Brother Printer MFCL8900CDW Business Color Laser All-in-One with Advanced Duplex and Wireless Networking, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled and Super High Yield Toner-Retail Packaging , Black

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I know someone else wrote a review saying they spent hours and could not find a way to reset the toner on this printer unlike ALL previous Brother printers but Im here to tell you two things: First, trust me when I say my Kung-Fu is STRONG... and second, there IS a way to reset the toner and save yourself a BUNCH of money by getting more bang for your buck and here are the steps you need to take: 1. Open the front toner door on the printer that would allow you to replace the toner but dont pull the toner tray out (unless you just want to for fun...but its not necessary) 2. Press the back and cancel buttons (top and bottom buttons of the three buttons on the right) at the EXACT same time quickly (and repeatedly if necessary) and then let off (it will almost certainly take at LEAST a couple of tries and if you get to anything other than the reset screen start over). Do NOT hold the buttons down as it will definitely NOT bring up the reset screen that way. You MUST be on the "open door" message, if you accidentally back out of it, just touch the message again in the top left corner to go back to the "Open Door" screen. 3. At this point, the reset screen should pop up and you just need to select the correct toner cartidge that you need to reset (K. = black, C = Cyan, etc.) and keep in mind that each one has THREE options for regular, high yield, and super high yield toner cartridges. 4. Click yes to reset. 5. Click back button and wait for printer to reset. It takes a minute or two just like when you turn the printer off and on. 6. Print...and you print like theres NO tomorrow!! You are *super* welcome for the money that I just saved you as inevitably the "replace toner" screen will come up when it hits a specific page count even though theres still PLENTY of toner in there and there is NO other way to get past it than either doing what I just described or replacing it with a new toner cartridge. Also, I HIGHLY recommend after researching the poop out of all three toner cartridge possibilities for each color that you go with the "Super High Yield" cartridges and save even more money buying all four as a pack. If you break it down by cost per page for each of the three sizes, then it makes the most sense and you wont be replacing toner *nearly* as often. Yes, in order to buy all four cartridges it will cost more than the printer (unless you find a good deal) but they will last three times longer than the standard cartridge even though they are physically the SAME size. Its all about how much toner is INSIDE the cartridge... If this helped you then please push, smash, or lightly press the "Helpful" button for the fun of it b/c really...its the right thing to do...or not. Its ALL good either way. :-)

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This printer/scanner uniit appears to be good at first, but then you will discover that it scans documents in a different size than everyone else in the world. "Letter" is 8.5" x 11" right? Not according to Brother. When you scan a "letter" size document, the resulting PDF/Word/jpeg is actually only 8.24" x 10.76". Thats right - the scan is NO LONGER 8.5" x 11". Why is this a problem? When you try to upload letter size documents to websites, this Brother-scanned-document is no longer letter sized and is rejected. I contacted Brother and explained the problem and their tech support literally told me "there is nothing Brother can do about that." I asked why every other company in the world can make a scanned letter document actually be letter sized, and the agent said "I cant speak for other companies, but there is nothing that Brother can do." I will never buy another Brother again and I suggest you do the same.

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January 2019 Update: Genuine Brother toner cartridges are only warranted for 90 days. If one fails outside that period, Brother provides no recourse other than to replace the toner cartridge, regardless of toner left in cartridge. The printer has begun spilling blue toner across pages. A call to Brother had me enter the printers service menu and read statuses of the printer. The telephone support technician determined the toner cartridge was defective and must be replaced. He informed me Brother would do nothing to replace the 90% remaining life in the $178 toner cartridge, as it was more than 90 days old. Original review: This machine makes a lot of promises and lives up to most of them. I needed a new multi-function machine. My inkjet-based Epson was no longer cutting it. The ink cartridges were a pain, with nozzles drying up. The world had moved forward, and the Epson couldn’t scan directly to Google Drive. I was doing the USB drive shuffle to move files. A new machine would have to be laser. Color was a must. It had to scan and print duplex. The consumables had to be reasonably priced. Most importantly, it had to support web services like scanning to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box. It had to support cloud printing like Google Cloud Print. Preview: It does, but is not perfect. The Brother MFC-L8900CDW had just been released. Specwise, it met my needs. It’s a color laser printer with a duplex ADF scanner. The consumables are individually replaceable, and it supported web scanning and printing. It was also available on Amazon, so I knew I wouldn’t be stuck with it if I was disappointed. The machine is solid and attractive. The build quality is typical of other Brother products. The design is minimal and clean. Setup was mostly simple. Pull it out of the box, remove a few strips of tape, plug it in and start printing. Print and scan quality are great, but that’s expected by now. The machine is appropriately fast and quiet. I’ve printed 350 pages. To date, not one has jammed. Cloud services work, but with some difficulties. Here’s where Brother could make some improvements. Sure, the services are there. Finding and enabling them is tough. Scanning to Google Drive is not so great. Enabling Cloud Print isn’t a simple matter. First, it isn’t well documented. It can’t be done from the control panel. You have to sign on to the web interface. You have to go to Network tab, then to the Protocol section, where you’ll find the Google Cloud Print protocol setup information. Not obvious, and not simple. Once you’ve set it up, however, cloud printing works perfectly. Scanning to Google Drive was one of the main reasons I needed a new MFC. Scanning works, but has a few flaws. Many days, I’m scanning a few documents, each with a few pages. Getting through each document involves pressing a button, waiting for a “Connecting…” message, then pressing another button, waiting for another “Connecting…” message. Worse, once the document has been scanned, it then uploads the document, page by page. The upload is slow, taking 5-10 seconds per page. You’re blocked from doing anything else (like scanning your next document) during this time. I’m tempted to walk away during scans, but cannot. If the scan doesn’t upload, I get no persistent error message. The error appears, then disappears, so I’m not sure if the scan completed. The only way to know for sure is to go to Google Drive and verify all scanned documents are present. Reaching out to Brother, I explained the scanning difficulties. Their tech support team responded like a large company. I was told this is the way it works, and nothing can be done. In the end, I chose to keep the Brother MFC-L8900CDW. Its benefits outweighed the scanning issues. I use it daily, and without further issue. I’m hopeful Brother will improve the documentation for web services setup. Before writing this review, I updated the machine to firmware version 1.05 I’m mostly hopeful they’ll revisit the scanning workflow and error reporting. It seems like a small issue on an otherwise fantastic machine.

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Two major issues I experienced with this printer: 1) The printer would arbitrarily add magenta to areas of the printout that did not exist in the source material. As an example see the attached image, which on the left is the zoomed in source PDF, and on the right is a scanned print from the printer. 2) Gradients seemed to frequently be shifted also to magenta. Our business slide backgrounds have a light to dark grey gradient on them, and the dark grey was being turned into an actual purplish color. I tested the above using the latest firmware for the printer, and latest drivers for the printer across multiple operating systems (OSX, Windows 7, 10), and across multiple source printing programs (Acrobat, Photoshop, etc).

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I upgraded my old Brother MFC-9970CDW to the new MFC-L8900CDW this weekend. It was being shipped FedEx and was scheduled to be delivered on Monday, but I called FedEx and was able to pick it up on Saturday. I spend about an hour configuring all the options, installing additional paper trays (1 250-sheet and 1 500-sheet), and testing the printer. Its a big improvement over the MFC-9970CDW, which was a workhorse in our home office. The printer is much quieter than my old one and when compared to other brands. There is a quiet setting that makes it even quieter, but this occurs at the sacrifice of some speed. The fax machine is pretty standard for all faxes. I was able to fax without difficulty using the normal compatibility setting via a Cisco adapter that converts analog to IP for RingCentral. I am very impressed with the L8900CDWs ability to customize scan functions. Perhaps this was present on the 9970CDW and I didnt explore it. I have mine configured with icons to scan to my iMacs desktop, scan to my personal email, scan to my wifes email, or send to a fire department where Im medical director. The quiet function is great (definitely can tell a difference), but it is slower (took twice as long to print a test 30-page PDF). Also, Amazon Dash Replinishment isnt active yet. This printer isnt listed as a supported model. I emailed Brother USA and was advised its too new and will be available soon. Overall, this is a great printer. One of the best multi-function machines you could buy. I highly recommend it!

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This was the second Brother I have owned. The first had a failure in the wireless feature six months into ownership. I decided to go with an expensive color model this time, thinking the first issue was a fluke and after all, they have award winning customer service. So this arrives and the unit will not power up. I change plugs, change cords, turn it off for 20 min, then 60 min, with quick press verses long press of the on switch which was pressed multiple times. I hook it up to the land line and my computer via hardwire in case it is asleep. I call Brother tech support. They had me try the exact unplug and wait 20 min then plug and try again, which had failed. They mentioned next steps which included them sending me a refurbished printer. I bought a new printer that had been out of the box about 12 hours and getting a refurbished one was less than optimal. I called amazon who will pick the old machine up and give me a new machine via UPS tomorrow. Important as this unit is more than 60#.

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Worst mistake ever to buy this product. The brother printer came with a malfunctioning cyan toner which showed its defect after it was out of the 90 day warranty. I had only printed 602 pages and the toner is supposed to last 1800 pages. The toner lever is above 70%. The customer service rep told me; "its not empty, its malfunctioning, buy a new one!" When I asked to talk to the supervisor, I was put on hold for 10 minutes, only to be told that the supervisor was busy helping other customers but there was nothing they could do.

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0:00 0:00 This video is not intended for all audiences. What date were you born? January February March April May June July August September October November December 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965 1964 1963 1962 1961 1960 1959 1958 1957 1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 1950 1949 1948 1947 1946 1945 1944 1943 1942 1941 1940 1939 1938 1937 1936 1935 1934 1933 1932 1931 1930 1929 1928 1927 1926 1925 1924 1923 1922 1921 1920 1919 1918 1917 1916 1915 1914 1913 1912 1911 1910 1909 1908 1907 1906 1905 1904 1903 1902 1901 1900 Submit Adobe Flash Player is required to watch this video. Install Flash Player Truth is, its been only 4 hours since I unpacked this printer and had the chance to play around with it. However trust me, its been a very busy amount of time and I think I put the Brother MFC-L8900 through its paces to the point that I can give an honest initial review. In addition to writing this review, I have put together a video that should give you an idea of what to expect if and when you finally decide to buy this printer. Let me start with giving you a few good reasons to trust my opinion and highly consider this all-in-one above all others. There will be at least one negative along the way -- particularly for Mac users. Dont get antsy -- this printer works beautifully with a Mac and that is the device I tested this printer with. Windows users shouldnt have any problems either as printers generally bond with PCs better than Macs. I have been buying heavy-duty printers for my home business for several years now. I know how to install them and I know what to expect. I also spend HOURS researching anything like this before purchasing. Please trust that I looked at all the top all-in-one consumer models from HP, SAMSUNG, CANON, etc. Now, with every printer, you end up researching on Amazon you are going to find negative reviews. I found quite a few negative reviews for this Brother model that kind of scared me. There were problems with print issues, the scanner cover not staying down, the wireless connection being dropped.....and on and on. Yes, the chances are always there you are going to get a dud model. However, I know Brother. I know their quality. In my opinion, they make the best and most cost-efficient printers in the marketplace. The last Brother printer I bought several years ago is still going strong. Its the cruddy Epson all-in-one that has given me nothing but trouble that I needed a replacement for. Make no mistake about it, the L8900CDW is one of Brothers current top consumer models. When originally released a year ago it cost twice as much as it does now. So, you are getting a $1k printer at less than $500 at the time of this review. This Brother pretty much looks, feels and prints like a $1k printer. It is a workhorse designed for a small home business. It has all the top functions you would expect from a printer at this cost including duplex printing, faxing and scanning. It also boasts a really nice 5" touchscreen that makes this an intuitive printer to use. I really did not have to resort to instructions in setting this up other than having to configure my email account on my IP webpage. More on that to come... SETUP Yes, this comes in quite a large box. Yes, it is quite heavy. Yes, its better to have two people set this up but I was able to move the box up a flight up stairs, lift unpack and set it up all by myself. So those of you who want to know whether you can set this up alone, the answer is, you can! Unpacking took under 20 minutes. There are a few pieces of tape to remove. You need to open the front door, slide out the printer tray, and remove a bunch of plastic holder pieces. Easy peasy! Having a Mac, there is no CD drive. I simply went to Brothers support page on the Internet and downloaded their installation software applicable to this model. The software guides you through connecting the printer wirelessly (or wired) to your network. Additionally, you can do it through the touchscreen. I have to really commend the ease of use that this touchscreen and its accompanying keyboard provides. One thing you might want to do is set up your scan to email through your computer web browser. You will need to do a printout from your printers network settings to get your IP address. When you plug that address into your browser search bar, it comes up with your printers utility page. Now heres something Brother doesnt tell you... You need a login password. I had to search the Internet for it. The default password is: initpass I had a GMAIL account and I simply did a search for the incoming and SMTP settings, entered all that information and did a test connection from the browser. It worked perfectly and transmitted that information over to the printer. COPY AND SCAN TO ANYWHERE What is really neat about this printer is that you can send scans and copies to just about anywhere. Of course, there is email -- anyones email that you wish. And there is a handful of supported Cloud Services like BOX, EVERNOTE, DROPBOX, ONE DRIVE, etc. So, I simply scan my documents and they are automatically deposited in those accounts. Each of those cloud services gives you free storage so I would recommend you take advantage of signing up with as many as you can. Whats even cooler is that you can create shortcuts on the touchscreen with which a single press will automatically fax, copy, email or deposit your document into a cloud service. You will certainly have a lot of fun setting these documents up. PRINT QUALITY This is where I read so many negative reviews. Well, not so many, but at least the complaints from the vocal minority do tend to stand out when reading Amazon reviews for this product. I found the print quality to be excellent. Even more so, I found color accuracy to be just about spot on. Text quality was as perfect as you would expect. Now, one of the downsides that I read about this computer is that it uses the color inks to do black and white printing, potentially shortening the lifespan of those cartridges. There is a way to go into settings and tell it to use the black cartridge only. The problem is, you have to keep switching it back-and-forth every time you want to print color or black and white. I am just going to take my chances and leave everything where it is. I printed a few web pages and scanned a few magazine covers. The colors looked very similar. I didnt see anything that was way off. This printer really doesnt do photos very well -- most all color laser printers dont. Most anyone will tell you that you need a separate printer designed for photos if you want to use it for that purpose. It doesnt bother me that the paper capacity is only limited to 250 sheets. Have you seen 250 sheets? That is a lot of paper. Most homes wont use that much paper in a month. For the high-capacity business use you can buy add-on paper trays for about $150. The print speed is excellent. The most wait time you will have is from wake-up to first print. That can take about 20 seconds. Otherwise, this is a very speedy printer. I used the top feeder to scan my phone bill which was several pages long. The top scanner did a great job of feeding each page through its feeder and properly scanned both sides of each sheet. There is an option for single or double page scanning. Fax worked fine. I was able to send a fax to a friend and it arrived without any issues. I am always sending faxes to my Doctor, so it was really neat that I was able to set up a shortcut on the touchscreen. With a single press it dials my physicians fax machine and sends my document. No more having to remember his phone number or go through the manual dialing process. THE ONE NEGATIVE There is another Amazon review that touches upon this subject to which I was able to relate to... The Brother Control Center Software that you install on the Mac (and Window PCs as well) looks like something from the 1990s. Its quite obvious this is the one product that Brother has turned its back on. Its not only archaic, but it kept freezing and then crashing on Mac Mojave. I will bet that since one Mac user has already reported this issue, all Mac users are going to have this issue. Hopefully, Brother is aware of this problem and will fix it. Their portable app for IOS and ANDROID is also pretty bad. It has a lot of 1-star ratings. It works -- I was able to print from my phone --- but the software is just really nasty to look at and work with. Brother needs to update their software to new millennium standards. Did it hinder my enjoyment of using the Brother L8900CDW? No. There are ways to get around using the desktop app. The mobile app works, though I would probably opt to download some other AirPrint capable app to use with this printer. CONCLUSION Personally, I dont think any other of the major brands can top this all-in-one at this price point. Though the software side of this printer for the desktop and mobile devices is severely lacking, the hardware itself is top-notch. For the few hours I have been putting this printer through its paces, I havent seen any negatives to complain about outside of what I have already pointed out. Wireless connectivity is fine. Print quality is excellent. Double-sided scanning and faxing worked as expected. The speed of printing is on par with office workhorse machines. In all, this is an excellent choice for your home or small business.

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I would not buy this again and I regret throwing away the packaging to return it. The duplex scanner works well when it works, aside from all the documents being somewhat skewed, even with the "auto deskew" enabled; acceptable for document management. The software looks like its been ported from the 1990s and has major reliability issues, as in the scanner will stop working after a network reset, even when attempting to initiate the scan from a PC where you can print successfully requiring hours of fooling around with reboots and software reinstallation. I finally discovered that you need to go into the scanner settings and update the IP address or store the scanner by name. As it is, this printer has cost me more in my time than I paid for it and I have half a mind to produce a farewell video based on that scene in Office Space once I find a suitable replacement. The main reason for the 1-star review is the way that it uses consumables to be bad enough for me to consider it to be predatory. I purchased this printer to print technical datasheets. Sometimes theyre thousands of pages and I wanted a color laser with duplexing. Most pages are black and white, but there are occasional highlighting, diagrams and charts that really need to be in color to take full advantage of as otherwise the data is very difficult to sort through. When printing black and white documents with the color setting turned on, it uses black and all color toners and there is no setting for "color text" documents that would only use the color toners for actual non-black colors. The result is that it burns through all colors at nearly the same rate for documents that are mostly black and white. There is absolutely no excuse for this other than Brother selling these printers at decent entry-level prices to screw the consumers on the consumables.

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Do not buy it! Pretty close to rated speed for MS Word docs, everything else much slower. Toner use for B&W OK, color copies expect about 25-30% of cartridge ratings from Brother before you will need to replace cartridges. If you have a problem with your machine Brother Customer Service will be very polite but useless. My 5 month-old machine simply quit working a week ago, repeated calls to customer service promised a replacement machine that never arrived. The latest story from CS is that maybe in 48 hours they can find a machine and ship it to me, but that will be from the warranty department, and customer service will not give me that phone number. After 7 days without a printer no promise when my replacement will arrive, only a promise that if they do not find a machine to ship to me in 48 hours, they will call me back to update me. Thats what +4 hours and 5 different calls on three separate days will get you from this company. Brother, thats pathetic.

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