Customer Reviews

Brother MFC-5100c Multifunction

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

3.5 stars.

I just picked up one of these Brother units almost on a whim, as the several that I played with in the stores were unacceptable with extremely poor print quality, for both text and graphics, color and B&W. I was worried that the description given by the one-star reviewer below was accurate. However, I gambled (well, not too much - the store has a 14 day return policy) that the demo units in the stores did not have anything close to the optimum settings, clean print heads or full ink cartridges. My gamble paid off, as the contrast between the well-used-if-not-abused store demos and my new machine is huge.

First, as a frame of reference, I had an old HP Deskjet 500 (the original inkjet printer) and currently own a five year old HP Deskjet 712 I use for text printing, and a two year old Epson Stylus Photo 780 that I have yet to master and attempt to use for photo printing.

I thought the 5100's set up and software install went about as quickly and well as I could expect - the directions were clear and simple, and I encountered absolutely no problems at all. I'm running Win 98SE, though, so I cannot comment on the complaints about XP compatibility. There are separate detailed instructions for XP installation but some of the scanning software (a third party's, not Brother's) may not be XP compatible. However, it does seem that Brother specifically addressed XP issues with the current models. It should be simple if you follow the directions exactly, rather than just diving in and mucking around.

As far as text printing goes, this unit has average, acceptable quality for an inkjet printer. If one looks closely, the individual pixels are somewhat visible even at the best print quality. I would say its text quality is nearly identical to that on my Epson Photo 780 and similar to what a 300dpi laser printer from a decade ago produced. It's sufficient for business correspondence and probably just good enough for printing resumes, but it's not as crisp as the text printing from my HP 712. However, I have never seen any inkjet print better text than the 712, old as it may be, including the newest HP's I've seen in stores. If text quality is of paramount importance to you, no other inkjet printer brand on the market can compete with HP, so you should stick to that brand. The MFC-5100 is twice as fast at printing text as my HP 712.

Copy quality is this unit's biggest shortcoming. It has pretty low resolution on the B&W setting, roughly what I got from my scanner printing out on the HP 712, or draft on the venerable HP Deskjet 500. It's debatable if the copy quality is sufficient to use for sending copies to other parties with business correspondence, but is ok for maintaining personal or home records. In the black and white mode, I see almost no difference in print quality between the Fast, Normal and Best copy quality settings, which may be a minor defect with my unit. It's pretty fast, though - prints in about 30-40 seconds from hitting the copy button, with subsequent copies coming much faster - figure five copies per minute in the real world beyond the first copy. Color copies are pretty nice and at a higher resolution than the monochrome ones.

I haven't done any color printing of signs and such, but have printed some photos and have been quite pleased. I've managed to get a few excellent, highly detailed photos lately with my 2.1mp Canon A20 digital camera and they came out very nicely on the Brother, much better than anything I could print with my 600dpi HP 712. At 5" x 7" size, pixels were only noticeable at close inspection. Larger 8.5" x 11" photos had very similar resolution and beyond a distance of 18" appear to be as good as any enlargement I have seen from a 35mm autofocus camera. My Epson Photo 780 prints at a higher resolution (2880x720 - individual pixels are not noticeable even on close inspection of an 8.5" x 11" print) but has lousy, inaccurate color (at least as far as I've been able to tweak it). The MFC-5100C's color is vivid and very accurate and I prefer its photos to those from my Epson at this point. I'm not sure if I'm printing at the 5100's claimed 1200 x 2400 dpi highest resolution, though, as the settings don't allow for that specific of finetuning. The generally thorough manual is a bit lacking on photoprinting, but I think I've been using best photo settings. The individually replaceable cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) are also a nice feature and black cartridges are a third less expensive than HP cartridges.

The fax function works perfectly and is as simple as anyone could want. The document feeder works like a charm, also.

In summary, this is a pretty nice unit for the price and there is nothing in the market comparable until you spend 50% more. If this Brother only had print quality comparable to the HP units, I would give it an enthusiastic five stars. The HP 6110 is the cheapest HP multifunction flatbed with a document feeder, it does print noticeably better copies and text than this Brother, and appears, from what I saw in the stores, to have fewer compromises. In fact, despite the fact that the HP 6110 costs 62% more than I paid for the Brother, I liked its better print quality and faster fax enough that I ordered one, will compare it to the Brother MFC-5100 and update this review soon.

I recieved the MFC-5100C this afternoon, with some trepidation about MacOS X support. I'm happy to report that it works without a hitch in OS X, both for printing and scanning. No USB cable in the box, but that seems to have become standard practice for printer manufacturers.

Print quality is decent. Not on par with the latest/best inkjets, but they cost more than this machine, and don't have scanner/fax capabilities. And inkjet printing has come so far in the last few years that this 'ok' modern printer is far better than the standard a few years ago.

Scan quality (via the TWAIN driver) is good as well. Again, not as good as more expensive scanners, but quite acceptable for an economical multifunction machine. Scanning speed is good as well. Minor gripe, that may not be Brother's fault - i can scan with no problems into Adobe Photoshop and some other apps, but Image Capture.app goes haywire with this TWAIN driver. Might be Apple's fault though, since the driver works fine with other apps.

So far my only concern is that the scanner light stays on permanently, and there is no on/off switch for the unit. So the unit is presumably sucking power and wearing out the scanner light 24 hours a day. :(

-robin

After using this machine for several months, it flashed the need for all three color cartridges. It still had black ink, but (as I discovered at their website) this machine will not print if ANY one ink cartridge needs replacement. It appears that cartridges have a microchip that prevents refill and reuse, and "knows" when you re-insert old cartridge.

Recieved the MFC-5100C this afternoon from Amazon.com. Was worried that some of the reviews indicated some problems existed with installation. Happy to report that it works without a hitch on Windows 98. Came with a USB cable in the box, but have been using the parallel line so far. Will have to add a USB Hub to attach the printer using the USB line since it was not included in the box --- Didn't think they would include a Hub.

Print quality is OK for home. Not on par with the latest/best inkjets, but at [this price] one can not complain, besides the best inkjets cannot do everything the 5100C can do.

Scan quality is good as well. Again, not as good as more expensive scanners, but quite acceptable for an economical multifunction machine. Scanning speed is good as well.

So far my only issue is that the scanner light stays on permanently, and there is no on/off switch for the unit. So the unit is presumably sucking power and wearing out the scanner light 24 hours a day. Which means it will break sooner than later. Hopefully Brother will read this review and add an on/off switch.

This product is not as well-built as my previous fax-printer: HP K60. There are severl problems with this MFC: 1. When I connect it to my PC (Window XP) with a USB cable, my computer could not shut down properly. When I connect it to my PC with a IEEE 1284 cable, my computer was able to shut down properly. 2., I had to purchase the USB and IEEE 1284 cable. 3., The function screen keeps saying that I have a paper jam when I don't have a paper jam. 5-10 years ago, I had a black and white laser MFC from Brother. I also encountered many paper jam problems with that MFC. At that time, the paper either kept jamming up, or the screen kept saying that there was a paper jam when there was not a paper jam. 4., The white scanning light bulb would not turn off. I don't know if it's supposed to turn off after a few minutes, but it's on all the time, even after many days of non-usage. I wonder if the scanning light bulb will last long if it's on all the time. 5., When I print with recycled printing paper (I use the back of non-essential printed papers), the feeder would often pick up two pages at once, instead of feeding one page at a time. 6., the quality of the Normal resolution of MFC 5100c is not as good as the Normal resolution of my previous HP K60. I need to go to SuperFine in order to get acceptable resolution.

The good qualities about this product is: 1., it prints much faster than my previous HP K60. 2., the MFC color is slightly richer than the HP K60. 3., the price is cheaper. 4., it's has a flatbed, so it can scan bulky or hard documents.

I don't understand how this product could get a bad review from anyone, especially concerning problems with XP. I have XP Pro and have not had 1 single problem out of this machine in the 9 months since I bought it. The printing speed is good, the scanning speed is good, and the fax/pc fax is excellent. Of course I have common sense and some people seem to lack it; when you print color pics at high resolution it will take longer than printing black and white text at a draft resolution, something some folks just do not understand. Yes it has a large footprint, but I guarantee it is smaller than the footprints left by a separate printer, scanner, copier, and fax. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in a multifunction machine.

It's a bit large but this is very functional unit. I had no trouble with Windows XP and was able to set it up as a Network printer for my other computers (Windows Me and 95 very easily. Unlike my old HP T45 unit which had a slow clunky startup everytime you turn on your computer this is much faster. There are fixes for the resolution of the scanner on the Website.When you are printing pictures or graphics I found it better to set it to Photo (not auto) in the Advanced setup.

I recently received this machine for Christmas as a replacement to my Epson 660C printer. The quality of the printing and copying is great on this machine. The scanner is extremely fast. I like having a flatbed copier/scanner with a sheet feeder so that I don't have to do pages one page at a time. The overall quality of the machine is great. The convenience of having a 5 in one machine is great and saves alot of space. It easy to learn how to use this machine.

Yesterday I would have given this MFC product **** stars, but Brother instantly resolved the installation issue I had (website contacted, e-mail response with great instructions, 100% functional within 5 minutes)-- now I'm back to *****.

This one product replaces an older, slow HP inkjet printer and a very good but space-occupying scanner.

We were faxing, printing and copying instantly and very pleased with the speed and quality of all three.

The scanner was my problem. Have Windows 98. After installation, the win.ini file caused 'Twain device already in use" error message in the scanner when I tried to choose the Source file. I contacted the Brother website "Ask Us"/Software issues site by e-mail and the next day had the step-by-step instructions for resolving this. It works perfectly!! Scanned a document, even sent it off to Word, and it worked perfectly.

I am very happy with this product. Haven't printed photos on photo-quality paper yet, but photocopied prints came out great on plain ol' white paper, so I'm hopeful!

Saw it in the store, read the reviews here, bought it -- another satisfied customer!

Pros: Many features and a low price.
Cons: You get what you pay for.

We purchased this product because it seemed to have the most "bang-for-the-buck." Combo color inkjet printer, copier, flatbed scanner, fax machine for $80 (on sale) at Staples. Seemed too good to be true.

Well...it was. The print heads have to be cleaned every few days - it takes about 5 minutes to finish - else the output is crummy. This is a real pain, especially when you are in a rush to print something out. Never had any problems with any of the HP products (2 laserjets and 1 inkjet) that I have owned over the past 15 years.

Once the printer heads are clean, the overall performance of the MFC-5100C is adequate. The scanner resolution/quality is nothing the write home about and the printer output is not outstanding (even when set to the highest quality) but is ok for most of our needs.

Now would I purchase this unit if I had to do it all over again? Probably not. I'd probably spend more money and buy an HP.