveiope you have to open a little door in the front of the printer to access the feed for it. Not a big deal but I thought I would mention it. So, why four stars? Well, the crinkled envelope issue mainly and also the plastic quality used to build the machine seems a little cheap (at least compared to our last Brother printer). Definitely not a big deal but warrants the four stars.

We're running the Brother MFC-8460n on a Mac OSX network. It's printing is remarkably sharp and fast. Copying is great. The only complaint we have is that scanning is not high quality and cannot be shared over the network. There have been some intermittent problems with receiving FAXes; we prefer to receive faxes in our e-mail rather than print on the Brother. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time it does.

Recently, despite my recommendation of the Brother MFC-7820N, two of my clients decided to purchase the Brother MFC-8460N because of the faster print speed and legal-size scanning bed and, oh boy, what a mistake that was! Both customers have had almost identical problems; the unit doesn't recognize the paper tray intermittely and says 'no paper in tray' and the unit makes an annoying clicking sound just before and for several minutes after printing, copying or receiving a fax. That might be okay in a noisy environment, but in a home office or any place where it's reasonably quite this will drive you bananas. Brother tech support doesn't have a fix for either of these problems and so they shipped a refurbished unit, only the annoying clicking was slightly less noisy while the paper/paper tray (MP tray) issue has come back to haunt the replacement unit. My suggestion, go with the MFC-7820N or better yet, get a unit from another manufacturer because Brother does not seem to want to do the right thing which would be to replace this defective model with another model that doesn't have the engineering, design and/or manufacturing flaws that make the 8460N a lemon. I really wanted to give Brother a chance because I think that the 7820N is a terrific little all-in-one, but stay away from this unit.

the printer works well with regular fax line but is inconpatible with fax over internet protocol which is my preferred usage.

PC fax is difficult to setup

the envellope printing system appears to be defective as the envelope comes out sqiuzzed and crumpled

I bought this machine specifically to print on envelopes and checks. It is the only laser all-in-one that has a multi-purpose tray at a good price. I was concerned that the snake paper path would not print well on envelopes, but there does not seem to be a unit with a nice straight-through paper path like my old HP 5Mp.

When I ran my first envelope, I was disappointed at the creases in it, so I visited the Brother web site and followed the extensive how-to. There are a couple of levers in the back of the machine you must flip and then using the network setup (control center 2) you set the MP tray to thick. Then let the machine crank through your stack of envelopes.

I just printed 200 heavyweight envelopes with NO creases. So it pays to read the tech support. The page goes on to state that if you are getting creased envelopes, you may need to be sent a new machine.

One problem I did encounter was a loss of communication (I'm using my MFC over an Ethernet connection), but cycling power brought it back on-line. Will tell you more as time goes on.

*** So here's the update. Still printing/faxing/scanning/copying just great. The network problem was that sleep mode was turned on. So I turned it off. Find sleep timer in the menu and then with the cursor on sleep time press the 'Secure' and 'Job Cancel' buttons at the same time. Then turn sleep off. And guess what? The machine goes 'idle' instead of 'sleeping'. It doesn't use any more power in 'idle' over 'sleep' according to tech support.

It was between this and the other brother mfc that performs duplex printing for my home office which two people use on a daily basis. We figured we didn't need the duplex (although we wanted it!), so we decided to save about 100.00 and go with this one.

I was very pleased with the construction, installation (XP) and documentation. Brother has a new customer in my organization. Coming from HP, I was acustomed to clunky software, and machines that wouldn't always perform as planned.

I couldn't be happier with this product and would recommend to all.

Thankfully, I don't print many envelopes! Other than that I really like this machine. The scanning is decent enough, printing and faxing is fast and copy quality is high. For the money I think it's a pretty good value. But if you do want to print envelopes with any frequency, stay away form this one!

Update - there is actually an adjustment you can make very easily in the back if you are having problems with envelopes. Look in the troubleshooting section of the manual. After I did this envelopes printed with no problem! Change to 4 stars. Would be 5 if I didn't have to manually adjust for envelopes.

I assume other printers/copiers must do their jobs better than this one. The quality of the output is fine but I have constantly had to clean the drum (done easily, admittedly). The two worst features are its inability to print envelopes--at least five creases per envelope on every try--and the print/copy output comes out very curled and winds up on the floor. This printer appears unable to copy/print more than ten pages without pushing it into a messy pile or all the way onto the floor. And did I mention the high degree of curling of the output (I did, but I will do it again). As a small business I will not buy a Brother printer-assuming they all share these faults (admittedly could be wrong). I will search another company's product line.