( 82 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 16 2009
Versatile, fast, but like all printers, the ink replacements are expensive. Also, they need to update their drivers for Windows 7-RC. Scanning to a Windows 7-RC machine doesn't work. Everything works great with Vista and XP, both 32 and 64 bit. Great machine.
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Posted: Jul 31 2009
After using the MFC-9840CDW for a few weeks I think this was a great choice - it's a good printer, a good scanner and a good copier (haven't used the fax yet) at a great price. This is a big machine (too big to fit on a desktop) and takes two people to lift. We had several paper jams in the first couple of days but have not had any problems since. The only technical issue I have had with it was when it randomly changed IP address up one morning which took a little time to resolve. Best features are: Duplex copying, scanning and printing (none of the other products I looked at in the same price range had this functionality) Good mono print and copy quality, OK color quality (colors are a little washed out). The Control Center software has good functionality and is easy to use. You can scan to pdf or jpeg and the OCR functionality is a nice feature. My main criticisms are: The print speed is quite slow, especially time to first print. I have a mono Brother laser printer with a similar rated speed and it is much faster than the MFC-9840. This is a complex network device and can take some time and effort to set up and configure, especially if you want to reconfigure or troubleshoot. The manuals are not great and there is almost no documentation on the scanning function. I am still trying to figure out how to get some of the functions to work, like scan to email.
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Posted: Jul 14 2009
I have only had my MFC-9840 for about 3 days but, so far, I am very pleased. I bought it to replace a 3 year old HP OfficeJet 7210 multifunction inkjet which I was none too pleased with. HP should be embarrassed with the software they provide with their printers. It is bloated and very buggy. I still love my old HP LaserJet 6MP laser printer which must be going on 15 years old. It's a bit slow by current standards but it just keeps on ticking. It is hard to believe the same company that produced the 6MP produced the 7210. But back to the Brother... It is pretty big and it is pretty heavy. If the UPS guy hadn't helped me up the stairs with it, I'd have had trouble getting it up myself. The beast weighs 83 lbs and with all the packing material, the box is pretty big and awkward for one person to deal with. I bought it because I wanted duplex printing and because I hope to save money in the long run for color printing... My impression is that the Brother laser toner will cost less than the HP 7210 ink cartridges. Setting it up was very straightforward. I hooked it up to ethernet and installed the software on both WinXP and Mac OSX machines. On the Mac side the software is a bit idiosyncratic... It doesn't install in the Applications folder. It just shows up as a very small icon in the bar at the top of the screen (at the right side). It took me a while to notice it was there. I have tested the duplex printing which worked fine. The document handler also worked well. And I was able to fax both incoming and outgoing. Copying, both black & white and color worked fine. I was able to print for all my networked machines. I was able to scan to both WinXP and Mac OSX (although I did have an issue with the receiving application (Photoshop CS4)crashing on the Mac. How well it will stand up over time remains to be seen but so far, I give it a thumbs up. The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 was the issue with the Mac side software crashing (and I don't know whether that was a onetime problem). --Doug
