Brother Monochrome Laser Printer, Multifunction Printer, All-in-One Printer, MFC-L5800DW, Wireless Networking, Mobile Printing & Scanning, Duplex Printing, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled

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I got both the MFCL5800DW and the MFCL5900DW. They look pretty much exactly the same. Theres only one major difference--the 5900 scans/copies/faxes both sides of a sheet of paper, but the 5800 only does single-sided scan/copy/fax. Both are color scanners, but black-and-white printers. Both do two-sided printing, but the document feeder in the 5900 also does two-sided scanning. A lot of offices dont use duplex printing often, so duplex scanning is even more a waste. If this is you, save $60 and get the 5800. If duplex scanning is something you need, get the 5900. Also, the 5900 does gigabit wired networking where the 5800 only does 10/100. Both have the same speed B/G/N wireless and both support USB (even though its silly for this size printer). With both the 5800 and the 5900, Brother seems to be making a bigger push into the medium business market. With features like Active Directory support, setting lock, and pin printing, its trying to make itself a viable choice in a it managed business environment. I still dont think of Brother as having enterprise reliability, so I still think of these as small business printers. You use them for as long as they last (hopefully 3+ years) and you toss them when they start to have issues that arent fixed with consumables. But the reason to use Brother printers is because theyre so cheap to run. An 8000 page cartridge is $110 and a 30,000 page drum is $135. Anything HP in this price range has a 2,000-4,000 page cartridge and drum in one for $100-$150. You can use third party toner in Brother printers very easily, but I wouldnt risk it. Ive seen the fuser in a lot of Brother printers go bad early because of third party toner. The quality of third party toner isnt always to par. Unpacking and setting up the printer was easy for someone whos unpacked a printer before. The step by step instructions seem good for those who havent. If you follow the disk, it will walk you through installing the network part of the printer, but I just setup the wireless on the printer itself. Wired networking is faster than wireless, so set it up wired if you can. The disk is an easy install. You can also download the latest installer from the website. If youre just installing it as a printer/copier, and dont care about scanning, I was able to install this printer without the disk just searching for the printer in windows. I read someone else had trouble registering the printer, but I didnt register so I cant tell you if theres a problem. The build quality of the 5800 and 5900 seems fine. The 42 page per minute printing is quick. The 300 page paper capacity is too small. It really should hold 550 pages so you can add a ream of paper every-time it gets low. The copy scan document feeder can handle 70 pages which is plenty. There are plenty of ways to setup scanning from direct to computer scanning or scanning to a server share. The touch screen is easy to navigate and number pad is nice for typing fax numbers. So far its working perfectly. And Im pretty sure its going to work perfectly for some time. Its a good small business/home office printer. If you dont need color, either the 5800 or the 5900 are great bangs for the buck.

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This 5800DW is my fifth Brother MFC units over the past 10 years (we print, copy and scan documents very heavily). So far it is the easiest to set up, took me only 3 mins after taking it out of the box. So far, weve been using this unit for 2 months and print quality, the scan quality and ability to print / scan from smartphone . . all are very good (same as it has been with earlier units). Toner replacement with genuine Brother is a little pricey but I guess that how they make their profits. I noted that over the years (and many units), owners certainly will look to cut cost, hence use cheaper toner and drum . . . but it is also when the quality of the prints begin to degrade. Anyway, it is the economic reality. From experience, MFC usually functions well for about 2 years of heavily used (I mean 10,000 - 13,000 prints and copies per month). Then it begins to show signs of wears and tears for which it is time to replace with newer model (as fixing it will cost a lot more on parts and labor). Lets see how long this unit will last ;-)

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I LOVE this printer! Im a notary and this baby can alternate between regular and legal size without having to stop and change paper. I dont know how it would perform in a larger office setting, but for my needs are perfect.

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If you need this for printing and/or scanning purposes, forget it! (Isnt that what we purchase printers for?) Right out the box, pages scan and print crooked. Called Brother numerous times, and they had us do everything from cleaning it, changing the drum, and re-installing the software. Instead of replacing the printer with a new one, they will only send a refurbished one! Terrible product and terrible customer service from Brother.

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Update: Brother customer service is Awesome. They lost the first order for a new toner cartridge so I contacted them for an update. They apologized and sent a new one OVERNIGHT! This completely solved the problem, no more toner spots. ********************** I have toner spots on my printouts whenever the printer had been idling for a while. I used chat support and they did a great job of walking me through cleaning the drum, but it did not solve the problem. The replaced the printer and the new one has the same problem. I decided to contact Brother (by chat) because I thought they would know this printer better than Amazon. They were very helpful and knowledgeable and they concluded that the toner cartridge may have a problem. They are sending me a replacement toner cartridge to test. They even asked me to return the bad cartridge and a maintenance report from the printer so that they can analyze it. I like a company that wants to fix the problem rather than just give your money back. I will update this review once I have had a chance to test the new cartridge. Stars may go up or down depending on the result.

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Fast enough. Feeds and copies well, but it keeps losing its ability to scan, and you have to monkey with it for an hour until it works. Their online support is useless ("try reinstalling the program") and the community blog doesnt help. Never had this problem with other Brother equivalents. But none of us have the time to waste on stuff like this!

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Im starting an at-home-business and only wanted a monochrome printer. Ive only bought Cannon printer before, but Brothers makes an amazing large printer. Its a little on the loud side, but its not a deal breaker. It does print very quickly. Definitely recommend for small businesses.

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We have 35+ Brother printers in our firm and theyve been excellent performers, so when we needed a copier/printer/scanner, we bought an MFC L5800, to install on our print server running Windows Server 2008-R2. However, the Brother setup program was completely unable to find the new printer, even when we manually entered its network address. Tried using the Add printer function from the Windows Control Panel, but it couldnt find any drivers for the L5800. Went to Brothers website to download drivers; theyre not available. All that you can download is another installation program, which failed too. What to do? Ran the setup program on my local Windows 10 machine, where it had no problem finding the new printer - and, incidentally, which created a folder containing the drivers! (In Program Files (x86)BrotherDriverTemp there was a new folder called M15A that contained the drivers.) Copied this folder to the server, re-ran Add printer and, when it asked for drivers, pointed it to the M15A folder. Mission accomplished - and wasnt that easy? Seriously, Brother, just put the drivers on the website so we can download them when we need to.

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I bought this because I print rarely and got tired of buying ink to print 2 pages. A dry toner approach seemed to be the way to go. I didnt pay attention at first but overtime I started noticing artifacts as the photo shows. This picture is the best quality after: 1) removing toner and cleaning drum TWICE with scotch brite microfiber cloth 2) seems you have to print a few pages (instead of 1 copy plan to print everything 3-5 times) before you get a usable copy. If you are an occasional printer, plan to make this your regiment moving forward with this printer. In my home office this printer takes some juice. Make sure your other equipment are on uninterrupted power supply.

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I purchased this machine in December 2018 to replace the 8810 that I had happily owned and worked with for years. Within days of setup the machine was spewing ink onto pages and the inside of the drum. Several calls to Brother produced their decision to send me a new toner cartridge. I tried convincing them the drum unit was contaminated and the new toner cartridge would not fix the problem of random ink spots and smudges on the prints. They refused, I installed the new cartridge and, as predicted, pages were still coming out with spots and smudges because of the ink in the drum. A few more calls to Brother resulted in their sending me a new machine absent the cartridge and drum. They wouldnt replace those for reasons that still escape me. Two months after installing a new cartridge and drum unit at my expense the pages are again spotty and smudged. Another call to Brother. Wretched machine and horrible customer service experiences. So bad that Im seriously considering eating the cost and starting over with a different manufacturer.

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