Customer Reviews

Brother MFC8660DN LASER FLATBED MULTI-FUNCTION

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

 

 

Prior to this I had an HP 3330, and it was good to me for over 7 years, but I decided to upgrade to a duplexing unit. I bought a Canon laser printer, and sent it back two days later to Office Depot--whoever designed that unit should be shot. Anyway...

My wife was in Costco a couple of days later, and told me they had the Brother MFC 8660DN there, and since it's easy to return stuff to Costco, I told her to bring it on home.

This unit is a dream. The footprint is small. The door for inserting envelopes and single sheets of paper (so you can easily use recycled paper) is right there in front where you need it and is simple (unlike the Canon); I use a lot of recycled paper.

The copier works FAST, and the settings are easy to use and very intuitive. The fax unit works better and faster and easier than the HP ever did--finally, it coordinates with my answering machine without any hassles.

The scanner and my computer (Windows XP) work together seamlessly.

The printer (although not the copier or fax) has great duplexing capabilities. (A more expensive unit, I believe, has duplexing for the copier and fax too if you need it).

Let's talk about Brother support--I stupidly sent an envelope with a metal clasp through the unit, and realized that that's why a couple of little dots were appearing on my pages. I called Brother, and they sent me a new drum AND a new toner cartridge (okay, I had to call two times)at n/c.

btw, you'll read some reviews online that say it's noisy. It's not noisy. There is more noise coming from the plane that's flying overhead right now, or the dogs barking next door, than from this printer, and it's right behind my desk chair, where I can easily access it. I use it all the time.
So, I'm really happy with this Brother product, and recommend it.

I'm surprised that one reviewer rated this machine so negatively. This is my fourth Brother MFC printer. My previous one mysteriously stopped working, but Costco gave me a full refund (after using it for two years), so I bought this one. It's a very good printer/scanner/fax machine and does everything I ask it to very reliably. Almost all of my previous printers were HPs, and I had pretty good luck with them but decided to give Brother a try a few years ago. They are every bit as good as HPs and usually less expensive to operate. Overall, I don't think they are less expensive to operate than Canons, but they've been such good work-horses for me in my business that I just keep going back to them. I'm not very 'brand-committed' since I see printers as basically commodity items with a fairly short shelf life. I expect to get about two years of service from a printer, but I have one Brother machine that is going into its fourth year.

I really like the built-in duplex feature of this machine since I have to create many of my forms for my business, and this machine handles that feature with aplomb. I would also rate Brother tech support higher than HP -- I got through to them quickly, and they readily answered my questions. I'd say this machine is noiser than the other Brother (or HP) machines I've had, but it's not a big deal. No one in my office has ever complained.

I would not hesitate to purchase another Brother, and I would say they are as good as the HPs I've had (but less expensive).

I'm not new to the Brother MFC line, having owned the 8440D for almost 2 years before purchasing the 8660DN at Costco just a few days ago. I'm a business users, and the 8440D was a great device (except for the power consumption). I purchased the 8660DN to replace the 8440D because it has the built-in network card. I want to connect this device straight to the LAN without having to use a PC as a print server.

The reason I give this unit 1 star is for it's total lack of duplex *copying* capability, which can only be explained as pure profit motive. Even my old 8440D allowed you to make a two-sided copy of a two-sided original, albeit through a convoluted series of menu selections.

This printer/MFC is DUMBED DOWN. Yup, that's right. The kissin' cousin of this printer is 8860DN. They are so close in every way that Brother even includes the two models in the same user guide. The 8860DN has a Duplex key that allows you to make duplex copies with ease. This model does not. Why not? Because brother wants you to pay more money for that feature is about all I can figure.

The reason I say this is that there are six keys used to control the copy features of the MFC. Both this model and the 8860DN have six keys. However, this "cripple ware" model uses what would be the Duplex key as the "Contarst" function. The 8860DN uses key two as both Contrast and Quality as shown:

8660DN keys
[Contrast] [Quality] ...

8860DN keys
[Duplex ] [Contrast/Quality]...

What's really irritating is that the contrast/quality key does nothing except put you into the copy menu anyway. In other words, you can set quality and contrast in the copy settings when you press the Copy key. Why do you need an additional button to set what you can already set as soon as you press the Copy key? So I have a device with two useless keys and no Duplex key that is a critical function of a duplex MFC.

Go figure.

Brother, you've not only lost a customer over this idiocy, but we *were*, as in past-tense, a VAR for Brother. We don't take well to this kind of marketing ploy. If you have duplex functionality, then make it available to through the copy feature.

This is my second Brother multi-function machine. The first one lasted forever, and we decided that it was time to upgrade. Also figured that getting this at Costco made it easy to return if we didn't like it. It periodically goes on special with a coupon, so that helped, too.

This is my first network MFC. We had a Hawking Print Server attached to the old unit, and that worked okay. This one installed very quickly and easily. The network printing has been reliable, whether we are wired or wireless. The duplexing works great, and is a real advantage. Beside a lot of printing, I've done scanning, copying, and faxing. It works great. I don't have it set up to receive faxes as that's more than I want to deal with right now, and I was getting spam faxes.

The copying often cuts off the left edge, but it is usually not a big deal. If it's really important, I can readjust the position. The scanning to my laptop works great, but it's not the quality of a stand-alone scanner. I scanned a lot of old family photos, and decided to go with a Canon CanoScan 8600F, which gives a little better image, and has great software.

The one thing that bugs me is that it wrinkles envelopes. I've tried the different settings, but that hasn't helped. This seems to be a design problem, and I've seen comments about it before, but hadn't seen anything about it just before I bought the unit. I went to Brother's FAQs and it is addressed. I haven't taken the time to try all of their suggested fixes, but wish that this wasn't such a problem. We are considering getting an inexpensive printer to just handle envelopes (we're a SOHO).

I've had the unit for about 6 months, and two of us print off it in our home office. We still have the starter toner cartridge in, which surprises me. I bought a backup high-yield cartridge, but it's just been sitting around for months. Hey, I'm not complaining about that.

Overall, it's a great unit, and a lot of bang for the buck.

In common with some of the other reviewers, I purchased the 8660DN from Costco on a coupon deal. Additionally, I was aiming to replace a old Apple Laserwriter and an HP3210 Photosmart multifunction that I hve learned to hate. Finally, I just left the corporate world and needed a home office fax machine. I was able to discuss the Brother, HP, Xerox, and Canon solutions with their respective factory reps at the 2008 Macworld exhibition in SF back in January, as well as demo most of the applicable products. So, the Brother unit won the battle of live demos and Costco pricing.

Here is how the 8660DN dealt with these missions:
1. Faxing - It's full featured and just a great performer. I have to send faxes every week due to health insurance and investment order processing. It's easy, fast and has all the memory a home office could ever use.

2. Printing - My home network has four computers attached running Mac OSX (10.4 and 10.5) in addition to a laptop running Windows XP. I have WiFi and hardwired connections. The MFC does a great job of printing in both single sided and duplex mode from all our computers.
***** ONE ISSUE: Do NOT plug the MFC power cord into the same circuit as the network router or any other network hub. When the MFC awakes from sleep, the startup power surge is sufficient to glitch the hub and lose the network address assignment necessitating a re-cycle of the MFC power switch to reconnect to the network. *****

NOTE: The above issue was diagnosed by Brother's excellent (in my opinion) customer support. I moved the power around, and now it's fine.

3. Scanning: Both network and USB connected scanning work well and produce moderate to good quality scans. It's not a replacement for a dedicated scanner, but it's fine for home office work. Also, the ADF works really well.

4. Copying. It's just great and is a much used features. The enlarge and reduce functions work well with presets for letter, legal, etc.

Conclusion: This is a great unit

I bought this printer after reading some reviews posted here. But more importantly I've used Brother printers for some time now and had faith in this quality-oriented company.

Rather than re-hash what's been said already I'll list my pros and cons:

1) This is a 'Energy Star' Vista ready printer. Have Vista on your computer? Just plug this in using your USB port and it's set to go. Haven't tried it on a network so can't comment.
2) Scanner operation is razor sharp. Scans are fast and control over contrast is easy.
3) Faxing operation works as expected and is foolproof.
4) Toner cost is low compared to other printers. The high volume toner cartridge is good for 7000 sheets and can be had for around $70 ( close to one penny a print-out.
5) Drum is said to give 20,000 sheets of service can't comment because I haven't printed out that many sheets but the printer does have a feature that allows you to view how many total sheets have been printed!
6) When it was new I used the default settings. Print-outs were very fast ( @600 DPI). Had problems with wrinkled envelopes though. Try as I might could not fix. Checked manual and it said to release tension springs in back which kept paper tight to drum. No improvement. Bummer! Everything was great about this printer but one of the most important operations. ARRGH! Then I remembered similar problem with another printer. Went into the 8660's properties and changed the DPI to 1200. Left the springs in back released. Tried an envelope. BINGO! The speed of the printer was reduced by half but the print-outs were sharper than ever and the envelopes came out perfect! Problem solved!
7) Cons: It's a lttle noisy. Umm...can't think of anything else.

A great printer and can be had at discounted prices because it seems Brother wants the 8860 to take its' place. Check it out ( I've seem them as low as $300- at that price it's a steal! )

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!!!