Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Multi-Function Copier and Printer, DCPL2550DW with Standard Yield Black Toner

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I was looking forward to having a grown-up printer after various awfulnesses with Epson and HP. In particular, I noted the glowing review on The Wirecutter of the sister model which doesnt have a document feeder. Before we do the good, the bad is very bad, but temporary. If you have a recent Mac, the installation experience will be appalling. How bad? World class awful. First the installation software crashes on launch on Mac OS X Sierra - the new one. You need to download the printer and scanner software separately. But the scanner software wont work. Worse than not working, it will appear to work, but nothing will actually be happening. To scan, you need to do a firmware update. In order for that to work, you need to download the rampantly insecure JRE (Java Runtime), and override the Macs various suggestions that you may want to think twice about this. It needs the WLAN (wifi, to normal people) set-up - and dont think that happens just by pressing the wifi button. Ha! No, you have to go into settings with the UI of a 1980s digital watch, and heaven help you if you have a complex password. Then, because you havent used the Brother software, you need to configure the printer and scanner manually. Remember, youre only doing this so the firmware updater actually to make it work will run. In the alternative, you need to find a USB cable. There is not one in the box because who, in 2016, expects to have to need a USB cable? Working all this out took me perhaps an hour. I am quite technically proficient and believe me my instructions are a lot clearer than anything on the device, or Brothers website. If what I have just written is incomprehensible to you, DO NOT BUY THIS PRINTER. If youre happy jumping through these hoops, just be aware you have to. One little gem? As it fails, it tries to print a page each time telling you how it has failed - just to use up the ink. It produces a largely meaningless error code. You can stop this by not loading paper, or pulling out the drawer - eventually it gives up. Brother is no worse than its competitors in playing this tacky little game, but its no better, either. As a post script, the Amazon Dash functionality requires an account setup which is reliably giving me the error page shown on the screenshot. At this point you can only laugh. I cant fully do justice to how bad this set-up experience has been but bear in mind, this I for a product which is not broken, or defective, or a refurb that has someone elses settings, and from a reputable manufacturer. Wow. All that said - and why I have given this two stars and not one - the printer and scanner itself is good. As these things go, it is not hideous, or flimsy. Its not as robust as a large office printer but for the price, its good. It fully encloses the paper. It has a feeder for different paper like labels or envelopes, which is great at this price. It does duplex printing, and has the document feeder for scanning. Ill have to see, but one reason The Wirecutter liked it was it is supposed to be quite parsimonious with the toner. My Mac is now reporting complete satisfaction with it. Now it is set up, I think it will be fine. I am looking forward not to have to deal with inkjet ink that dries up between uses and alignment issues both of the ink and the paper. But the person or people at Brother who put this out in the state it is when you open the box have engineered an initial experience which would be like going into a great restaurant, but having the maître d spit in your face prior to seating you. In time you might recall the great food but I think that initial experience would be hard to forget as well.

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Printer arrived today, and I was able to set it up and install the software without a single glitch. Im running Windows 8.1 and using a local USB interface. The reason for the purchase is my Canon inkjet died, and I needed a business-capable laser printer. Ive had three Canon inkjet printers but I used at least two Brother laser printers previous to the Canon inkjets. There is a considerable difference between this DCP-L2550DW MFC printer, and the previous Brother laser printers besides the glitch-free install. The Windows print driver is far improved with more feature control and ease of use. Brother has a separate printer utility, iPrint & Scan, that provides a print and scan UI for document and image printing and scanning, it is very easy to use, and it is a vast improvement over the Canon print/scan utility. There is a third software, Nuance PaperPort, that is an impressive document management tool and includes a fast PDF reader. The install CD gave me the option to bypass the Nuance Paperport install and install it later. If you dont have a CD player in your machine, you can download the installer from the Brother support web page. During the install, the installer utility also installed printer firmware updates without a glitch. I have printed a text document, and graphic document, and the print quality is impressive. BTW, the printer woke up from a sleep and printed those documents without a glitch. The printer is quiet and the print speed is amazing. Being brand new, I cannot speak to the long term reliability of this printer but here are a few things I learned in my research: the older version of this printer, a Brother 2540 model, is the source of the vast majority of negative reviews for this printer--whether the 2540 or 2550 model. On the first dozen pages of negative reviews, only four pertained to the 2550 model, and three of those four reviews were wireless problems. Wireless printer problems are not unique to Brother printers; they are ubiquitous. If you think about it, the wireless challenge is to make a device in deep sleep mode respond to an interrupt signal--something humans dont like to do--and the majority of the negative reviews are expressing frustration with this challenge. I have returned a Kodak printer due to wireless problems. For these reasons, I stay with tech that works: local USB. The competitor printer nearest in features to this Brother printer is the Dell E514dw, and I noticed the Dell uses the same printer chassis as the Brother 2540 model but the Dell comes with a 10,000 monthly page duty cycle, and this Brother DCP-L2550DW comes with a 15,000 monthly duty cycle. Maybe the duty cycle difference is significant, maybe not (remember: "your MPG may vary") but I went with the higher duty cycle number. I didnt think I would have any install problems for a local USB connection but Brother has a support web site that is easier to use than Dell, and Brother comes with free telephone support if you need it. Bottom line: the 2550 model--including the bundled software--is impressive so far.

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This printer is just about the toughest printer to get onto a wireless network. I spent two weeks and multiple calls to Amazon, HP, Brother, and Xfinity to try to figure out why the printer will not connect to our Xfinity wireless and why the computers cannot see and install the printer. We even had a second one sent from Amazon to replace the first to be sure its not a problem with this individual printer. Every service we tries to access punted the problem to the other services, Brother said it was an HP problem, HP said it was an Xfinity problem, Xfinity said it was a Brother problem. We went round and round, we finally got it working on a regular basis by connected a network cable to the printer, making it available to all computers. But even after this I have still had to reinstall the driver every day or so because the print goes into deep sleep which we cannot wake it. Only reinstalling the driver works. I am so disappointed with this printer, It does not connect wirelessly and Brother techs do not know what they are doing. One tech said it will not connect to the 5G network, An HP tech figured out that the two wireless networks we have confuses the Brother printer. But even so we could not get the Printer to be recognized by any of our four computers in the house on the 2.4 G wireless. I think the Brother wireless software is not up to the industry standards and it does not do me any good to be punted to another tech service when the problem is too hard to figure out .I now have a tech meeting scheduled on Wednesday with a HP Manager because I had to purchase a year of HP service calls for my HP computers, which ended up costing me easily $150, more that we bought the printer for, and the manager says "he will figure this out." I have my doubts. I do not recommend buying this printer unless you want to have two weeks of techy hell, or are a computer network expert yourself. I am not a slouch myself, have easily installed numerous HP and Okidata printers for over 25 years on a succession of computers. This first foray into Brother has left a sour taste for me. Purchase at your own risk.

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So -- I saw some reviews that said it was a med-difficult setup and I thought Id write about the ridiculously easy time I had. Im a Mac and a PC user, primarily Mac. Did NOT need a USB or Ethernet cable. I *have* set up other wireless printers before. However, this is not hard. Truly. It took about 5 minutes to remove all the packing, insert the drum/printer cartridge and paper. Probably would have been faster, but had to go track down the paper. READING THE Quick Start Instructions, I decided Id go with the "Alternative wireless setup" directions rather than connect each computer/mobile device (even though the directions say Brother recommends configuring wireless settings from computer). If I have the printer on the network, then each device (Mac or PC) can find the printer like in any normal wireless environment. Again. FOLLOWING THE EASY Quick Start Instructions exactly, I found my network using the Setup Wizard and used the up/down keys to enter the "key" or network password. Our password is 24 characters long and this took MAYBE 2 minutes. If you hold either key down, it will go through faster than repeatedly pressing the keys. PRO TIP: If you need to get to the alphabet first, use the Up key, if you need a character, start with the Down key. Either key will get you the whole alphabet and character list. Saved everything and immediately went to my phone and printed off a note to test it. And voila! All done! UPDATE: For those who want to know about printing from the computers in our home, I used the "Find Printer" functions on our Macs and our PCs and the printer was found, Apple will auto-download the correct driver so thats super easy. Not hard to find in Win10 either. And in less than 5 minutes per device, was printing. SERIOUSLY -- YOU CAN DO THIS!! Even if youve never set up a wireless printer. This is an incredible price for a copier/printer and all the other functions. And it has (for me) a super small footprint. I could not be happier with this purchase.

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This printer was working fine, until one day when it suddenly was not. The initial set up was relatively easy, and everything seemed to be working fine. After about one month, I came into work one morning and it was not printing. Looking at the LCD panel, it said it was in "Deep Sleep." It was no longer recognized on the office network. I reset to factory settings, and reinstalled everything from scratch. For some reason, my windows 10 laptop no longer recognizes the printer. I took the printer home to test it on my home wifi and had the same results. I have spent multiple hours with Brother tech support, and they cant fix it. One person helped me for an hour before quickly saying "sorry" and disconnecting. Brother keeps telling me that it is an issue with my laptop, but my coworker cant connect with his laptop (different manufacturer). Also, when I went home on my home network, my Acer laptop could not connect, and either could my HP laptop. They still tell me that it is an issue with my computer. Also, they say that it is an issue with my wireless router or SSID, but I have two different providers at work and at home, and the printer is having the same problems. They said that it was the firewall or antivirus, but I disabled all of those features and it still does not work. I did the same on multiple computers, and it simply does not work. Also, a google search reveals that all of this appears to be a known issue with other owners of Brother printers. It goes to sleep, or appears offline, and cannot communicate or connect wirelessly. There appears to be no solutions for the errors, and Brother simply blames your computer or network, even though you can demonstrate that the problem must be with the printer. In short, I have wasted hours and hours trying to trouble shoot, reinstalling from scratch, online with tech support, and they have ZERO answers. I would not recommend this printer or other printers. Before you purchase, do a quick google search with terms like "Brother printer not connecting" or "Brother printer offline" or "Brother printer wont come out of sleep." You will find it is a common issue. Im telling you that they dont have an answer, and this will be a huge waste of your time.

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After spending a year of frustratiion with an ink based printer, i decided that a laser printer would be a better choice. My research led me to Brother laser printers. After reading through the reviews, I saw that the biggest complaint was that the printer becomes unresponsive after a period of non use. This is a programming problem thats easily changed. I downloaded the appropriate Brother suite of programs. While running the install software, I paid close attention to the prompts, and I opted out of the toner replacement. The test page printed perfectly. I saw complaints about installing the printer, but I had no problem. The complete installation took 15 minutes. I just went as far as the printer installation, then opted out of the rest of the options. Using the IP address, I changed the sleep mode so that the printer stays in standby instead of sleeping. I also installed the Brother app on my note 8. I have no problem at all connecting to the printer and printing. To sum it up, I encountered no problems installing the printer on my laptop and Android phone. I went into the printers IP address and I turned off the sleep mode. The printer readily prints from my phone or laptop. Ive seen complaints about the toner. It doesnt smear on my paper at all. I really like this printer. Ill update this review if anything changes.

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This printer was a huge mistake. I saw negative reviews but thought, "hey! Im tech savvy, I can set up networks, I know how to add drivers, this wont be any problem." Huge. Mistake. This printer is a nightmare. While it wasnt difficult to set up at all once I put my wifi info into the printers settings, it only works after I pull the plug and restart it every time. The sleep mode is a disaster, and I have tried every fix people have listed online. The printer goes to sleep and wont wake up. Printer controls work (on the physical printer only, not from the computer) but there is no way to wake it up, and I cant even turn it off (yes, I have held the power button down for up to 30 seconds-- nothing). ANY time I want to print I have to first walk over to the printer, unplug it from the wall, plug it back in, and wait for it to restart. In my first call to tech support, while the guy was super nice, he solved nothing. His "fix" was to connect me to the printer via IP address instead of letting my computer find it like it had (so now none of the controls worked properly). Lo and behold, the sleep problem persisted. When I called back the next day, the female agent told me that I just had to "wake the printer up" every time. She advised me to change the sleep timer (you can only move it up to 50 minutes, and it should be able to go to sleep anyway). Of course, the problem is if you dont push any buttons or print anything for 50 minutes..... you got it, the printer goes to sleep and wont wake up. So unless youre printing a document every 50 minutes at all hours of the day-- this printer is not for you! Now I am on hold again (20 minutes so far!) and I plan to tell them to send me a box to return this piece of junk. For the record: when it prints-- it works great! Maybe I just got a lemon, but I would not trust this printer to not be a mess for anyone else. I do not recommend the gamble involved. At least with a mac / OS X. Nightmare. And its so big its going to be such a pain to return. I seriously hate this thing. I thought it would be such a convenience and all it makes me want to do is smash it with a baseball bat like Im in Office Space.

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I bought this to replace an earlier version, which was a workhorse. The old one had good print quality, was fast, and easy to set up. The scanner had a very intuitive and attractive interface that allowed custom scanning to different formats, e.g.. tiff jpg pdf . This new model was a huge disappointment. First, it took my daughter-in-law, who worked as a tv tech, almost two hours to install - and it never installed correctly. The wifi would not install at all. I didnt care that much about wifi, so I figured Id keep it for all the features Id loved in the earlier one. Then I needed to scan a document. The scan never reached the computer. The scan window came up - an ugly black screen, totally non-intuitive, and I couldnt get a scan no matter what I did. Im returning it.

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I never write reviews but I had to out of compassion for anyone with an Apple computer that considers buying this Brother printer. After over 2 hours on a tech support call it still does not print without a cable. We did download and install the patch that was supposed to fix this problem which Brother knows about (see other reviews I should have listened to that mention this issue). Well the patch needs a patch. Brother printers are ok but only if you are a Microsoft person. Do NOT buy if you use Apple.

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After years of using other printer brands, Ive decided Brother makes the most durable printers. My small business has about 25 of these new Brother MFC printers and the older DCP7065. They are simply affordable workhorses. We have printers with OVER 50k printed pages that still work fine (of course the drum has been replaced several times). The scanners work very well and almost never double feed pages. Best of all, there are quality aftermarket toner cartridges (such as LD brand) that work just as well as the Brother toner. Seriously, you just cant kill these things. The only negative is that the print quality - the sharpness of the printing - is notch below some other brands. But for our business documents, it really does not matter. In short - if you are looking for durable and affordable printers, you cannot go wrong with these Brother MFCs.

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