Love the quality!! Just keeps working on anything...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent quality, super easy setup, clearly shows ink capacity, high capacity toner cartridges available.

Cons: Noisy, refill sites don't have these cartridges, heavy weight!! only one paper tray.

The Bottom Line: 
Like this unit as it offers intermediate service capability for small office.

Author's Review
I spent quite a bit of time trying to find THE right printer for my one person home office. I'd previously had a Brother multifunction unit which I was glad finally died. Because I often do 30-50 pages at a time, I was really concerned with having to use one of the models out that uses all in one color cartridges where if one goes you have to replace them all. Boy do they have you trapped on that one! You can't get replacement toner cartridges from one of the on-line services, however with a little shopping around like on Amazon, etc. you don't have to pay retail from Brother.

Quite unexpectedly, I ran into a friend who has this same unit and said it was the most reliable piece of equipment in their home office. (Having gotten this only a month ago, I can't vouch for that, but suspect that if you keep it clean and don't move it around a lot, it should work great.) BTW it is HEAVY--about 70 lbs-- so be sure you have it securely situated on a firm cabinet, and pretty level. I like the fact that the cartridges and the holder are easily owner replaced and parts are available directly from Brother. Another of the things which impressed me about this unit is the readout for what is happening with the machine, such as number of copies-the ready light- quality adjustments, etc, are all easily seen in a stand up LCD back-lit gauge. Also on this gauge is full time cartridge capacity levels, all of which can be clearly viewed without having to stand up and get a flash light. The downside is that everything that happens to the printer is shown here and if the LCD goes, would it keep running anyway?

I wish though that it had the second paper tray so printing from one source like regular paper to envelopes wasn't so cumbersome. Also not having a top feed keeps the dust and crud out of the unit, which I think in the long run might make a difference in performance. This laser printer comes with a printed manual which I like.

The price of $399 with $30 off sale and $30 rebate took the bite out of the price of what appears to be a really good printer. While there may be better deals on line, I'm not sure I would purchase it except through a local store such as Office Depot, etc. The cost to ship this back in the event something was wrong upon delivery, isn't worth the small discount from shopping on-line. When I get into this type/price unit, I want to know there is someone there to help with any problems if need be.

BTW I coupled this printer with one of the smaller Canon scanner/copiers and I'm totally functional for almost any job I need to do. Granted, the combined footprints are bigger, but so is the quality and convenience.

For a small office I would recommend this unit.