Full Review

I had this machine for about 3 years now. I was looking for a MFC that has network capability for both printing and scanning. I found this with a very good price and at the time it was too new so I didn't find any reviews yet.

After I bought the machine, I started having printing problem in about 3 months. It kept telling me that ink is empty even though I saw that the cartridge was still half full. When it says any of the color is empty, it just won't print, even if you don't need that particular color to print. So I ran to office depot to buy new ink, and after a few months, the same problem happened again. Except that I didn't print anything in between the ink replacement and when it said my cartridge was empty!! I called Brother and the service rep told me if I don't use the printer often enough, the ink will dry and I need to replace it. But afterwards they agreed to let me take it to a repair shop to see if that can be fixed as my unit was still under warranty.

At the repair shop, I saw many brothers lying around but I figured they may specialize in brother so that may explain it. The guy told me that there is nothing much he can do about the ink problem and said he'll see what he can do. After I took the unit back home, it seemed to work well for a few months. I moved so the unit was not used for almost 8 months. When I started to use it again, it said I needed to replace my cartridge. I didn't want to buy the expensive Brother ink so I went online to get the cheaper kinds. Shortly after, I got the error 41. I went online to research about it and that's when I found a lot of people complaining about it. But the good thing is even though my warranty went out by then, Brother extended the warranty for this particular error 41 issue. It was the print head being clogged and Brother blamed it on using non-brother 3rd party ink cartridge. So of course the first thing they asked me was if I used genuine Brother ink and I said yes even though a week ago I just changed one of the ink to generic. Anyway they authorized a free repair for me.

I brought the unit back home and it has been working fine. I started using the printer frequently and the print head needs frequent (almost daily) cleaning. Since I use the printer almost daily now, it is as simple as doing a test print and cleaning. At the repair shop they charged me for a new set of ink so I knew it wasn't the generic ink that was causing any clog in the printhead. Also people that had error 41 were always using genuine Brother ink. Anyway, the last repair place must have reset the machine so whatever the first repair shop did to fix the problem of saying the ink cartridge was empty when it was still half full came back. It was very frustrating as the Brother ink cartridges are so expensive.

Then after searching online, I found out that brother purposely did this to make money by doing frequent "cleaning" and also force the printer to stop working once one of the cartridge is "empty" when in fact it is still half full. People have found there is a ink scanner and by taping the front top portion of the ink cartridge with electrical tape, you can fool the scanner and use the ink until it is really empty. I didn't have electrical tape at home so I tried paper labels and scotch tapes but they won't work. So I ended up buying a roll of electrical tape just for this and viola it worked! Only electrical tape will do the trick and I don't know why but that's what the posting of the work around said to use and sure enough that's what did the trick.

So now with this ink problem solved, as long as I don't get other error messages, I am happy.