Category: (CE)
30 new, starting at $599.00
1 used, starting at $615.00
The MFC-9840CDW is the ultimate color laser Multi-Function Center® business solution that offers superior quality color laser printing, faxing, copying and scanning? with built-in wireless and Ethernet network interfaces. It delivers superior quality color and black laser output at up to 21 pages per minute. It also features automatic duplex printing, copying, faxing and scanning?, a legal-size document glass and a 50-sheet auto document feeder. A USB direct interface allows you to print directly from a USB flash drive or PictBridge enabled camera. High capacity replacement toner cartridges are available to help keep your cost per page low, too.
Only Duplex Color Laser with Wireless Network That Works with Mac
& Windows - But Toner ProblemsReviewed by SanjeevP, 2010-03-14
After getting poor customer support & warranty on previous
Brother products (dot matrix, laser and color inkjet multifunction
centers), I had vowed never to buy to another Brother product. But
then in fall 2008, when I purchased MacBook, this was the only
Wireless network color laser multifunction printer/scanner/fax with
duplex scanning & printing that worked with both Windows and
Mac (I think it still is) and uniqueness of the product overcame my
resistance. The good thing is that I have not had to use Brother
customer support & warranty and so far I am satisfied.
How long is it going to last? I don't know.
My first Brother product in 1985 was a portable typewriter, that
was also supposed to work as serial printer for IBM PC. Out of the
box I could not get it to connect to IBM PC. that was the era
before the technical support when everything worked, just like a
toaster, and Brother customer service would not honor their
warranty and take it back because it was not their fault. I was
stuck - using just as a typewriter. Finally around 1988 or 1989
after a lot of experimentation and mucking around with serial port
settings I got it to work as a serial printer. Then I realized that
using it as serial printer was prohibitively expensive - cost of 3
Brother printer ribbons bought me a new Citizen dot matrix
printer!
In 1993 Brother came out with one of the first, if not the first,
laser multifunctions which I purchased. Lot of paper jams and
Brother technical support kept blaming it on paper and wouldn't
help or take it back. Eventually paper jams became intolerable and
I got HP laserjet series 3 that worked flawlessly for 13 years.
Never even had to call technical support.
I think around 1996 Brother again came out with one of the first,
if not the first, color inkjet multifunction machine that worked
reasonably well. But what really pissed me off was that each time a
color ink cartridge was out, even the black and white printer and
fax stopped working.
Somethings never change: look at the user reviews of Brother
printers and multifunction devices - they are all studded with
complaints about customer service and ink or toner
cartridges!
Does't look like it hurts Brother Corporation either. Their formula
is to seduce customers with a unique product at low price and then
recoup the money off the ink and toners cartridges!
There is, of course, no perfect printer. And I got suckered again
into buying this unique Brother 9840WDC!
I have five other network printers that include multifunctions Dell
1600cn, 2300cn; two 5100cn color laser printers; and one Samsung
ML-1630W Personal Wireless Mono Laser Printer. One problem that all
of them have had is periodically losing network connectivity and
all of them needed to have their IP address set as fixed. In the
year and a half I have not had that problem with Brother
9840CDW.
This machine is so feature rich that I have not even used them all
in last year and a half but they have been covered extensively in
other user reviews and highlights include good print quality,
duplex scanning & printing, compatibility with both Mac OS
& Windows, and very good network performance. The print quality
is definitely much better from Mac than Windows, probably because
of the post script driver. Even from Windows, color printing with
this printer is far superior than Dell 5100cn. Black & white
printing is fast but color is fairly slow.
Some other reviewers have stated unavailability of users guide and
drivers from Brother's web site: untrue, all users guides (quick
start, software, network), drivers, and firmware are available for
download from Brother's web site.
My main pat peeve with this machine really is that low toner
message comes on long before the toner needs replacement, not only
that, you cannot even do black and white printing even if one of
the three color cartridges is out! I had the same problem with my
previous color inkjet Brother MFC, which makes on suspect corporate
malfeasance to rip customers off. Where can the customers go to buy
toner when they have your machine? Monopoly! Over time it is
expensive and environmentally inimical. Other reviewers have given
tips on that and there are discussions groups on Amazon and web
sites covering this issue. You can beat that by setting to toner
saver mode and covering the toner sensor holes an the side of the
cartridge with a tape and winding the gears back to original
position on color cartridges.
Brother is also misleading on the cost of printing per page. Going
by their stated yields from toner cartridges, the cost should be
1.2 cents for black & white and 5.3 cents per page for color.
In my real world experience it is about 3 times that.
Even though it is multifunction, you can use only one function at a
time. It cannot receive fax and scan at the same time. Sleep mode
is energy saver but it takes a few seconds to wake up from sleep,
which can be annoying if you need to print or scan something
quickly. And it is very heavy at 115 lbs, even for two people.
Think long and hard before you decide the initial location of this
machine because moving it is going to be extremely difficult. After
all, it is wireless network multifunction machine and you keep it
anywhere in your office or home, not necessarily next to the
computer or router. But you need it close to the phone outlet if
you are going to use it as a fax machine.
Despite above annoyances, in the big scheme of things it is a very
good multifunction machine, especially if you have both Macs and
Windows machine on your network, probably unique with all the
feature set.
Problems with the InksReviewed by Buy no more Brother, 2010-03-05
What is the problem of it? I used it for almost a year and it seems
fine initially. When it said the toners are running out, you have
to replace all three toners. I replaced them as advised. But, the
new Magenta toner was spilling all over inside the printer. I went
to replace it and put back the old Magenta toner as an interim
solution. It worked. Not only it worked. It worked for more than a
month! What does this mean? It means the Magenta toner was not out
of toner. It asked you to replace it before it ran out. The toners
are not cheap. They are expensive. Now, there is a warning signal
asking me to prepare to replace its Magenta toner. Yeah, the new
one replacing the spilled over one is still waiting.
This happens to the black toner. I ordered the long life one. It is
not yet used up and it suddenly dead today without any warning
asking to replace it with a new one. I tried not to replace it
because I know there is about half of the toner inside. It did not
work. So I have to replace it with another new one. I am still
trying to figure out how to use the one that actually is still half
full of toner.
The other Brother I had was even worse Brother HL-5280DW Wireless
Laser Printer Network Duplex
Will I buy Brother printer again? You bet!
Brother Color LaserReviewed by Tom, 2010-02-22
I purchased this printer to replace an inkjet printer that wasn't
working for my application. First of all I was amazed that the
product arrived intact and without damage. This guy is heavy! And
it shipped in it's retail packaging. (save the box just in case you
ever have to ship it back)
I originally hooked this up to my PC based network and the drivers
were out of date and it took the usual fooling around, downloading
drivers etc. to get it working. A couple days later we scrapped our
PC network and switched over to iMac's. We plugged the Ethernet
cable to the router, and viola it was hooked up and working. The
Mac OS already had the drivers as part of the operating system and
automatically looked for any updates. Inside of three minutes the
printer was hooked up, installed and ready for service.
The print quality is more than adequate for business use. We
occasionally print out photos and the quality is outstanding. The
printer does take a while to warm up but the print and processing
speed is plenty fast enough for our needs.
Be careful with toner. There is a lot of info out there on the
toner life. Rather than rehash, when the printer says you need a
new cartridge, you don't. Simply reset the timing gears and your
off for another couple hundred or more pages.
All in all, I feel this printer was a great value. We must have
caught some sort of sale or promotion at four hundred sixty five
dollars with free shipping. At that price for such a full featured
multi function printer it was a no brainer. Even at the "regular"
price of seven hundred it still represents a good value compared to
what else is out there.
Does the trick!Reviewed by Sebastian Good, 2010-02-20
After years of frustration with HP drivers, I'm pretty darn happy
with this printer. Under Windows XP, Windows 7 and Mac OS X
(10.5.8) install was either trivial (point the OS at the printer,
which just magically appeared on the network) or very easy
(download some drivers). The drivers seem to be small, work well,
and produce good output. (The exception is the Windows 7 x64
driver, which seems to produce less than crisp lettering for some
of my documents) The scanning software, like most, is a bit funny
looking, but works very well. I was very pleased with the two-sided
duplex scanning (though every other page is slightly rotated).
There is a bug in the Mac drivers which cause the document feeder
scanned pages to be rotated and cut off, so if you've only got
Macs, you may want to consider, or check if the bugs have been
fixed in the drivers.
Don't forget this is a color laser printer. Like all such printers,
it's a monster -- tall and heavy. But once in place, its print
speed is excellent, the quality is good, and since it just sits on
your home network, it's a pleasant servant to everyone in the
house. Unlike that ill-mannered HP printer that sat in its place
before! When every computer in your house can just make a print job
happen without sharing, without swapping USB cables, without
dropping off your VPN, etc., the world is a better place.
Worst Customer Service that I have ever seen!!!!Reviewed by Troy L. Wiley, 2010-02-09
I purchased this printer back before Thanksgiving 2009. I wasn't able to install the product until January. I had all sorts of setup issues but was able to fix everything but the scanner features. I've contacted their customer service number for the entire month of January and I explained to them that my computer is a Windows XP OS and this printer is supposed to be compatible to my system. However, it is not!!! One of their rude employees informed me that I need to contact Dell for some other driver. My response to him was that if the printer is compatible to XP systems then why would a call to Dell be necessary. The needed drivers for any printer from my experience has always come with the product. You can never contact their technicians but they want you to send a fax to another number and someone will be in contact with you. This is not the case. I've sent several faxes to them with no answer. I have never experienced such incompetent customer service in my life. As an engineer with my own business, I'm extremely disappointed that I ever purchased this product. I definitely don't recommend this printer or any other printer that this manufacturer offers. They really need to get a handle on what is important to their business. Customers are supposed to come first and not get the run around and deal with the inadequate idiots that are operating in what they called, "Customer Service."
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