Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsAfter printing 19,500 pages in two years, totally unusable, even with 22% of the original drum remaining. Don't recommend.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 3, 2014
UPDATE JULY 2017
Going from bad to worse. The printer is now officially almost a paperweight (well, I can use the scanner). The printer mangles the paper, and now I just received the "print unable oa" error I reported in May 2015, totally unusable for printing even mangled pages.
As I noted when I first got this printer in 2014, I was concerned about the quality as compared to other Brother printers I have owned. For a printer to break down to an unusable level when I have more than 20% of my original drum left is unacceptable. I strongly recommend avoiding this printer. Now I need to get a new laser color and not sure which one.
UPDATE APRIL 2016
I have had this printer since July 2014. Since then I have printed out about 17,000 pages, about 800 pages a month. I have probably scanned 10,000 to 15,000 pages. Unfortunately, although I have about 40% of my drum left, I am getting an indentation (sort of like a notary seal impression) on the page, and more frequent paper jams. The paper path is completely clear front and rear. Of course it is out of warranty, which is why I will now probably always buy one of these extended warranties for printers because it seems as if the quality of printers is going down these days. I had another brother printer which lasted much longer)
As you can see from my original review below, I did have concerns about the build quality, and now those concerns are showing up. I would definitely not recommend this printer unless you get a service plan that has in-house service. The printer is huge and probably weighs about 60 pounds, so it would be a big hassle to drag it to any service center.
I have liked brother products in the past, so I am not quite sure what I will do to replace this one.
Update January 2015:
I have just started using color printing of documents and I must say I am disappointed in the difference between what I see on the screen, or from what I have scanned, and what gets printed out. The most obvious discrepancy is scanning or copying a letter that is signed in blue ink, and the print out is much darker, sometimes almost with her purple tint. The same for printing emails that have their replies in blue: it prints out almost a dark purple. Since this is my first color printer I don't know how accurate they tend to be. The printed version is still okay and usable, but not as accurate as I would like it to be especially since each color cartridge costs about $90, a total of $270 just to replace the cartridges. I have used Brother printers for years, but this one is a disappointment.
Update December 2014:
As I note below, one of the primary things I use a multifunction printer for the scanning documents. I still have my older Brother 8860DN, and I have scanned tens of thousands of pages of documents. I have not used the new printer (L8850CDW) nearly as much, and recently, I have noticed more scanning jams. Recently I scanned a 35 page document in the new printer, but it kept jamming. I tried scanning it in my older Brother printer without a problem.
I have concerns this color printer will not be as reliable. Although it is heavier, it does not feel as well constructed. For example, the 8860DN has a very solid feel where the paper is fed, as well as in the part where you put in envelopes, when you open and close it. The L8850CDW feels much less solid, which is maybe why I am having problems.
This last scan, which works on my old Brother (8860DN), but not on my new Brother (L8850CDW) is a bad sign that the new Brother is not as well made and will not hold up over the long-term. Right now, I would not recommend this printer. I will update if further use changes my opinion.
Initial review:
I received this printer recently, and I will be updating this review as I use the printer more. So far I am the first verified purchaser to leave a review (the others were Vine reviewers). I had concerns about ordering because it is a brand new and untested new model and one of the two initial Vine reviewers reported some jams in printing double-sided. A printer should not be jamming regularly no matter unless you are feeding in the wrong kind of paper. The other reviewer didn't try the scanning function.
My first attempt at printing 50 pages double-sided worked perfectly.
I have also scanned double-sided with no problem. The bottom line, if this printer works as well as my other Brother printers, I will be very happy. I have been a long-time user of Brother printers and I have scanned many tens of thousands of pages with virtually no jamming. One of the reasons I switched from HP to Brother is that the HP printers I have used were always jamming. This is a feature that is too important to me and I can't afford to be dealing with paper jams of any kind.
I should note that although the sheet feeder is rated for 50 pages, as were my older Brother printers, I do not recommend doing that many at one time. Depending on the condition of what you are scanning, I would scan anywhere from 25 to 40 pages at a time, with 30 as average. Although it would be really nice to scan more pages (and I will attempt that with this printer over the next several days), I have not found that the particularly problematic and it virtually eliminates jams at least for the scanning part of the printer. (Update, I just scanned 43 pages in a batch without problem). (Second Update, scanned about 700 pages, mostly 40 to a batch, no problems, and even was able to scan 52 pages without a problem).
It was relatively easy to hook up the printer wirelessly although I thought the instructions were not perfectly clear and I did have a few glitches along the way. For example the instructions recommend using a USB cable to do the initial wireless connection but I still haven't found where the USB cable would actually go on the printer. I looked in the manual to see if there was a diagram showing where the USB connector is, but there is no such diagram. USB is not even listed in the index at the back of the manual. I was able to set it up wirelessly.
Fortunately the printer does scan wirelessly directly from the printer to your computer without using any cable. I am using Windows 8. I had been unable to scan wirelessly with my older brother printer when I upgraded to Windows 8, but so far this new printer works perfectly.
There is a place for putting a thumb drive and you can scan directly to the thumb drive which is a great feature. It appears to be USB 2.0 which is not so great, but I haven't done enough scanning to the thumb drive yet to see if that impacts the speed at which documents are scanned.since Since it scans so easily directly to my computer, I may not use the feature but certainly would be useful if you have a busy office and might want to give a scanned copy of something to someone, or scan something to take with you in a hurry.I believe it also lets you print from documents on the USB.
The print quality looks very good so far as does the scan quality.
The touch screen is nice but it is a little finicky when having to side scroll through options. It is easy to go one selection or two too far, but you probably won't have to use touch screen all that often. In addition, you can control all or most functions from your computer. However, I do think the touchscreen responsiveness needs to be improved a little bit.
The only problem I've had with other Brother printers is that sometimes for single-sided printing the paper curls significantly and I have to constantly monitor the printer to take out the pages otherwise they will get all mixed up. It is not a deal breaker for me but I will see if that happens with this printer and let you know.I just noticed that the settings have an option from the Control Center which is installed when you set up the computer, to reduce paper curl. I have turned that on and then I will update if I notice any difference in the amount of curling as I used the printer more. I have not done enough printing to say for sure, but so far, this has not been a problem.
It is very heavy and it is definitely a two-person job for initially getting the printer to wherever you want to be.
This is my first color printer and although I don't have a much need for color, I thought it was a nice feature. In my prior Brother printers I was able to bypass the early warning system for changing the toner. One reviewer seems to imply this may not be possible for this printer.If I can figure out how to do that with this printer I will let you know as well. For a black and white laser printer was simply putting a piece of tape over the sensor, but I am not yet sure if this is possible with this printer.
Overall I've been very happy with the Brother printers I've had in the past and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will continue to be happy. I would probably give us a 4.5 stars if Amazon had that as an option(why don't they have that as an option?), primarily for the finicky touchscreen. For now I am going to read it 4 stars, but if it continues to work well over time and I am able to override sensors from Brother that force you to change the cartridges too often(unless I can find some explanation of why they do this that seems reasonable), then I will upgraded to five stars over time.
UPDATE 1: My first scanning glitch/concern: I had 15 pages to scan. Some of the pages had been stapled so of course I removed staples. I have done that for many hundreds of times if not more with my other Brother printers. What I usually do when there are pages that have been stapled is put the pages in upside down to minimize two pages sticking together. With my other brother printers I rarely if ever had a problem. However, when I ran the 15 pages through (at 600 dpi color so it went relatively slowly), two of the pages did stick together. I decided to run the pages again, rather than just scan the missing page, and it happened a second time. I was very careful in putting the pages in and fanning them both times, so this is concerning. `
I ran the pages through a third time, this time in black and white I ran the pages through a third time, this time in black and white, same thing. I changed the order of the documents and ran it through a fourth time and it worked. That is not acceptable to me. I will do some more tests over the next few days and if necessary call Brother. If I do have to return this printer is going to be a hassle because it is so heavy.
Update 2: Well, I scanned 29 somewhat dog-eared pages (recipes) without a hitch, so that is increasing my confidence a bit, so I am going back to 4 stars. I hope to do a fair amount of scanning this week, so I will have a better idea if this is going to be a problem or not.
Update 3: did a larger scanning job of single sided, with no problem.
Update 4: So far, after about two months, no problems. My daughter was able to use the printer on her Mac (I have a PC).
Update 5: Update May 2015:
Though I have not used the printer much, out of the blue I received a "print unable oa" error message. The panel asks me to turn the computer off and then back on. I did so, but the same error appears. Tech support is closed now, but I have a big print job needed for tomorrow. I will upgrade my rating back to its current 2 star if there is a simple fix for this, but, if not, my earlier concerns regarding build quality may prove true. ... a few days later, unplugged the printer, left it off for a while, turned it back on, and the error message disappeared (see below). I decided not to turn off the printer until I had a chance to call Brother, but the more I use this printer, the less confidence I have that it will perform or last as long as other Brother printers I have had. Because of my concern regarding its reliability, I am actually going to buy a backup printer. In other words, if you need a printer for time sensitive business needs, I would be somewhat cautious in buying this particular printer.
Even without this problem, I think the printer is only fair, since the color is inaccurate, and the sheet feeder does not work reliably, but to get a sudden error message that disables the printer from working...that's a problem.
