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Product Description
MFC-9320CW digital colour MFC printwireless print copy scan fax
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
241 of 248 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review
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(Updated to reflect experience and the updated version "C" firmware.)
This Brother color MFC is a reasonable choice if you are looking for a wired or wireless networked high speed laser-like color printer, copier, scanner and fax all-in-one, but do not need duplex (two-sided) printing/faxing/scanning. Personally, I duplex almost everything to save paper, and so would prefer the model Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Interface and Duplex which is a small price increase over this one. (You can manually duplex with the MFC-9320CW by printing odd numbered pages, taking the output stack and placing it in the paper tray, and the printing the even number pages. But, just one paper jam would ruin that process.)
I have a variety of complaints about the machine and the software which prevent me from giving it more than three stars.
Note that laser-class printers are no substitute for photo printers. Do not expect photo quality color (or even a very wide color gamut) or the ability to print on photo paper. That is not what this class of device is for. If photo quality is your expectation, look to inkjet photo printers. (The scanner on this device is photo-quality, though.)
My rating is based on the reasonable expectations of what a color laser is supposed to do: spot color, color graphics, mixed text and graphics documents, reasonable color copies.... and all water resistant, due to the fused toner.
Both wired and wireless networking worked well, although the instructions for the wireless setup are written by and for a geek, so if you're not a techie, you'll probably need a tech friend to help if your wireless network is secure, with hidden SID and password. It is really annoying that the device prints two sheets of paper when you change the network settings, one with the wired and one with the wireless settings. That should be a user option.
The printer comes with four toner cartridges, each good for about 1,000 pages according to the instructions. But, there is some kind of bug in the firmware or the software. After printing only a handful of pages, both the device and the software monitor reported that the Cyan cartridge was almost empty. The color bar charts showed it empty. But, the web-based control panel for the printer showed all cartridges full. The only way to get rid of the Cyan empty messages in all places was to turn the MFC off and then back on again. Installing the software onto another computer on the network caused the message to come back - this time saying that both Cyan and Yellow were empty. Updating the firmware from the delivered version "A" to the current downloadable version "C" seems to have fixed this problem.
Print quality is quite good, but requires adjustments for printing photos. I printed the PDF for a software user manual that included various color screenshots. It looks terrific and printed at close to the 17 PPM advertised rate. Nice.
Even if it is not a photo printer, photos are part of what will be printed on a color laser - as part of newsletters, real estate flyers, business cards, etc. So I looked at what I needed to do to get the best results from color-calibrated source images.
Anything containing photos really has to be printed in the 600 X 2400 resolution to get all of the details. (600 x 600 is fine for most other documents.) The white foam of the waterfall in a test image just blurred together at 600 x 600 resolution. 600 x 600 on this LED printer is not the same crispness as 600 x 600 on a laser.
I found that photographic images require printing with the Vivid color option, and with brightness increased. Even though a color wheel looked good, a calibration image containing various faces for skin tones, color patches and resulted in skin tones that looked sepia, in spite of some other colors in the image looking close to correct. I had to bump the red level to +12 and brightness to +4 in the print settings dialog to start to get the skin to look like skin. Even then, it was somewhat orange-sepia. Neither the Caucasian, Asian or African American babies' skin looked right, but the image was more usable. It seemed wrong that a bump of +12 (out of 20) on red made so little difference. Further, on making a color photocopy, where there is only +1 and +2 for red, the +1 improved the red in some places, but made green grass look yellow. There is no reason that adding red should cause that. So, I think that there are some firmware and/or software issues yet to be resolved here by Brother.
Manual fed items must be fed one at a time, unlike other Brother MFC machines that have a multifunction tray that accepts several sheets at once as an alternate feed tray. But a plus is that when you use the manual feed slot, you can open the back of the machine so that thick card stock can feed straight through the machine (after setting the paper type setting to "thicker"). It is not a truly straight path - the paper comes out the back pointing upwards and has a slight curl to it.
After attempting to print both brochures and business cards with the manual feed, I have to give the manual feed mechanism only 1 star. It is impossible to get a piece of paper to feed through perfectly straight. So, it is hard to get business cards, labels, etc to align properly. The manual feed slot has guide bars that are only an inch and half long in a lip that is a little over 2 inches long. So, not only must you stand there, holding the piece of paper as you insert it (there is no tray), it is impossible in a little over an inch to make sure that the piece of paper is feeding straight. Infuriating. I should note that trying to print brochures on thin stock via the paper tray resulted in skewed images also - so the printer is incapable of feeding paper absolutely straight there either.
The manual feed is also infuriatingly temperamental. If you don't push the piece of paper far enough, or too far, the printer senses a paper jam. No paper has even entered the printer yet. The directions ask you to open the printer and remove all four drum-toner elements - which requires someplace convenient to put them. In this case, that is not necessary - just shut the printer again and wait for several minutes while it rechecks itself, try to fee your paper again, and repeat.
Toner fixing was a major problem with the business card printing. More often than not, the last 1/3 of the page was not fixed and just smeared. I found a buried setting for 'improve fixing', and also held the paper as it came out the rear slot of the machine, and things improved. But, I still experienced smeared or lumpy toner on the page itself at times - some of it no doubt left on the drums from the previous page that was not properly fixed.
The software is common to most Brother MFC products. I am more than annoyed that after so many years, Brother has done nothing to improve their software for Macs. Yes, things work on a Mac, but you do not have the identical functionality as on Windows.
The printer driver interface for Windows has various options of handling (manual) duplexing. On the Mac, your options are to print either odd or even pages and in normal or reverse order. Finally, Windows users have ControlCenter3 which lets me choose between my two installed Brother MFC devices. On the Mac, it is ControlCenter2 which will not give multiple devices in its drop-down list. I have to browse each time I want to switch to a different Brother MFC.
Another complaint about the software installation is that it does not automatically check the Brother web site to see if there are updates. You have to manually do that after installing. Even then, the Brother web site is not very transparent, giving September 2009 dates to "updates" that, when downloaded, were created in January 2009 and thus are not even required. The names and functions of the update files are pretty obscure. I know what they all do as I've had Brother machines for some years. But, non-techie friends would not have a clue as to what to download or why. As an example: you would never know that if the ControlCenter stopped running and needed to be re-installed, that it was part of the Twain driver.
Scanning on the Mac stores the scanned files in the hidden /tmp/<user> directory at the root of the boot drive. You have to use Finder's menus to go to that folder and purge it. On the other hand, if you set up custom scans, you can both specify the folder into which the resulting file is placed, as well as have a Finder window open to that folder after a scan completes. I recommend this approach for Windows and Mac.
The OCR capabilities delivered via the Twain driver or ControlCenter are really primitive on Windows, and just plain bad on OS X. On Windows, the OCR is done by PaperPort OCR; on Mac it is done by Newsoft OCR. When presented with a page having three columns of text and a few font changes, and selecting rich text scanning, on Windows, the text was scanned almost error-free, but without any font changes. On OS X (Snow Leopard), the text was scanned as columns with breaks but with lots of errors and all over the page; basically useless. Even on Windows, better OCR software can scan the full page, including layout and images. Not so here.
The MFC has a USB port in the front into which you can plug a thumb drive or digital camera. With no connection to a computer, you can page through the files on the drive or camera and choose the ones you want to print directly from the memory device. Read more ›
This Brother color MFC is a reasonable choice if you are looking for a wired or wireless networked high speed laser-like color printer, copier, scanner and fax all-in-one, but do not need duplex (two-sided) printing/faxing/scanning. Personally, I duplex almost everything to save paper, and so would prefer the model Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Interface and Duplex which is a small price increase over this one. (You can manually duplex with the MFC-9320CW by printing odd numbered pages, taking the output stack and placing it in the paper tray, and the printing the even number pages. But, just one paper jam would ruin that process.)
I have a variety of complaints about the machine and the software which prevent me from giving it more than three stars.
Note that laser-class printers are no substitute for photo printers. Do not expect photo quality color (or even a very wide color gamut) or the ability to print on photo paper. That is not what this class of device is for. If photo quality is your expectation, look to inkjet photo printers. (The scanner on this device is photo-quality, though.)
My rating is based on the reasonable expectations of what a color laser is supposed to do: spot color, color graphics, mixed text and graphics documents, reasonable color copies.... and all water resistant, due to the fused toner.
Both wired and wireless networking worked well, although the instructions for the wireless setup are written by and for a geek, so if you're not a techie, you'll probably need a tech friend to help if your wireless network is secure, with hidden SID and password. It is really annoying that the device prints two sheets of paper when you change the network settings, one with the wired and one with the wireless settings. That should be a user option.
The printer comes with four toner cartridges, each good for about 1,000 pages according to the instructions. But, there is some kind of bug in the firmware or the software. After printing only a handful of pages, both the device and the software monitor reported that the Cyan cartridge was almost empty. The color bar charts showed it empty. But, the web-based control panel for the printer showed all cartridges full. The only way to get rid of the Cyan empty messages in all places was to turn the MFC off and then back on again. Installing the software onto another computer on the network caused the message to come back - this time saying that both Cyan and Yellow were empty. Updating the firmware from the delivered version "A" to the current downloadable version "C" seems to have fixed this problem.
Print quality is quite good, but requires adjustments for printing photos. I printed the PDF for a software user manual that included various color screenshots. It looks terrific and printed at close to the 17 PPM advertised rate. Nice.
Even if it is not a photo printer, photos are part of what will be printed on a color laser - as part of newsletters, real estate flyers, business cards, etc. So I looked at what I needed to do to get the best results from color-calibrated source images.
Anything containing photos really has to be printed in the 600 X 2400 resolution to get all of the details. (600 x 600 is fine for most other documents.) The white foam of the waterfall in a test image just blurred together at 600 x 600 resolution. 600 x 600 on this LED printer is not the same crispness as 600 x 600 on a laser.
I found that photographic images require printing with the Vivid color option, and with brightness increased. Even though a color wheel looked good, a calibration image containing various faces for skin tones, color patches and resulted in skin tones that looked sepia, in spite of some other colors in the image looking close to correct. I had to bump the red level to +12 and brightness to +4 in the print settings dialog to start to get the skin to look like skin. Even then, it was somewhat orange-sepia. Neither the Caucasian, Asian or African American babies' skin looked right, but the image was more usable. It seemed wrong that a bump of +12 (out of 20) on red made so little difference. Further, on making a color photocopy, where there is only +1 and +2 for red, the +1 improved the red in some places, but made green grass look yellow. There is no reason that adding red should cause that. So, I think that there are some firmware and/or software issues yet to be resolved here by Brother.
Manual fed items must be fed one at a time, unlike other Brother MFC machines that have a multifunction tray that accepts several sheets at once as an alternate feed tray. But a plus is that when you use the manual feed slot, you can open the back of the machine so that thick card stock can feed straight through the machine (after setting the paper type setting to "thicker"). It is not a truly straight path - the paper comes out the back pointing upwards and has a slight curl to it.
After attempting to print both brochures and business cards with the manual feed, I have to give the manual feed mechanism only 1 star. It is impossible to get a piece of paper to feed through perfectly straight. So, it is hard to get business cards, labels, etc to align properly. The manual feed slot has guide bars that are only an inch and half long in a lip that is a little over 2 inches long. So, not only must you stand there, holding the piece of paper as you insert it (there is no tray), it is impossible in a little over an inch to make sure that the piece of paper is feeding straight. Infuriating. I should note that trying to print brochures on thin stock via the paper tray resulted in skewed images also - so the printer is incapable of feeding paper absolutely straight there either.
The manual feed is also infuriatingly temperamental. If you don't push the piece of paper far enough, or too far, the printer senses a paper jam. No paper has even entered the printer yet. The directions ask you to open the printer and remove all four drum-toner elements - which requires someplace convenient to put them. In this case, that is not necessary - just shut the printer again and wait for several minutes while it rechecks itself, try to fee your paper again, and repeat.
Toner fixing was a major problem with the business card printing. More often than not, the last 1/3 of the page was not fixed and just smeared. I found a buried setting for 'improve fixing', and also held the paper as it came out the rear slot of the machine, and things improved. But, I still experienced smeared or lumpy toner on the page itself at times - some of it no doubt left on the drums from the previous page that was not properly fixed.
The software is common to most Brother MFC products. I am more than annoyed that after so many years, Brother has done nothing to improve their software for Macs. Yes, things work on a Mac, but you do not have the identical functionality as on Windows.
The printer driver interface for Windows has various options of handling (manual) duplexing. On the Mac, your options are to print either odd or even pages and in normal or reverse order. Finally, Windows users have ControlCenter3 which lets me choose between my two installed Brother MFC devices. On the Mac, it is ControlCenter2 which will not give multiple devices in its drop-down list. I have to browse each time I want to switch to a different Brother MFC.
Another complaint about the software installation is that it does not automatically check the Brother web site to see if there are updates. You have to manually do that after installing. Even then, the Brother web site is not very transparent, giving September 2009 dates to "updates" that, when downloaded, were created in January 2009 and thus are not even required. The names and functions of the update files are pretty obscure. I know what they all do as I've had Brother machines for some years. But, non-techie friends would not have a clue as to what to download or why. As an example: you would never know that if the ControlCenter stopped running and needed to be re-installed, that it was part of the Twain driver.
Scanning on the Mac stores the scanned files in the hidden /tmp/<user> directory at the root of the boot drive. You have to use Finder's menus to go to that folder and purge it. On the other hand, if you set up custom scans, you can both specify the folder into which the resulting file is placed, as well as have a Finder window open to that folder after a scan completes. I recommend this approach for Windows and Mac.
The OCR capabilities delivered via the Twain driver or ControlCenter are really primitive on Windows, and just plain bad on OS X. On Windows, the OCR is done by PaperPort OCR; on Mac it is done by Newsoft OCR. When presented with a page having three columns of text and a few font changes, and selecting rich text scanning, on Windows, the text was scanned almost error-free, but without any font changes. On OS X (Snow Leopard), the text was scanned as columns with breaks but with lots of errors and all over the page; basically useless. Even on Windows, better OCR software can scan the full page, including layout and images. Not so here.
The MFC has a USB port in the front into which you can plug a thumb drive or digital camera. With no connection to a computer, you can page through the files on the drive or camera and choose the ones you want to print directly from the memory device. Read more ›
70 of 70 people found the following review helpful
By JOHN D
Amazon Verified Purchase
Let me start by saying that this is my first review of any product anywhere. I felt that I should write this because I always read user reviews before buying anything, and I find them very helpful. I must say that this printer is outstanding. I first contacted Brother support via e-mail to find out if this printer is compatible with Windows 7, both 32 bit and 64 bit, and also with Apple's Snow Leopard 10.6.2. They responded within 24 hours and assured me that it was, with down-loadable drivers from the Brother Solutions Center download page. So I took the plunge and made the purchase.
My printer was delivered by FedEx, a day late (as usual). I like UPS so much better, but am not faulting Amazon or Brother for this. I set up the printer as per the quick start guide and turned it on. So far so good. Here comes the best part. I called Brother's technical support line to ask for assistance in downloading the driver's and software package and installing it on my systems. An initial wait time of about fifteen minutes kinda sucked, but let me tell you, these techs at Brother are top notch. I had a Windows 7 tech walk me through the install on the 64 bit system, then the 32 bit system, without a hitch at all. They then transferred my call to an Apple expert who did the same for me. I was up and running within the hour! Wirelessly and all! Amazing!
Then I got to play with it for a while. I wasted some paper trying out the scan, copy, and print features, but it was worth it. Fax works great also. The printer is compact but heavy! I set it all up by myself, but a second set of hands would help. The printer is relatively quiet for a laser. Black is BLACK! Color is beautiful and vibrant, and best of all it works perfectly on all my systems, PC and Mac!
I have to say that the Brother support techs were so very good. They all spoke clear English and were easy to understand. They were all very knowledgeable about the machine and the various OS I had. Thumbs up all the way.
I had considered a Samsung CLX-3175FW wireless color laser, but the limited Mac support pushed me away. I called their customer service line to ask the compatibility issue and was told "I'm pretty sure it works with the Mac." Pretty sure?? No thanks! This printer replaced a Dell 968 wireless All In One. This printer would not play nice with the Mac or with 64 bit Windows 7. Dell's tech support is the worst. Long waits and unrecognizable dialects. This MFC-9320CW was THE answer! Hands down!
My printer was delivered by FedEx, a day late (as usual). I like UPS so much better, but am not faulting Amazon or Brother for this. I set up the printer as per the quick start guide and turned it on. So far so good. Here comes the best part. I called Brother's technical support line to ask for assistance in downloading the driver's and software package and installing it on my systems. An initial wait time of about fifteen minutes kinda sucked, but let me tell you, these techs at Brother are top notch. I had a Windows 7 tech walk me through the install on the 64 bit system, then the 32 bit system, without a hitch at all. They then transferred my call to an Apple expert who did the same for me. I was up and running within the hour! Wirelessly and all! Amazing!
Then I got to play with it for a while. I wasted some paper trying out the scan, copy, and print features, but it was worth it. Fax works great also. The printer is compact but heavy! I set it all up by myself, but a second set of hands would help. The printer is relatively quiet for a laser. Black is BLACK! Color is beautiful and vibrant, and best of all it works perfectly on all my systems, PC and Mac!
I have to say that the Brother support techs were so very good. They all spoke clear English and were easy to understand. They were all very knowledgeable about the machine and the various OS I had. Thumbs up all the way.
I had considered a Samsung CLX-3175FW wireless color laser, but the limited Mac support pushed me away. I called their customer service line to ask the compatibility issue and was told "I'm pretty sure it works with the Mac." Pretty sure?? No thanks! This printer replaced a Dell 968 wireless All In One. This printer would not play nice with the Mac or with 64 bit Windows 7. Dell's tech support is the worst. Long waits and unrecognizable dialects. This MFC-9320CW was THE answer! Hands down!
81 of 85 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
As a previous reviewer pointed out, this printer doesn't do automatic duplex printing, although you can do it manually. I'd say that's its main downfall if duplex printing is something you frequently do. If you don't, then this machine is really impressive in all other respects. I agree with the other reviewer that the color is a little off, but for color copies it's fine. It's a big beast of a machine so you better have space for it. You can connect it directly to a computer via USB, or network it either wired or wireless. I connected with a USB cable (not included but it's a standard USB printer cable and I had one around) and installation was very easy. I quickly had this set as the default printer and then shared it on my network. Printing was fast and the print quality is impressive. In particular, the lines on black letters were noticeably crisp and sharp.
The addition of a sheet feeder for the copier/scanner/fax makes this a really useful small office all in one machine. If you've got a lot of copies to make, stack 'em up and let 'em rip. For single copies you open the lid and set them on the glass. Either way it's easy to choose color or black and white on the control panel.
The fax feature allows you to share a phone line with your telephone, in which case you can use distinctive ring to let the fax machine know when to pick up and when not to. If you don't have distinctive ring, you can just set it so you manually answer the phone with the fax machine to avoid people having conversation with that screeching fax machine sound. You can fax from your computer or the machine.
All in all I was impressed with this machine. Again, if printing duplex (both sides) is a common task for you, I'd look for another machine. Otherwise, if you want an all in one that's easy to set up and use, you should consider this machine. I barely read the manual and had it up and running in no time. It took me about 30 seconds to teach my wife how to use it. I agree the instructions for wireless set up are a bit techy, but that's the nature of wireless. Aside from that, it's easy going.
The addition of a sheet feeder for the copier/scanner/fax makes this a really useful small office all in one machine. If you've got a lot of copies to make, stack 'em up and let 'em rip. For single copies you open the lid and set them on the glass. Either way it's easy to choose color or black and white on the control panel.
The fax feature allows you to share a phone line with your telephone, in which case you can use distinctive ring to let the fax machine know when to pick up and when not to. If you don't have distinctive ring, you can just set it so you manually answer the phone with the fax machine to avoid people having conversation with that screeching fax machine sound. You can fax from your computer or the machine.
All in all I was impressed with this machine. Again, if printing duplex (both sides) is a common task for you, I'd look for another machine. Otherwise, if you want an all in one that's easy to set up and use, you should consider this machine. I barely read the manual and had it up and running in no time. It took me about 30 seconds to teach my wife how to use it. I agree the instructions for wireless set up are a bit techy, but that's the nature of wireless. Aside from that, it's easy going.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
high quality parts but very user unfriendly.
high quality parts but very user unfriendly. the machine itself is great! to save money I bought refill kits for all the drums because the orginal ones don't last any time at... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Kenneth Drews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good printer but it's very big
A have this printer since Dec 2009. The test page prints in perfect color but when I color copy or print pictures the colors are weak. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Florida Cracker
2.0 out of 5 stars
Technical Service Support non-existant
I bought this unit about 2 years ago and it was working fine. After about 10,000 pages it started placing lines and white spots on the color pictures. Read more
Published 2 months ago by jollyroger
5.0 out of 5 stars
great
thanks for your dealing i will deal again and again with you because it was nice to deal with you
Published 2 months ago by Salah Meemar
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disaster!
Ordered this from the open box items, as it said "like new" and it was a complete joke! When my spouse and I unpacked the printer, small plastic pieces fell all over the... Read more
Published 3 months ago by beckie owenby
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glad I bought it.
This was a used printer so I was hesitant to purchase it but it turned out to be a great deal. The print quality has been great. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jeffrey Bedell
1.0 out of 5 stars
most frustrating printer
This is the most frustrating printer I ever had to deal with. Works more or less o.k for regular printing, although it would sometimes tell you that you have a paper jam. Read more
Published 5 months ago by MoMO
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great little device!
It is easy to use and works great! I wish the scanning function could be accessed directly on the network.
Published 6 months ago by JL
1.0 out of 5 stars
CRAP
This printer is great, unless you actually want to use it. As long as you are physically connected to the printer, you're OK. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Dave
3.0 out of 5 stars
So So
I have had this printer for over a year. It generally works, but it does really annoying things like
1) Not print is a cartridge is low
2) Put a pink stripe down the... Read more
1) Not print is a cartridge is low
2) Put a pink stripe down the... Read more
Published 7 months ago by David Beatty
