Customer Reviews

Brother MFC3220C Color InkJet Multifunction

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

We have had the machine for about a week and have tried out all the gadgets. The fax is easy to use both from the machine and when sending PC faxes. The copier works great and is easy to use. Fast printing for text documents, color printing is okay too. The scanner is also easy to use and the text conversion software worked well when we scanned in an image with text and it converted it to a Word document with very few errors.

The easy setup instructions are just that, easy. The software allows accessing the MFC-3220c from your PC. Some parameters can be changed from the PC, but not all.

Three downsides that really don't bother us because of the great price of this machine.
1. Scanner is the type that feeds through so you cannot copy
anything thicker than paper, like a book.
2. We printed an 8 1/2 x 11 photo that took about
10 minutes to print. It is photographic quality but
good, not excellent.
3. Only USB connection.

So if you want a great Fax, Scanner, Copier, Printer and don't mind slow photo printing, and don't need to scan a book, and have a USB connection to your PC...this is the one for an unbelievable low price.

I am generally a reasonably patient person and not too fussy about the equipment I use, but this machine really got to me.

I bought this machine about a year ago. All was well for the first three months...then the ink issue reared its ugly head.

Like other reviewers, all my printing is with black ink. Despite this, the color cartridges run dry every three to five months, even with absolutely no use. That is a pretty big deal to me already, but the real clincher is, get this....you can't print anything, even in black, even with a full black cartridge, if any of the color cartriges are empty. So, even if you just print in black, you have to replace the color cartridges, all three of them, on a regular basis. In my mind, this is either the ultimately stupid feature on a printer, or a blatant attempt to increase ink sales. Either way, it has come to bother me beyonds words.

I can't imagine what happens to all that color ink. The machine does have a disturbing habit of "cleaning" itself at all hours of the day and night, when not being used, so maybe that's when it gobbles up all that ink, but where does it all go?

I decided to try to get around this unexpected expense, which I had come to view as a regularly recurring and involuntary Brother surcharge, by buying bottles of ink and refilling the cartridges myself. I did this yesterday and boy, what a mess that was. I don't recommend this to the average person. My fingers may be stained for days. The worst part was, after replacing the ink in all of the cartridges, the MFC 3220C kept telling me that the cyan cartridge was empty, even though it was clearly full. This, if you have been following the story you will know, means the printer still wasn't going to print a thing.

At this point I had finally had it and I did what I had been fantasizing about for several weeks. I picked up the machine with my yellow, cyan, and magenta stained hands, took it outside, and threw it off our second story deck onto the driveway below. Boy, that felt good. This machine is now, finally, where it belongs.....in the garbage!

Now that I have that off my chest...and desk, I will indulge in some due diligent research and make sure I get a less aggravatingly stupid machine next time. I won't by the way, be looking at another Brother machine, now or EVER.

My machine SHUT-DOWN and refused to print in Black, supposedly because one of the Color ink cartridges was "empty." This seemed impossible.

I had the machine for less than 6 months and I only used it occasionally to receive B&W faxes (fewer than 100 text pages). I NEVER, EVER printed anything in color! NOT ONCE! Yet, the color ink was used up before the black ink.

Brother's Customer Service sheepishly explained that the unit's frequent (and loud) "maintenance cyles" consume ink by squirting small amounts of ink through the print heads. There is no way to disable this function. They also claim that they intentionally designed the machine to stop working when ANY of the cartridges go empty, in order to prevent "damage" to the print heads(?). This sounds like nothing more than a marketing ploy. Brother forces you to continuously buy their (very expensive) ink, whether you use it or not. Diabolically ingenious!

Where does all this ink go? After spraying entire cartridges of ink inside the machine (not on paper) you would expect to see large gobs of ink all over the place, yet there is no sign of it. Maybe there is a secret compartment that will someday overflow all over my desk. Or perhaps the ink is vaporized into the air. Breath deeply if you dare, brother.

Brother Customer Service didn't have a clue about where the ink goes. I know this all sounds unbelievable, but it is true.

This machine seems to be designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: to sell you unnecessary, high-priced ink cartridges. Shame on you, Brother! I have tried to get a refund from Brother, but so far they have ingored me.

I refuse to play their game and am shopping for a HP replacement product. So far, the HP 4215 multi-function looks promising - and if one ink cartrige runs out, you can keep on printing with the remaining colors. From past experience, the HP units do not wastefully consume ink doing needless "maintenance cycles." Their print quality is superior as well.

Until I buy a replacement, here is my, admittedly awkward, workaround to keep my FAX capability functioning. To receive faxes, I set the Brother to pickup calls on the 4th ring, and I set my computer's Microsoft Fax software to pickup on the first ring. That way, incoming faxes are received by my computer, bypassing the Brother. If my computer is turned off when a fax comes in there is no practical way to retrieve the fax from it's memory, therefore, I have the Brother set to Forward all incoming faxes (it won't print them, remember) to a free "efax" account on the internet (long distance telephone charges apply). The faxes are then converted to emails that I receive back when I turn on my computer. I can still send faxes with the Brother, but naturally it won't print out confirmations.

It's hard to imagine now but my wife and I actually waited for almost 2 hours for the store (5:00-7:00 AM!) to open to buy this POS!! We bought it on a "Black Friday" sale. BIG Mistake!!!

Buy ANYTHING BUT this!!!

Ink Tips:

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I got this from a guy who fills printer ink for a living.

You have to "trick" the printer into thinking it has ink.

To do this, you apply about a 2 1/2 - 3" strip of black 3/4" wide electrical tape around the "top", front face of the cartridge. The top of the tape should butt up against the colored cover plate.

There is a small rectangular slightly grooved clear area that you must cover, so that the printer "thinks" it is full. There is an optical sensor that detects the presence of ink from that area. (This is not 100% fool proof but it has worked for me and should buy you some time UNTIL you can find a REAL printer.)

I now have tape on ALL my cartridges...

Can't Print:

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That is the BIGGEST problem with this printer. The printer SHOULD allow you to SELECT EXACTLY what color to print in. IF "I" wanted to print a RED For Sale sign and my blue ink is out, "I" should STILL BE ABLE TO PRINT MY SIGN!!!

I think brother manufactures ink that is HIGH in "solvent" (all inks have a certain amount of solvent), which EVAPORATES QUICKLY explaining HOW ink "mysteriously" vanishes even without use

which is probably about 99.99% of the time.

Buying Ink:

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Someone posted about where to buy your cartridges for $5 each.

Printer Tasks:

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The ONLY thing this printer was reliably capable of was faxing.

IF I can fax (and I didn't know the first thing about sending a fax) then virtually anyone can fax. However, IF ANY of your colors are out you CANNOT "print" a fax, just "send". So basically I bought 1/2 of a fax machine for about $99. (I got robbed...)

The THREE Beeps From Hell:

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One thing I haven't read yet about this printer was just how ANNOYING that printer "triple beeping" error message can become. Man I just want to rip the thing up off the desk (like the guy from California - I "HEAR" YOU!! "brother", NICE TOSS!! and INDEED I can appreciate the satisfaction you received in doing so!!) and you basically just want to slam it down HARD onto something hard like a driveway or pavement...this printer really IS that ANNOYING!!

This happens usually when you are running LATE and you need to print something IMPORTANT and can't or when you try to shut it down and it keeps beeping to "remind" you that you have jobs to complete BEFORE shutting down and you DON'T!! beep, beep, beep

I too will enjoy totally destroying this worthless piece of garbage when I find a "suitable" replacement or maybe I'll make some kind of robot out of it...

Error 41:

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Yea, I had that problem too after about 10 1/2 months but was able to get a "refurbished" model which took FIVE days to receive. Just for the record, the refurbished model will ONLY cover the "remaining" time left on the original 1 year warranty.

This left me feeling really ripped off because if a "new" printer is already a BIG POS, just how much more of a POS will a "refurbished" unit be???

Support? What Support??

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I went to www.brother.com to see if I could get a toll-free or even any actual phone number to find out if I could scan a document and save it as a .jpg or .gif (image) file. The only thing I saw was a "Fax-Back" support (or email but I wanted to "speak" to someone not email and WAIT days for a response). Now if you can't PRINT because one of your colors has run out, how in the hell are your going to be able to PRINT out a faxed-back document???

I will NEVER EVER purchase another Brother product again...

In my search for a new printer, I will be looking for a printer that I can open the lid of a cartridge and pour my ink in and close the lid. Then I can buy my ink in bulk and the ink cost won't be so much of an issue. If it has 5 or 6 separate functions, give me 5 or 6 buttons to individually select which function I plan to use.

Thanks for all those who took the time to post!

Best Regards & God Bless...

I went out to buy a basic plain-paper fax machine to replace a failing old one, but then I came across this device in the store. Since the price is very close to what I had expected to pay for an inkjet fax machine anyway, I figured the sheet-fed document scanner feature would more than make up for the difference. Also, this could work as a backup printer.

This is a very inexpensive device, and looks it. It's bulky and plasticky and garishly decorated; at least the cheesy advertising decals do come off. It's also by far the NOISIEST inkjet printer or fax machine I've ever run across. If you get a phone call while this baby is buzzing away on your desk, you'll want to get up and move to the far wall, if not leave the room.

The print quality is mediocre -- fine for everyday use, but I wouldn't waste photo paper on this. The scanner with the automatic feeder is great for filing documents, and the included Paperport software makes managing the resulting files easy, but the mere 24-bit color depth and lack of a flat bed make this a poor choice for scanning precious photographs or any thick or inflexible objects.

The driver software seems hastily written and maps poorly to the user interface on the printer. The "Black Start" button seems to force either black and white threshold or dithered halftone; true grayscale seems to be unavailable as far as I can tell. Thus I prefer to scan from within Paperport, where all settings are easily accessible, and the documents always end up where you intend.

Very importantly, this unit does have a stand-alone fax function, which is not the case with many other inexpensive multifunction devices. This is what cinched me on this device: unlike many other "all-in-one" devices, this is a genuine fax machine at heart! I'm not going to miss any faxes while Windows is rebooting, and I don't need to boot up Windows to send a quick fax.

I did have some trouble sending a fax to a particular remote station; this may have been secondary to problems with the phone line or the remote station, however. It appeared that the Brother and the remote station simply refused to shake hands. I did manage to get a 12-page fax through to this particular station tonight on a different line.

Overall, I've found this machine to be a great value. I figure I got a decent inkjet fax machine for a fair price, and it came with a free document scanner and backup printer! (...)

ADDENDUM 4/21/04: After three months of very light printing use, the paper feeder now no longer works reliably, rendering this device useless as a printer or a receiving fax. The dumb thing can't even tell there's no paper in the path until it's sprayed half a page's worth of ink into its innards.

The scanner still works, but my opinion of the included PaperPort 8.0 SE software has also gone down. Apart from the frequent crashes, a major problem is that this version can't export multipage documents in any format that an average Windows user is likely to be able to view correctly, so sharing files with others becomes a pain. (While the self-contained .EXE files theoretically work for anyone with Windows, they tend to get eaten by ISP email virus scanners.)

I guess the moral of the story is: never buy a device that comes with advertising decals preinstalled.

Rating dropped from 4 stars to 2 stars.

ADDENDUM 06/05/04: Ok, now I can no longer print anything even if I hand-feed the printer its paper. This is because the printer is out of cyan ink. Being out of cyan ink, the printer can't print anything at all, not even a black-and-white document.

Oh, Brother, you sure got me. You won't get me again.

Rating dropped from 2 stars to 1 star, as if that made any difference.

The machine itself it great. Easy to use etc. But it's the dudes who programmed the "artificial intelligence" in this thing that really messed it up and has me pissed off.

If one of the cartridges goes out, YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING! Supposedly the fax doesn't even work. Huh? This is an obvious attempt that they just want you to buy buy buy more cartridges than you need.

I only use the black. I have never touched the colors. But for some reason, the colors run out before the black. What the...? And now they want me to replace everything before the machine will be usable again. I looked at the colors, and it clearly still has A LOT of ink or whatever inside. And there isn't a way to fool the machine by just taking it out and putting it back in.

I'm really thinking about just filling it with toilet water to let the machine think there's something inside. Don't know if it'll work. But here's the bottom line. I ran through the whole set (or the machine thinks I did) of ink in 4 months. So here's what you need to know. It costs about $80 or so to replace the set. So do you really want to pay $240 a year just to use the fax machine? If you actually do some printing, think $400+. This is lame. Fellow users. Anyone have suggestions please help us all.

It is difficult to believe that so much is available for less than 100 bucks. The document feeder works flawlessly. The scanner is great for documents. The fax is easy to set up through your PC with the supplied software. The Paperport software supplied with the unit alone sells for the cost of the printer, so this is like buy the software and get the multi-function printer/fax/scanner free.

Brother's drivers are excellent. They are well written and unobtrusive. The drivers allow you to customize 3 settings to your needs (they are named "photo", "web", and "text") You select whatever settings you want for each of the 3 named categories and they are saved automatically. Then, when you scan you just select one of the 3 settings and all of your selected customizations, like resolution and color depth, are used for that scan.

If you load up the document feeder with 20 pages and scan to Paperport, they are saved as a single 20 page Paperport document. Paperport then allows you to edit, annotate, and touch up your scans and file them away in a file directory type structure which is fully compatible and navigable with Windows Explorer. You can also export your scans from Paperport to other formats like multi-page tiffs, jpegs, bmps, etc.

So far, I am very pleased with this unit, especially for the money. Since I have only had it for a week, if time alters my opinion I will be sure to come back and edit this post. For now though, I highly recommend this unit.

Seems like a great buy, but the unit shuts down when it 'thinks' the ink cartridges are empty. I'm replacing FULL cartridges after only about 50 B/W pages. I'll try replacing one time, but if this continues, I'll have to replace the unit. NOTE there is no manual override, the printer will NOT work if it thinks a cartridge is empty. My cost? 50 pages for $20 of ink, 40 cents a page. Use Kinkos, it's cheaper.

This thing looks great, but I have had two major problems

1) The printer will not print if it thinks one of the ink cartridges is empty, which happens often when they are not empty: it has happened to me with nearly new cartridges. It essentially renders the device useless. Anyone know how to work around this? Please post a review if you do.

2) The paper feeder does not pick up paper unless I manually hold my finger against the tension arm. Clearly inconvenient, especially if you want to receive faxes.

I had purchased two different models of Brother all-in-one machines. One of them is MFC3220C and the other one was also MFC model and I forgot the model number. The machines I purchased had issue with "Machine Error 41" error. This error is displayed when the print head is bad or clogged up. On the internet, many other buyers of these machines were complaining and frustrated with this error code. I called Brother support and they had sent me a remanufactured machine as a replacement. The machine they sent also has the same issue and it lasted only 5 months.

Don't waste your money on this machine!! After experiencing the same issue on two different models, I decided not to waste my money on any of the Brother all-in-one inkjet machines.