Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-8870DW Wireless Flatbed Laser All-in-One Printer

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This was my third Brother MFC printer. I was trying to replace my current MFC9600 that has been been excellent for more than 5 years. I wanted the duplex functionality, the better print quality, as well as the some of the additional features.

And you better believe it, this machine is IT! Faster faxing, faster and better quality scanning, faster copying and printing, better quality prints and copies, and many more very beneficial features that I really liked. being technically savvy, it was a breeze setting it up as a wireless printer without using the Brother wizard in the CD. So, after a quick setup, I was able to complete all my tasks wirelessly...

I was very pleased with my purchase. Everything was actually perfect until I tried printing on an envelope. The first time I printed on an envelope, the result was a completely wrinkled envelope. Then I tried again, and same result. I thought that I could survive with a wrinkled envelope anyway. So, a week later, I tried again. This time, I kept getting the message "Check Paper Size". After a few calls to customer service, the problem was still not resolved. So, I decided to return it to the store.

Printing on an envelope is a show stopper for me! However, I will check back again after a few months. Hopefully Brother will fix this issue so I can buy this printer again.

Yes! I have to admit it! Except for the envelope issue, this is the best printer on the market.

Oh how I wanted this, I like brother printers - and a wireless one that supports OS9 OSX, and Windows too, USB, wireless, or ethernet - wowee! Then I opened the box, does not do wireless with OS9. Oh well, then I plugged it in and every UPS in my office chimed and the lights flickered when I turn it on. Yep, even plugged straight into the wall, this room heater uses 9.1 Amps, and I bet 11 when it first powers up. So, this just won't work in an average home office - we have 15 amp lines - a few computers, a TV, a radio, a light, and that can add up to 7 amps - add this fax machine and pop a breaker. I never got a chance to test it, but it sure sounds good. If you have a 20-amp circuit, or can dedicate a 15-amp circuit to it, I'm sure it's a great machine.

Well, I tried it again, put it downstairs in a room with no other computers and
tried the wireless option. Ok, I'm keeping it! On my main wireless laptop, it
works great, my other wireless laptop - in the same room as the monster
Brother MFC - it works for one time, then stopped working. So I used a
USB cable on that one. My 3 other OSX machines in other rooms work great
printing to it wirelessly, so, most of my computers can print, scan, and fax,
wirelessly to this beast. So, I'm going to keep it, as it sucks less than an
amp when it sleeps, and it copies and faxes and scans - wireless access,
really well. I think it was the hassle of returning it that made me try again.
And the laptop that won't print wirelessly to it, well, PCs are PCs, some
don't work for some reason, it's an older laptop, my workhorse one works
fine.

I bought this printer from Costco and got the wireless feature for the same price as the non-wireless version with a rebate. It's works extremely well. It's very fast and the quality is excellent. I was unsure whether I needed the duplexing feature but since I have it, I use it all the time and am very pleased that I opted for this model. No, this machine cannot print on envelopes. Don't even try it. I don't need this feature so I can get over it. I print on labels instead. The Brother software is easy to use and works well. I love being able to scan into a pdf document or email directly from a scan. The auto document feeder works very well. I have no complaints other than the envelope problem. I defintely recommend this machine. It does everything I need, very well and for a very reasonable price.

I was considering purchasing a $7,000 reconditioned "floor model" Canon copier (that would have required adding a 20-amp electrical line at an additional cost of about $1,000) when a friend suggested that I look at the $600 (MSRP) Brother MFC8870DW.

I was pleased to find that the quality of copies made with the Brother multifunction unit is comparable to that of the Canon copier and superior to a floor-model Konica that I had used for some time.

As a copier and printer, the MFC8870DW is not quite as fast as its bigger brothers from Canon, Konica, etc., but it is fast enough for my purposes.

The Brother copier will not make 11x17-inch copies or copy on 110-pound card stock, both of which I need to do at times. However, for the difference in price, I can go to a copy center once in a while.

I am quite pleased with the PaperPort 9.0 SE software that is bundled with the copier, notwithstanding the very negative reviews for the current retail version (PaperPort 10) posted elsewhere on Amazon. I use it for enhancing (page de-skewing, removal of stray dots, and otherwise enhancing and printing multi-page docunent stands).

PaperPort has difficulty straightening pages that include drawings with prominent diagonal lines, for example, but I believe that any comparable program would have the same problem. It provides a simple method for manually straightening crooked pages, however. It also leaves more "stray dots" than it removes, and manually removing them can be tedious. However, it's my understanding that this is the state of the art at present.

PaperPort also provides a means of compressing large scanned files (to less than 10% of their original size) with no loss in quality that I can detect, and removing, replacing and rearranging pages of multi-page documents, and converting files to PDF format. It also provides some editing capabilities for PDF files. For many casual users, it will make the purchase of Adobe Acrobat unnecessary.

Properly installing PaperPort did require a 10-minute telephone call to Brother's customer support, but overall setting up the copier and installing the software was relatively painless.

I have owned the copier for about six weeks and have made more than 12,000 pages of copies and prints. To date I have used the the TN550 toner cartridge ( rated at 3,500 copies) that came with the unit and two TN580 cartidges (7,000 copies each). Obviously, I am getting about 70% of the estimated number of copies per toner cartridge.

The estimated capacity of a toner cartridge is based on average 5% coverage, which is the industry standard. I assume that my pages have somewhat higher than 5% coverage.

The DR520 drum unit died last night at 11,926 copies. It is rated at 25,000 copies, and it lasted for about half that number.

However, since I have purchased remanufacured toner cartridges from Meritline and a reconditioned drum unit through Amazon from Itonerink, my cost per copy is still below estimates based on Brother's estimated life of these products and the cost of new toner cartridges and drum units.

I have used the MFC as a scanner, printer and copier and am well pleased with its performance. I have not used it as fax machine, nor have I tested its wireless capabilities. (I have a large number of documents to scan, and I have been told by various IT people that wireless scanning simply doesn't work very well on any machine.)

This model includes true PostScript, which is a necessity since I use many Adobe PostScript fonts.

I don't often spend money on extended warranties, but because of my high volume of printing and copying, I purchased one from Brother. Brother offers one- and two-year warranties in two flavors -- "depot" (you take your copier to an authorized repair depot for repairs during the warranty period) and "replacement" (Brother sends you a reconditioned MFC, no questions asked, and you return the original MFC in the same box. Brother pays the return postage.) I purchased the two-year replacement warranty (which begins after the one-year limited warranty expires) for $138.

The Brother MFC-8870DW does everything I need it to do - and then some. Given the rich feature set, the price is quite low. Given the lightweight plastic feel of the paper drawer and small input rollers I have some concerns about the build quality of the paper path (but we've had no problems at all with it so far). There's no end of flexibility about how you can hook it up and make it do all the many things that it does:
* fast laser printer with fine resolution and duplex (automatic print on both sides) capability. Enabling duplex by default saves a ton of paper.
* fax machine with a ton of flexible receive options to make it coexist with answering machines on a shared line and other methods (including a well behaved manual mode).
* digital sender for network fax servers including RightFax.
* connection flexibility with network printing, faxing, and scanning (yes, to PDF too) via ethernet - as well as local via USB, and wirelessly via WiFi.
* stand alone copy machine w/50 sheet automatic document feeder
* did I mention that in addition to document scanning (with OCR) it does color scanning too?
The workstation on the network are all running WindowsXP so I can't comment on other OS support - but the included software is well behaved and feature rich. You can initiate scan jobs from the workstation, for example as well as print, fax We're into our 4th month with it. My wife has printed out several copies of her dissertation on it and the page count is several thousand and we haven't even had a jam. Our old Brother laser printer (a 1040) still runs after 8 years. The unit sure feels lightweight and plasticky. I wouldn't put this into a high volume environment - but for my home office it's killer and I've been so happy with it so far.

Follow-up June 2008 - 8 months later. Unit has been perfectly reliable so far. No jams or any trouble of any kind so far.

Follow-up March 2009 - 17 months later. Still perfectly reliable. Still never had a paper jam. I really come to love this beast.

This machine does pretty much everything you could need in a wireless machine. Main downside to machine is that it won't support faxing using vonage and Brother customer service refused to give me any advice as to how to get the fax to function because vonage was my service provider and they won't support if you use vonage. I called back three times and three different customer service reps told me this, and vonage's customer service center in India does not seem to have a canned speech to address this so it was useless.
But, I like the machine so much for its speed, relative lack of jams and the amount paper it saves on the duplexing function, that I got an online fax provider and kept the machine despite the problems. I had no trouble getting the wireless to work with my toshiba laptop. If you don't need to fax or don't use a service like vonage, this is a great machine for heavy home office use.

I bought an HP-7410 all-in-one color jet printer with wireless capability about 13 months ago, and had to replace it because the scanner feeder is totally gone. I swore I would bever buy another HP product, as I felt for what I paid the printer was constructed rather cheaply.

The Brother MFC-8870 laser printer has been a pleasant surprise. I never had really considered Brother before, but because of the features, and given it was in the same price range as the HP-7410, I went ahead and got it. It has performed above expectations. It is very well constructed and functions as promised. The setup and menu are much better than the HP, and the quality is the equivalent of a made for commercial unit.

I would have liked another color printer, but have decided to stick with a laser printer for home office use, given the frequency pf cartridge changes and the ridiculous price of HP colorjet cartridge replacements.

If you're looking for a multi-function laserjet printer that is well contructed and performs as advertised, you can't go wrong with the Brother MFC-8870dw.

This 8870DW does everything I need. It scans/prints and copies. I seldom use the Fax option but it's nice to have if I need it. The send to email is a nice feature but I primarily use it for send to file and printing.

It's definately a great addition to my small office. There are a couple of things I'd like to see like 300x300 scanning to FTP instead of 200x200 being the max. Also the color scanning is not the greatest but it is OK for alot of application. Nice job Brother on a nice machine that is wireless and can be placed anywhere in the office with full functionality.

I ordered one of these two months ago and it worked GREAT for the first two months, then it started having a weird clicking noise every time it would pull from the paper tray and then paper soon started jamming. We returned it to Costco and ordered a new one. We just received the new one and I went to set it up and received an instant error that said "Machine Error. Call Brother." I called them and they told me the error I was receiving was because it was broken and I would have to use the warranty to get it fixed. Thank goodness we purchased it from Costco, because we will be returning it tomorrow. So... why the 2 stars instead of 1... well... it was a great printer while it was working. It was fast and with the wireless option, it would work with all the computers in our house. It scanned and faxed well. I just wish we could actually get one that works. Chances are... we will probably try one more time to purchase it because there is not another wireless all-in-one that I could find on the market for a reasonable price. Wish us luck on our third one!

I have 8860dn - it based on the same engine as this one, the only difference - wireless. So here is my experience - hope it will be helpfull.

I was with HP for 15-20 years, needed MFP, read all reviews here and decided that MFC-8860DN will be a good choice (other option was HP 3055). It has everything I need - copier, network print, scan, fax. Easy setup (I am in IT for 25+ years). Everything was almost perfect. The only complaint you need to keep in mind - IT EATS 1100 WATTS when starts printing - light could flash.
It was OK, until I reached 1500 pages mark - it start printing small dots every ~3". No problem - need to clean everything (per my experience and confirmed on Brother's web site). Cleaned - it was the biggest mistake - all outputs were with tons of small dots all around the page.
Called Support 2 times. After few hours of troubleshooting - they advised me to replace DRUM. Hey - its only 1500 pages, nowhere close to promised 25000! After I mentioned it, they offered me 75% discount on it. What's about warranty? Sorry. I spoke to supervisor, he explained that Support in Philippines can't do it, the only option - to call USA office.
I replaced DRUM. Now counter shows around 2000 pages and I have same problem again.
Hey, I heard this before - never say never. Still as of today:
I would NEVER, NEVER buy Brother printer/MFC again!!!