Brother MFCL5900DW Business Laser All-in-One with Advanced Duplex and Wireless Networking, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled and Brother Printer TN850 High Yield Toner Bundle

Comment

I bought this printer as a replacement for the Brother MFC8910DW which was very good when it worked, but was prone to errors including broken drums and drum error message. I got the MFCL5900DW printer to give Brother another shot. Speed: Initial start up time to first printed state feels like about 2 seconds slower on the MFCL5900DW compared to the older MFC8910DW. Once it starts printing, the speed on the MFCL5900DW is very fast. Installation: I installed the MFCL5900DW in for my office which has 8 computers. Installation was painful. To install, use the CD or download install file from website. To install on Windows 7 using a non-administrator account, extract files to a folder. Right click on the "InstUI" and "Run as Administrator" to install. Note that after each install, the printer crashes and there is a big red "X" on the printer. You have to unplug the printer power cord for each machine you install to reset it. For a Windows 8 computer, you have to log in as Administrator in order to install. I had to unplug the printer 8 times to install on all eight machines. If you work for a large company and have to install the MFCL5900DW, this is a disaster. Print Quality: Excellent. No complaints. Its copy quality beats the older MFC8910DW. LCD screen: I can do w/o the color LCD screen. I have flourescent lights above the MFCL5900DW and the glare makes if extremity difficult to read the color LCD screen (see pictures attached. The first picture is glare caused when the overhead light is on. The second is a better view of what the LCD screen is light when that particular light is turned off). Its much easier to read the old b/w screen on the older model. Also, I dont like the lack of buttons on the newer model. Price/Print: While calculating price/print, its important to factor in the cost of the drum into the price. Some models like canon MFCs have the drum built it. On the other hand the Brother MFCs have Drum and Toner in separate packages. As of 4/10/16, the TN850 high yield toner cartridge is $112.91 for 8000 pages while the DR820 drum unit is $133.39 for 30,000 pages. For 32,000 pages, its $133.39 (1 drum) + $112.91 x 4 (toner) = $113.39 + $451.64 = $565.03 for 32,000 pages. It averages out to be 1.77 cents/page. Update 6/27/16: After a few months using, I found it has been reliable. Upgraded it to 4 stars. The installation bug still a big hassle. However, prints come out clean and quick. Update 12/6/16: Warning for change drum came up today. The change drum warning came up after the 5th change in toner after initial starter toner. I had ordered replacement toner TN850 in April (1), May (2), June (3), August (4), October (5), and November (6). I just put the October TN850 in (5th). The November TN850 (6th) is my spare. Been happy with this printer so far.

Show more

Comment

Loved the printer until it decided to tell me I HAD to change the toner. The few brother printers Ive had before had simple overrides but Brother seems to have worked a little harder on this one and I cant figure out how to print checks at my office despite the fact that the printer was printing flawlessly before the shut down. If youre legally blind and arent able to tell when your copies look like garbage then this printer is for you. Brother will tell you (prematurely) that you need to replace them with their genuine overpriced toners. Sincerely, Long time (former) Brother user.

Show more

Comment

Ive owned exclusively high-dollar color laser HP and Lexmark printers. All of them have been unnecessarily expensive to maintain and they all had their own quirks. Ive had this printer for over a year and I am VERY impressed. No quirks, very economical toner and you get this odd feeling that every part of this MFP has been well thought out. Honestly, I never use the touch screen but it works great. I do most of the controls from the computer. Scanner is spot on with excellent scan quality. All of the document feeders and rollers are flawless as well (something my HPs never mastered). Get This Printer!!

Show more

Comment

Printer-hostile, high- volume user, used to pay Staples rather than touch my office printer. Finally fell in love: the printer of my dreams. Strong, handsome, reliable. We have the occasional squabble about using the wireless, but it is always quickly resolved. After four months, I am still giddy.

Show more

Comment

I have purchased several of the model that came before this one - one finally gave out - needing a new laser unit (lifetime about 3 years). Given previous experience, I decided to buy this generation. I have had two of the MFC 5900s now and I am finding if the unit idles for a couple of days,pages develop black spots/smudges on the first couple of pages. Brother says to clean the drum - unsure why this would have to happen on a new printer ... running quality paper ... no labels, etc. I really do not have time to service the drum every week. Amazon as usual is doing an awesome job ... going back to HP printers.

Show more

Comment

I had Brother 8680 DN for 5-6 years. I got this new brother 5900 to replace the wearing out 8680 printer. The problem of this new 5900 is the very poor scanning quality, comparing with 8680. If you scan a paper written with blue ball pen, it will miss about 20% of the writing. Scanning a pure white paper will give you grey background image file. I can use 8680 scanner for photo scanning; but 5900 is not reliable even for text document.

Show more

Comment

I am very disappointed with this purchase. I have a MFC 8910DW in my office that has been very reliable for my small business. I am an attorney so I print a lot of documents. I bought this for my home office so that I can be efficient and productive when working from home. I would have bought another 8910DW but it was discontinued. Any time I try to print a PDF that is more than a few pages, it says that it is receiving information and then never prints. It also freezes while scanning small documents (10 pages). Sometimes when Im printing a word document, it only prints part of the document. For the price I expect to be able to print and scan documents quickly and easily. This was a total waste of money and Im very disappointed after having a good experience with another brother laser printer.

Show more

Comment

I have used Brother printers for several years through my non-profit. They are excellent until they wear out, and then often cost more to fix than replace. This printer fits that description perfectly. The Printer: It uses a common size toner making aftermarket toners and drums available. Even if you stick with genuine Brother consumables, the cost per page is very affordable. I have my printer hard wired to ethernet, so I cannot speak about wireless or phone / tablet printing. I do have a couple complaints about Brother printers: It is hard to set which trays it pulls paper from and if you are completely out of paper it will pull paper from the legal drawer. The touchscreen seems to make it impossible to remotely access the printer as well, which is disappointing. Also, Brother is a little too proud of their extended drawers which can cost more than another printer. The scanner: I have been using a Fujitsu Scansnap for several years. It is still the best high speed document, check, and receipt scanner on the market. This makes it hard to rate the Brother scanner because it is not in the same league. It is really nice to not have to setup a Fujitsu scanner or dedicate precious desk space for one. I dont have problems scanning a statement, and the ADF is fast. I like the ability to enable or disable duplex scanning so that the PDF is cleaner. The ADF is incapable of cleanly scanning a stack of checks or receipts because it often pulls multiple sheets at once. It also tends to pull smaller documents crookedly without any correction software. The Apple App seems to work better than the Windows 10 App, but both give lots of options regarding resolution, color, and duplex scanning. I have not had any problems with the App other than it is extremely slow when saving as a PDF. Having the option for a flat bed scanner is a nice feature. This is how I handle receipts and checks right now, and it is nice to be able to scan from a book without having to remove the page. The flatbed also works better for IDs and photographs since you dont have to use a carrier page like you would with the Fujitsu or the Brother ADF. The shortcomings of the scanner has not made me hook the Fujitsu back up other than in the field, so that is why I am giving it 4 stars.

Show more

Comment

Great print quality, excellent special features and the best software interface of any small business printer Ive used. Weve been using it in the office for about 6 months and I can only think of a handful of inconveniences: * Lots of trouble trying to use the USB port for direct printing from a flash drive. Most of the time, it says the device is unreadable. * Label and envelope printing are inconvenient because so many tray flaps must be opened in order to be able to special-feed paper and then to keep it from falling on the floor once it prints. I must open five different flaps in order to print on special paper and then close them all once the operation is done.

Show more

Comment

Printer is great, solid build and fast. The support for OSX is an afterthought. I never got the printer firmware to update because it could not find the printer. I tried OSX 10.12 and 10.13 including a flatten and reload with only the OS, Java, and Brother software installed specifically to run this printer. Printing was fine, only the updater was failing. I am a system admin at work, so i can usually figure out these issues, but not this time. My system logs showed that it was throwing java errors. I spent hours on the phone with Brother and they could never figure it out. Avoid the frustration and buy an HP. They have great support for OSX. UPDATE: A few days after my complaint to Brother Support, they confirmed there is something wrong with the updater process for OSX. They promised to have a new process in-place within three days. I can not confirm that it works since I returned the printer already.

Show more