Customer Reviews

Brother MFC 4800 Multifunction Printer, Scanner, Copier & Fax

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

There is no multifunction machine that does everything as well a collection of individual machines. The MFC-4800 is advertised as a 5-in-1: Fax/Printer/Copier/Scanner/PC-Fax. Here's how it performs at those tasks:

Fax: At its heart, this product is Brother's well-regarded PPF-2800 laser fax machine. It does not require a computer connection to work as a fax, and it has the robustness to serve a medium-sized office. Its TAD/Distinctive Ring feature lets me use the machine to automatically receive faxes on my standard telephone/answering machine line. As a fax machine, it's a 10.

Printer: USB and parallel interfaces, as well as Mac and Windows drivers, make this a good, 9 PPM laser printer. Text printing is very crisp, and the paper feed works well. Two downsides: First, graphics aren't printed as well as other laser printers. They appear to print using dithered black and white, rather than grayscale. Secondly, this printer doesn't have any built-in networking features, although it can be shared using Windows printer sharing or a hub.

Helpful Printer Tip: If you use Windows XP and you only want to use the printer feature (without the scanning, OCR and PC-Fax), simply plug the USB cable from the printer into your already-running PC. Windows XP will automatically install its built-in driver for this printer - great for those of us who are wary of installing loads of software on our computers.

Copier: I purchased this machine because I needed a fax machine, and happily paid a little extra for the laser printing capability. I'm delighted that it has a handy and useful standalone copy feature -- simply load a stack of originals into the fax feeder and press the "Copy" button, and out churn your copies. As with the fax feature, no computer connection or software is used. However, if you're looking for a "real" copier, you'll want a color, flatbed unit. Using the fax paper feeder means you can't copy books, small, or fragile items. It also tends to twist vertical lines a little. For record keeping, it's terrific, but if you want to make 20 copies of a 20 page document that look as good as the original, you'll probably be disapointed.

Scanner: I didn't even bother. The scanning and OCR software it installed on my Win ME system has a distinctly Windows 3.1 appearance. There are loads of [$$] color flatbed scanners that can run circles around this unit. If black and white, fax-quality PC scanning is useful to you, well, go for it.

PC-Fax: I haven't tested this feature.

Summary: I'm completely satisfied with my purchase. At its heart, this unit is a fax machine with a very good laser printer engine. Within the limitations of its fax heritage, it's a useful copier, but those fax limitations are significant in terms of its scanning capability. Two last comments - no USB or parallel cable was included, and the toner cartridge is a 1,000 page "starter" cartridge.

Considering that the street price on this machine is under $...(plus a... rebate) you are getting a lot of bang for the buck. What I was looking for a was a reasonably priced multifunction laser printer that would be used primarily for printing text, occasional faxes, and document imaging. I found what I was looking for in the Brother MFC-4800.

Looking at it function-by-function, the laser printing quality is excellent (and fast) when it comes to text, but achieves only average quality when printing graphics. For my fax needs the MFC-4800 fits the bill and even provides features that I'll never use (broadcasting, and fax forwarding, come to mind) .

The quality of the scans is acceptable for my uses (archiving phone, cable, and credit card statements, etc.) However, the document feeder does seem to be overly sensitive to slight misalignments, thus creating a scan that is at a slight angle. Copy quality is significantly worse than average, but acceptable for making copies for archival or backup purposes. If you need to make copies where appearance matters, e.g., of handouts for a presentation, definitely consider going to a copy shop, or even a convenience store.

As far as installation goes, I'm using Windows XP Pro SP-1 and installation was uneventful. XP drivers and software were included on the installation CD-ROM that was included in the package. Buyers of units that have been on store shelves for a long time may need to download the XP drivers from Brother's web site. The included OCR software works with XP. In a review on another site, and even on Brother's web site, I read that the OCR software was non-functional under XP, but I am able to scan a document and edit the resulting text with no problems.

Even if all you need is an inexpensive laser printer, the MFC-4800 should be considered especially since it is in the price range of most other single function printer only units. If you decide on buying it, you will probably find its additional functions to be icing on the cake.

Indeed, it is an "all can do" machine. At least during the first months. We are a small business and use the machine only a few times a day. But after a few months we had a problem with ink lines being spread out on each page we printed out. The Brother people (help line) were very helpful but couldn't find a solution. I eventually came up with the idea to replace the Drum Unit. The problem was solved but two weeks later, we had the same problem all over again. Now I wouldn't mind that this Drum Unit was just a few bucks...the problem is that one of these Drum Units costs you A LOT MORE than the purchase price of the Brother MFC-4800. ............In a perfect world, you can take it to a service center that Brother suggests. But who can live without a fax, telephone and copier for a week? Not a normal business! !! Do yourself a favour, calculate your time, toner and drum unit costs into the price of a machine.
A more expensive one might actually be cheaper in the long run.

I looked long and hard to find a fax / laser printer / scanner that uses USB, is small enough not to take over my entire desk, and works with XP. This Brother works like a charm-- quick, quiet, small, and it works great with XP (using a downloaded driver). Plus you don't need to install any other the kind of junky software (unlike some rival HP multi-function devices)-- just install the driver and you're ready to go.

Highly recommended for a good combo printer and fax machine.

This machine produces high quality laser copying and printing. I first purchased this machine to recieve faxes at a much lower cost. I have since tossed my old color inkjet and use this machine for about 1/5 the operating cost for printing. I find the crispness of this laser much more professional than that of a ink jet machine and the cost saving are great! This machine recieves about 30 faxes a day and has been a great addition to my office.

I have looked at other machines for hundreds more and found this machine to offer even more than I expected. We have been using this machine for 4 months now and have been putting it to work. Our office has other higher priced laser multifunction machines and have found this one to be faster and cheapest to operate. The fast warm-up time and speedy printing were just bonuses for the price we paid here. Hands down the best value laser MFC for the price.

We have had the Brother MFC 4800 for about three years now, and it is one of the absolute best purchases we ever made. The copy feature is not that great, but will suffice for home uses, and I don't know about the scanner or PC-fax features or haven't used them enough to pass judgement. As a printer and fax it has been great though.

I went through law school while my wife was a realtor who worked 50% out of a home office using this printer. We have probably printed 25,000 + pages through it. It still works great. We replaced the printer drum unit once, which the salesman said we would have to do somewhere around 15,000 - 18,000 copies. I think it cost about $150. The toner cartridge is usually about $30, and lasts for at least 2,000 pages if not more. Never needed any other parts or repair, although I did open it once and dust it out as best I could.

It doesn't print lightning fast, but it will do fast enough for a home use or a small home business, making high quality prints at probably 10 pages per minute. It makes great high quality prints on bond paper for resumes and postcard type paper for mailings, etc. I'm not sure now about the prices, but 3 years ago this machine was hands down the best value for the price if you wanted a home laser printer. I would estimate that at our high usage it has paid for itself several times just by how much longer the toner cartridge lasts versus inkjet cartridges, which usually cost even more. This thing costs only nominally more than an ink printer, and you won't miss having color. All the problems printing with ink make it almost a waste of time to deal with color printing at home anyway. The fax has always worked great too, and is easy to set up with your phone system, it has caller ID on it, and it has always worked fine detecting incoming faxes and answering them on the second ring.

The machine has been just a workhorse and a brute. There were software glitches I remember when we switched to Windows XP, but it wasn't terribly difficult to fix and it works fine now. Sometimes if there is a power loss or the computer shuts off incorrectly, something happens in the printer communication that causes a headache for a short period. But not being a computer expert I have always got the printer to work just fine, and those are really minor things compared to the low cost, high quality printing, and longevity of this machine with very high usage (and we've moved twice since owning it and it's gotten beaten around!).

I should say printer / fax / copier / scanner. Installation was was very simple and did not include a lot of gratuitous junk ads that seem to come with the driver disk nowadays. The drivers also don't take over your computer system and imbed themselves into every nook and cranny. It's relatively small for all that it does and the print quality is truly outstanding! This is a great price for such a versatile machine.

After seeing some of the negative reviews, I had to comment. I have had my MFC-4800 at least 2 years and it has been superb. Print quality is far better than the HP Laserjet 1100 that it replaced. The scanner captures quality images to Paperport, and the fax works like an office fax - fast and reliable, printing very high-quality images. One of the main attractions is that with Brother, you only have to replace a $25 toner cartridge, not a $75-$90 hit like HP requires. I have never replaced the drum unit. The owners manual tells you that the control panel will let you know when this is necessary - presumable based on usage. I use a ream of paper a week, so this machine is getting high usage for a home printer. The only caveat is that it chokes on more than 30 or so sheets in the paper feeder, causing misfeeds. What do you expect for the price - perfection? An excellent machine overall, and an incredible value at the price.

These machines are known for placing random ink marks on your paper after a jamb. If you have paper jamb inside the machine (as opposed to in the feeder), you will inevitably have random black marks on every page thereafter. It has been a continuing problem and since Brother doesn't have a fix for it, they tell you to replace, you guessed it, the $160 drum unit! That's over half the price of what they sold the machine to us for. Think twice before buying. As stated before, the scanning and copying on this unit leave a lot to be desired.