A useful printer with good features.

I bought this printer to replace my HP model because I really wanted something that could photocopy. I was on a very restricted budget and this was on sale for a very good price. This is not a top of the line printer but I am very pleased with what I got for my money. My main uses for a printer are text printing and photocopying with occasional faxing.

Printing
When printing from the computer this printer prints sharp, clear text. I use this for work (to print things for my classes) and home use. I do not know how it would be viewed in a business environment but it is fine for all my requirements. Printouts of colour graphics are also very good.

Photographs

Photographs on photo paper are also acceptable. The colour and vibrancy of the photos is good but I'm not sure it's as good as my old HP or Epson printers. I am still using the last of my Hewlett Packard photo paper so I may get better still using Brother paper. I know using branded paper made a considerable difference with my HP printer. I should point out here that I print any photos I really like at the local photo developer. Even with good printers I didn't feel I ever got as good a quality at home as I did at the developers. The ink definitely fades more quickly from the home printers.

Fax
This works better than my old Sharp Fax machine. The Automatic Document feeder works well with no papers feeding through together. Resolution can be set. I haven't used any advanced features such as storing phone numbers etc. as I send very few faxes. I have never received any faxes so I cannot comment on that.

Card reader
This feature I never expected to use but I used it to check printing soon after I purchased the unit. I checked photo printing before the printer was hooked up to the computer and it read the card and worked fine. There is no viewing screen or editing capabilities for photos built in to the machine but, after viewing the photos on my camera screen, I took note of which numbers I wanted and scrolled to those numbers using the printer arrow buttons. It was easy to print the photos and they looked good. This printer can read XD, SD, and CF cards. It can also hook up to Pictbridge cameras. (cable not included.)

Photocopying

This is one of the main reasons why I bought this machine. There are times when I want to set up a worksheet or something and need to photocopy a few pages from a book to put something together. This machine is great for this. The top cover lifts up a bit to accommodate larger books and, if your book is really big, you can just leave the cover in the up position.

You can set the print quality to fast, normal or best. Normal yields excellent results for regular text and fast mode yields lighter but still quite readable results.
Normal has been so good that I have not used best mode.

Scanner

I have only once tried scanning a photo using this machine. At first I was frustrated because the photo was scanning too small. I had to fiddle with the software and did finally get a good quality scan. I had scanned a photo which I had shot with a film camera and the print was not as good a quality as the original (or as good as my digital photo printouts) but it was acceptable.
More fiddling with the scanner setup may yield better results but scanning is not something I do much of.

Overall

This is a noisy printer. You really hear the paper being fed through the machine. Its speed is acceptable but not blazing fast, especially in photocopying. If you are looking to photocopy a lot you may want something better but if you are copying only 30 sheets per day or so this should be OK.

I like the paper cassette tray which is under the machine. My old printer had the paper mostly exposed attached to the back of the machine. Sometimes the paper would curl over. The tray is not very big, however. It holds perhaps 60 sheets or so.

One annoyance is the printer will not print with the black ink cartridge empty. Sometimes, if I get caught on empty I change my text to blue just to get a quick printout. No such luck here, the machine will not print with the black empty.

I always refill my cartridges to save money and did so with my previous Epson and Hewlett Packard printers. This machine has the most challenging cartridges to refill. I had to do a google search using instructions and the cartridge name to find instructions. I had to take the black cartridge completely apart as the hole is not accessible from outside the cartridge. I did get it refilled and it printed just fine afterwards. Perhaps practice will make me better at this and the cartridge that came with the machine did last a long time.

This machine can attach via a USB port (my preference) or a network cable. When setting up I did not realize that a USB cable fits into a network cable port no trouble. I could not get the printer to work and, after much frustration, had to call the Brother help line. They were very fast and did not make me feel like a complete idiot for not trying the obvious. When I switched the cable to the other port my printer worked just fine.

The ports are reached through the back of the machine and routed under the glass for the copier/scanner. It makes it less quick to undo a cable but the cables wouldn't come out accidently either.

The printer software is easy to use and installed with no trouble. I can scroll through the menus for faxing, photocopying etc with little difficulty using the information screen on the machine. It is a simple display but serves the purpose well.

I have been very pleased with this machine. It works well at a very good price.