HL-L8360CDW Business Color Laser Printer with Low-Cost Printing, Wireless Networking, and Duplex Printing

The short version is that my wife & I are really liking this printer so far. As the headline reads, the color prints look great (including photo prints) and it prints fast (even from startup). So I chuckled reading some of the reviews (which I carefully did for several models). People talk about this printer being hefty (aprox 40lbs). This printer replaced an old HP 4550N Color LaserJet I had. THAT printer was hefty (113lbs!). So, the approx 40lbs was a JOY! :) I was very pleased with the HP but it was just getting old and was well beyond end of life. So I've been an HP fan for many years and felt I was really taking a risk trying out the Brother. My wife is a teacher and prints a lot of "stuff". So far we (especially my wife) have been just very impressed by this printer. I even printed my first double sided print (full duplex) today and it worked great. We've probably printed 30+ color pages and the toner and other perishables don't even show a dent in utilization (still 100% across the board). So thank you Brother for sending decent starter toner cartridges! I appreciated the one reviewer providing the password "initpass" for the built in web server on the printer. The information and configuration options on the printers web page are impressive. The pictures above are of the unboxing process. There are about nine pieces of tape that have to be removed and there are these orange clips that keep the toner cartridges in place during shipping. They are fairly easy to remove. You will need to pull down the main front door and pull out the cartridge drawer to get to them. Last, it has been great getting this printer. It immediately prompted me to download and install updates (twice). My WIN10 PCs immediately see the new printer and it worked flawlessly. We own iPhones and we can print very easily from them straight to the printer. On the iPhones, if the photo is large it takes a little longer to print which I assume is because it's going over WiFi to get to the printer. Speaking of which, I have this printer plugged into my network and am NOT using the built-in WiFi. APPROX. 1 YR UPDATE -------------------- So we purchased this in August of '19... now July '20. So far this printer has been VERY impressive. We've gone through the starter toner... got approx. 2k prints from those alone!!! I purchased the high yield toner cartridges... that's pricey but not when you compare number of prints to traditional toner. We've been so pleased I recommended this to my mother (and she purchased it). I'll occasionally log into the printer and upgrade the firmware (if a new one is available) and check the stats. So far we have 2,650 color & 151 b&w prints. Excluding toner, all the perishables (drum unit, fuser unit, laser unit, etc are above 90% with most being just under 100%. OVER 2 YR UPDATE -------------------- Printer is still going strong! My wife is a teacher and prints tons of stuff... I have three teens cranking out reports, you name it. I'm on my second FULL toner cartridge set (four). That is to say, I've gone through the starter, a regular full set and on another. So far I have 6,690 color pages & 548 B&W pages. As I mentioned... I have my second FULL / extended toner set in and they are almost 100% each. Sad to hear anyone has issues with this model... I can just tell you my experience. I DID however have one issue where I purchased a full (black, yellow, cyan, magenta) Brother toner replacement. ONE of the toner cartridges didn't work... it was brand new out of the package and the printer showed empty. I tend to purchase this stuff some months before they run out so I don't get caught empty. The bad thing about that is that it was past the seller's return date. I was disappointed with the seller for that. Unfortunately Brother wouldn't help me out either BUT... to Amazon's credit they gave me some credit for the single toner. I ended up purchasing a stand alone toner cartridge to replace the "defective" one and it worked great.

After having suffered through several hand-me-down printers, I wanted a new laser printer that could duplex and print in color so I could reduce the number of devices in my home office. While having the ability to make copies would have been nice, this really handles the bulk of my needs. The setup was incredibly easy and required very little interaction with it to get it on the wireless network. All of my laptops and PC found the printer through the Windows printer wizard very quickly and easily. The only issue I've run into is that the included Windows driver for this printer does allow duplexing but no matter what setting in the application, printer defaults and onboard the printer, it would always duplex on the short side, meaning when you flipped the paper over, the print was upside down. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, would make it behave any differently. I downloaded the driver directly from Brother, unpacked it and replaced the driver to use it even though Windows tried to tell me I had the best driver already installed. Now, it works as expected and as it should. I was so frustrated I was ready to send the printer back. Thanks, Microsoft... The speed of output is a bit inconsistent for multiple pages in the same document. There is sometimes pausing in between pages. I've had plenty of printers that just cranked out page at the rated speed one right after another, so this is the only detractor on an otherwise fine printer. The output is acceptable for a color laser printing color graphics. Do not expect photo quality output - get a high-end inkjet for that (love my Canon Pro-100) but is just great for brochures and other office quality color output. All in all, I'm quite pleased and satisfied with the printer. The price is great. Consumables are going to be where I feel the price pain but that's to be expected.

UPDATE - after 2 1/2 years of low usage with very good grades, it just died on me. The machine is saying there is an error with the drum, but doesn't say why. The printer only has 5,990 page count. The drum is rated for 30,000 pages. UPDATE 2 - I learned from a Google search and examination that the Corona Wires were covered in toner. I cleaned as much toner as I could and ran the Corona wire cleaner back and forth on each color. The printer started up and ran perfectly again. This printer is awesome. Revirw - I had an Epson CX-series color laser in my home office for over a decade. It's been mostly a good girl, but the fuser finally went and I started my research which led me to the Brother HL-L8360CDW. My first impressions were that it was super easy to set up and then "Wow, laser printers have not changed much in 10 years". After using this for a month, I have changed from my initial reaction to "this thing is awesome". At first, I thought it was really slow, but I found the printer quality was set to "Fine" and after changing that to "Normal" this printer screams! Even in normal mode, color vibrance and quality is way better than my old Epson. I haven't bothered with "Fine" mode. The touchscreen is a little small and my fat fingers require precise placement, but it's still better than the old click-clack buttons. This printer is half the size of the Epson and the toner "drawer" is so much easier than the older style of rotating drums. Envelopes? Well, kind of. They still wrinkle a little like I've found with every laser printer I've ever used. Not bad though. The paper tray is larger which is always a plus. The best feature I've found is the full-duplex printing. That is so cool and I use it all the time. Gone are the days of printing odd pages, then reversing and printing even pages. It's just all automatic now. This is also much quieter than my old printer. So much quieter that when my associate in the next room sends over a print job, she is constantly asking me "Is it printing? I don't hear it". Yeah, it's printing... and it's already done. I've never owned a Brother product, so on advice I read online, I sprung for the 4 year extended warranty from Amazon. I hope I never need it. Would I recommend this printer and buy it again? Yes, at this point in time, I would.

**EDIT ** UPDATE ** KEY TAKEWAY ** IF YOU READ ONE THING READ THIS ** Since writing this review, I found the following brother printer hack, which I have now been wonderfully putting to use. In the full review below, I mention a bug where the printer does not recognize brand new toner cartridges. Well, there's another related bug, and I have figured out a hack to fix both issues. This could very well save you hundreds or thousands of dollars over the lifetime of this printer. it has already saved me hundreds. *BUT FIRST* *UPDATE: October 19, 2020* One more useful tip! If you end up buying this machine, make sure to either A) save, or B) photograph the original Brother printer toner cartridges in your machine for future reference. Just now, I had an experience with their tech support which I will describe at the end of this review. Please see below for more information. *RESUME* The bug is that the printer will tell you it is out of toner once it has hit its internal toner counter, without actually checking the cartridges somehow internally to decide whether it is actually out. Here is the hack: When your printer is out of toner, don't believe what it is telling you! look at the last few pages it printed. Are they faded? as if printed by a printer which is low on toner? or are they still sharp and crisp, with your desired level of clarity and readability? if the pages are sharp and crisp, guess what, you don't actually need to replace the toner! what you actually need to do is the following: 1) cancel any ongoing print jobs until you get to the main screen. 2) push the button on the top right front part of the unit to open it, as if you were about to replace the toner 3) the main screen should say something like "cover is open" (note that the hack seems to only work from this "cover is open" screen) 4) *the next step is the hack* I reminds me of the old days of N64 video game cheat codes. game shark for the win! 5) press the following button sequence: (to the left of the LCD screen we have three buttons: "back", "home" and "cancel", listed from top to bottom) the button combo is: - "back" + "cancel" together in unison push down and then release evenly (the whole move lasts less than a second) - now press the "back" button once (with about the same cadence as you pressed the previous two together) 6) you should land on a screen which allows you to completely reset the "toner counters" in the machine 7) you can reset any toner level to standard, high, or super high levels of toner. this will trick the machine into thinking you have actually installed new toner 8) after this is done, you can continue printing 9) you will have to manually decide when you are actually out of toner. there will come a point when the pages get thin, or start omitting words or phrases, washed out white spots, etc. 10) once this behavior makes your toner *actually* unusable, you can manually replace the toner, reset the counters, whatever 11) my experience is that this trick saves me 2000 pages on each cartridge, effectively extending the life of a toner replacement up to 150% of what it was before. This trick works with all 3rd party toner manufacturers I have tried, and has, so far, led to no sort of instability. There have been a few times where I have accidentally printed 20 or 30 pages which didn't have enough toner, but this costs me far less money than if I replace the toner when the printer says it is out. It seems the printer only says it is out once its internal "toner counter" has reached a certain number, 4000 pages, or whatever. 12) I hope this helps you! if you are stuck with this printer, good luck!!! my printing strategy has been to print everything I think I will ever need to print for my entire life up front! in another week or so, I will be done! then I can get back to my life and stop this human brother printer-monkey side business I have been running for the last month. good luck!! ** back to the original review, below ** here are the bullet points, in no particular order: #1 printer makes numerous long pauses during printing jobs, often for 5-10 minutes at a time. it simply says "waiting for a while," in the middle of your print job, and then waits for ten minutes. this has never been a deal-breaker for me. from what I understand it is cooling down to prevent overheating. however, it happens consistently enough, to the point where it seriously decreases their advertised pages per minute #2 printer comes with multiple components that seemingly need to be replaced every few tens of thousands of pages of printing (laser, drum, etc). I have had the printer for about a month in a small home office, and had to replace the drum already. this cost me about 150$. Not to mention, in the final 10,000 pages of the previous drum, the left side of every single page was streaked with black. it looked like every page was toner-burned. this has been highly annoying. it is not worth it to me to buy more toner and paper to replace these pages, so now I will have these burnt out documents forever. we live in the year 2020. we can make airplanes hit mach three and put a man on the moon. you're telling me we can't engineer an office printer that doesn't need its whole insides replaced every few weeks? I don't buy it. I get it that toner is a resource these brother printers consume like a paintball course burns through paintballs. they have no incentive to engineer systems that don't chew through toner because it is their primary revenue stream. but the fact that the core printer components have a an expected lifetime of weeks not years or even months under heavy load is embarrassing. I know they're getting money for the replacements. in my opinion, only second rate businessmen and below average engineers run a business this way. they are not willing to design a product that is worth the money and bears the load it should have been designed for. they push their engineering bugs and inadequacy onto you, their customers, making you shell out hundreds more dollars for toner and parts replacements, essentially giving you the new job of "brother printer technician" in addition to whatever else it was that you were already doing. this printer will eat your time. and then later, you will need to send brother more money to replace the parts of the machine they designed in the first place.... which brings me to my third point: toner. #3 the toner market for brother printers is an interesting one to observe. let's break this down. if you want to buy the brother brand toner, here is what they are offering on amazon: Brother HL-L8360CDW (TN-433) High Yield Toner Cartridge Set and the product description: Brother TN-433 High Yield Toner Cartridge Set contains Four(4) color compatible cartridges (Black TN433BK, Cyan TN433C, Magenta TN433M, Yellow TN433Y) that has been designed to work with a range of Brother printer(s). The black cartridge can print up to 4,500 pages and each color cartridge up to 4,000 pages. Compatible with Brother Printer(s): • Brother HL-L8360CDW the price for this item: Price: $438.00 & FREE Shipping Here are a few of the compatible competitors: 1) MxVol Compatible Brother TN-433 TN-431 TN433 Toner Cartridge 4-Pack (TN433BK, TN433C, TN433M, TN433Y), High Yield use for Brother MFC-L8900CDW HL-L8360CDW HL-L8360CDWT MFC-L8610CDW HL-L8260CDW Printer price: 47.99 2) E-Z Ink (TM) Compatible Toner Cartridge Replacement for Brother TN-433 TN433 TN433bk TN431 to use with HL-L8260CDW HL-L8360CDW MFC-L8900CDW MFC-L8610CDW (1 Black, 1 Cyan, 1 Magenta, 1 Yellow, 4 Pack) price: 48.99 Amazon's Choice! 3) myCartridge Compatible Toner Cartridge Replacement for Brother TN433 TN-433 TN431 Fit for Mfc-L8900Cdw Hl-L8360Cdw HL-L8360CDWT HL-L8260CDW MFCL8610CDW MFCL9570CDW (Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) price: 48.99 4) ONLYU Compatible Toner Cartridge Replacement for Brother TN431 TN-431 TN433 TN-433 for HL-L8360CDW MFC-L8900CDW HL-L8360CDWT HL-L8260CDW MFCL8610CDW MFCL9570CDW Color Laser TN433 TN431 Printer (4PK) price: 47.79 and the list goes on. Brother: the market is telling you something! toner is not worth that much! it is ink! your competitors are eagerly demonstrating that not only is toner not worth that much, but *high-quality, highly-rated working* toner is not worth that much! it seems to be pretty easy for them to do! on several places on the internet, we (your customers) can see statements such as (paraphrasing from memory) "warning: only use brother official toners. using third party toners is not supported and could damage your printer or void your warranty" but brother, the price of the whole printer is $342.99! why would we buy your printer, and then buy your 438 dollar toner every few thousand pages? I could buy the highly-rated $50 variety, play it on the wild side for an evening, cross my fingers that nothing terrible happens ,and then if the printer catches on fire I could just buy a whole new unit! I would have saved money over buying the brother variety of toner! but I would have wasted my: time, energy, not to mention the whole hunk of burning plastic, emitting who knows what into the atmosphere. does any of that make sense on any level? and so I can say: I have been buying the third party toner, and the prints have been flawless! other than the problem with the *brother* drum. once I replaced the drum (buying the $150 replacement piece of plastic, unfortunately, from brother), the streaks went away while still using the third party toner. But there is larger problem, leading me to point #4 #4 here is the behavior I encounter: some of you are likely programmers or engineers. let's see if we can diagnose this bug. brother printer says *need toner, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow" user says "ok! I have a brand new pack!" user removes old toner, installs new toner, closes unit brother printer shows same error user says "hmm that's odd, this is a brand new set of toner cartridges. these have been working fine up until now user opens another new box of toner and pulls out a new set. "let's try these!" new toner registers as working! wow, the user says. that's a shame that now I have to waste these new toners! I guess brother was right, that the 3rd party toners are unreliable... but wait! the user gets an idea user opens printer again, removes new working replacement toners and reinstalls the first set he tried previously voila! upon closing the machine, the printer still has the updated supply levels from the second *working* set of toner! now, the printer is able to print 4,000 flawless color pages using the toner it had, moments previously, ruled out as a third party dud cartridge. okay wait a second. what's wrong with this picture? is this a software bug? hardware bug? is this a problem with the third party toner or brother's systems? I have been experiencing this behavior consistently. somehow, my toners became "out of phase" with the machine, and I needed a surrogate to trick the brother printer into recognizing them, only swapping them back out later so as not to waste the brand new cartridges! why am I doing this??? oh yeah, it is because brother literally has a mechanism built-in to their machine to brick non-brother toner cartridges that have been removed once previously from their machine. you plug the toner in, brother printer "whirs" for a few moments, and then that toner cartridge, full of ink, will no longer recognize as *new* to the brother machine (unless you get lucky). now, the surrogate toner cartridges won't work later when you try to use them as replacements once out of ink (unless you have surrogates for these) and the cycle continues! there are so many other small design flaws with this machine and its advertising. discovering and troubleshooting them has been a major headache. I am writing this here so that hopefully one of you is saved from buying brother and buys a different brand! final notes: -direct print from USB stick is an order of magnitude slower than the advertised pages per minute -the software interface to the direct print usb stick is MEGA slow, and always returns you to the top of the whole tree after clicking *forward* and then *back*. in other words, you better not hit the wrong key on the touch screen! or you might be scrolling back through your alphabetized USB stick contents for 5 minutes back to the letter "M" -PDF pages with any transparency take orders of magnitude longer to print on this machine -if you fill up the whole tray with paper, and then leave the printer printing with a long job, going to make lunch in the meantime, the printer, (if is has enough time to print the whole tray before you come back) will start spilling over the edge of the landing zone after about 1/3 of the tray has gone by, leaving your pages out of order strewn all over the floor. there is a little plastic flap you can use to mitigate some of this, but it barely works, making is so that 2/3 of the tray can be printed without major spillage. I duct taped a piece of cardboard to the plastic flap. now the pages won't spill, but the printer will literally JAM after too many pages have been printed. that is all I can think of for now... but wow. I feel like I accidentally took on a part time printer technician job after buying this thing. BUYER BEWARE *UPDATE, October 19, 2020* Make sure to save or photograph your original brother toner cartridges! Brother tech support will lock you out if you have a problem with your machine and they determine you are not using genuine brother cartridges. It doesn't matter what your technical problem is, or whether or not it is solvable without the genuine cartridges. It is in their tech support playbook to deny access to all users who can't read them a barcode. It does not matter whether or not your problem is actually related to the toner cartridges or the machine itself. If you can't read them the barcode on the top of their genuine toner cartridges, the brother tech support assistant will put up a wall, responding to everything: "the rest of my technical steps do not apply to you until you use genuine brother cartridges." I say: "okay, well, I don't have any of those. Would you please read me the steps so that we could try them? I know there is a chance they won't work, but if there is any chance at all they do, I would be so grateful! I would be able to get back to doing what I was doing before the machine made that loud buzzing sound and broke!" Brother support in a robotic monotone: "I am sorry for your inconvenience. the rest of my technical steps do not apply to you until you use genuine brother cartridges" in a loop about ten times. If I had one of the original cartridges (that came with the machine) or a photograph, I could have simply read them the barcode. I am almost positive that the subsequent steps could have at least *diagnosed* the issue, but the whole tech support staff refused to indicate what those might be. This occurred after waiting on hold on the phone for well over an hour! So rude! The color printing stopped working after the printer made a loud buzzing sound. I tried two new sets of cartridges and bought a whole new brother drum! nothing worked! If the new drum, and two sets of toner cartridges didn't work, my experience debugging tells me they are not the problem! Instead, there is something wrong with the machine! But I will never figure out what it is, since Brother won't help me! I think they need a new name for their brand. My real brother would never do that. BUYER BEWARE

Update (Most Recent 2019-May-09): ------------------------- With the most recent updates in firmware (the only thing that's changed for me) this printer is now working quite well through my wi -fi network. To quickly recall, my printer is set to a fixed IP address through the printer control panel -- and my router associates that same fixed IP address with the printer based on the printer's MAC address. There are no disconnects and the printer remains accessible for as long as we have it powered on. I appreciate greatly that Brother has addressed this issue. With wireless connectivity fixed (at least for me) I think this printer is a very good, even excellent, value. My comments are below in the original review about print quality. The printer interface LCD and software really brings color laser printers up to modern current expectations. Perfect or even just good color matching will require tinkering, but that's going to be an issue at this price point. Of course brand new this printer comes with filled, full sized, toner cartridges - a nice plus. I now fully recommend this machine! Current Review 4.5 stars --- Original Review 2.5 stars Original Review: ------------------ The wi-fi connectivity would not work properly. Through the LCD panel everything seemed to be a go, and I could verify it was connected to my network. Windows recognized the printer. And yet, nothing would print over wi-fi, which makes this printer useless to me, to be frank. The software installed with the printer is essentially dialog boxes that indicate if the printer is not working, then we can't help you: error code -1. Great. Update: --------- So after contacting customer support, their fix was to (in Windows) create a new TCP/IP printer port using the IP address assigned to the printer by the router. I'm not sure how long this will work since the IP addresses are assigned through DHCP. So what happens when the printer's IP address changes when the lease expires or the router is power cycled? I downloaded the Brother android app on my tablet (my tablet is wi-fi only and was connected to my network). That app couldn't detect the printer and needed me to manually input the printer's IP address, so I see a common issue with this printer being glitchy among two different platforms. After the android app connected to the printer, the app worked and I was able to send pictures and documents to the printer. However, on subsequent tries the app did not work. The printer usually acknowledged a print job was incoming, but it would just bomb out. So tonight I haven't really been able to evaluate print quality, etc. because the wi-fi connectivity has been obtained (unsatisfactorily) through a stop-gap measure or kludge, and was really an annoying time sink. Upgrade from one star to two. Update (a few days later): --------------------------------- Okay so I tried a number of things, like assigning a static IP address to the printer's MAC address in my router -- essentially when my network sees the printer always assuring the printer's IP address is fixed, so that applications know where to find it on the network. The Brother LCD panel/menu has settings to do this on the printer's end as well. This doesn't make any difference. The problem is the printer goes into a sleep mode, and never wakes up. So if the software driver in concert with my OS can't communicate with the printer, I have to power down the printer and turn it back on. There is no way around this. So when it comes to printing, the Brother is not there waiting for me, it needs a wake up call. Maybe this isn't a wireless issue, maybe the printer goes to sleep and never wakes up with cable connectivity too. It's annoying as all get-out. So in Windows I did a clean install of the latest drivers. Now personally I set the static IP address in the printer and in my router, but I think the normal wireless (WLAN) install of this printer is fine, you just need to power-cycle the printer if your computer can't communicate with it. The Brother android apps as a general rule DID NOT work for me, either through my wireless network or through wi-fi direct. The printer would usually acknowledge a print job was starting, but would bomb out at some point. Occasionally the LCD display would give the cryptic message "Data remaining in memory" and "Push X to stop". Is that a good thing, bad thing? I don't know. The printer's print quality is okay for text, and colored text -- certainly acceptable. Photos are meh. It is nice to see pictures print really, really fast, but I wasn't planning on printing a bunch of photos on plain paper or card stock. I can say if you want a really decent picture printed with this printer you need to use color profiles and a program like/similar to Photoshop to manage output. Also, if a picture is black and white, set the printing options to monochrome in the printing properties. The colors in general are off unless corrected in some way. Since this printer uses toner, there are some streaks where rollers push paper through the printer, and the toner lays on top of the paper: it doesn't soak in like ink. Brother says this printer can handle at most 43 pound bond paper, which is about 94 grams per meter square weight. This is VERY thin card stock. Using paper that's too thick might result in toner not sticking and causing problems over time (e.g. a laser printer could run hot and the rubber rollers could soften). This printer does have a nice front and rear tray for printing on special paper and keeping it relatively flat. As an artist, I've printed line art on some special paper with the intent of using alcohol markers (e.g. Copics, Prismacolor) over the toner and that works great with no smears, as well as printing blue lines over which I would ink. Thick watercolor paper is an absolute no-go since it's way too thick, especially Arches paper, or anything of that nature. So I would give this printer maybe two and a half or three stars. The wi-fi/wireless connectivity is very very very very disappointing, and really an ABOMINATION in this day and age where such connectivity is so ubiquitous. I would have thought the Brother engineers would have done a much better job of troubleshooting/fixing wireless issues than releasing the printer as it is to the general public. Maybe they'll fix the go to sleep/dying issue in a firmware update. I don't know.

Easy to use and set up. It prints very fast. Note that this is strictly a printer and not a scanner or copier. The colors are pretty vibrant. It isn’t really as noisy as I thought it might be. It has a relatively conservative footprint for its size. Overall, it’s a very nice machine. Brother is the way to go when it comes to printers. It connected very easily to my computer. It works very well for my needs and I would definitely buy it again.

After reading all the negative reviews AND living in an area where UPS delivery consists of kicking the package from one end of town to the other (after it is been opened to see if there is anything to steal) I was expecting the worst. That I would have to return it. Sure enough the box was badly mauled and dented as is every package I get from UPS. But I opened it up anyway. No damage to the printer and nothing missing. Yea!! The printer was very heavy. A good sign! And when I plugged it in it worked. The WPS did not work. But not being a novice, I had no difficulty setting it up on WiFi. Really its completely straightforward with no surprises. Once I had an IP address for it I downloaded the Brother Linux driver and it installed perfectly. Zero knowledge needed, the driver works by itself. And it prints beautiful full color pictures that look like photographs (because they were). My hat is off to Brother for supporting Linux just as well as HP does. They had better if they want to sell printers in China! Some people complained about a delay before printing. Yes,,, but the delay is no different from the HP laser jets I have and all the laser jets at work. In fact the longest delay is only after the printer has not been used for a while, lasts for about 30 seconds and then subsequent prints are much quicker. THATS A GOOD THING PEOPLE!! It means that Brother is not burning your electricity keeping the drums warm! In an office environment it would never be an issue because the printer would be constantly in use and the electricity saver would never kick in. The noise is no worse than any Laserjet I have had for the last 20 years and it is a lot quieter than most. The Laserjets at work make much more noise (but at an acceptable level - (the noise is useful because the printer is 20 feet away and thats how you can tell it worked). This printer could sit on your desk without a problem. The color on this printer is every bit as good as my old HP K80 office inkjet and the 2000 dollar commercial HP color laserjet at work. I am deducting one star because the instructions are not adequate for a beginner. There are plastic pieces and tape to be removed deep within the bowels of this beast that are nowhere in the instructions. And the instructions gives no hint that they are incomplete. I suspect the negative reviews are because people had no way to know they needed to take the thing apart to get all the tape and orange plastic gizmos out. Also while it may be Centurylink's and not Brother's fault, the WPS doesn't work at all even for an experienced person. If I run into any problems I will update but I am a very happy camper right now and recommend this printer. I did forget to mention that the printer does slightly curl the paper. My guess is that the drum is too hot. I will contact Brother to see if that can be adjusted. In the meantime the curl is not very bad so I can live wth it. EDIT: A year later still works perfectly. Zero problems. I have been printing almost every day and still have not had to replace the starter toner. Which is annoying because I bought new toner so I would have it on hand and its in the way! I keep hoping the starter toner will run out but it just keeps going. Also works perfectly with the Windows 10 I installed. Works perfectly in LINUX and Windows 10.

I like this printer a lot. I got it to replace a 15-year-old HP 2600N that I was never able to get to work properly on the network. I just plugged a long USB cable into it when I needed to print in color. I got tired of doing that--and the HP didn't want to talk to my new Dell. So I got this Brother. It took me about 5 minutes to set it up on the network, and it works perfectly. I printed some photos to compare with the HP's quality when it was at its best. Impeccable photo quality is not what I was looking for, but this little printer does a more than acceptable job. If I want sooper-dooper quality, I'll just use my fancy (and expensive) Epson 600. A couple of things that surprised me: * The first print takes 29 seconds from a cold start, but then they come out very fast. Once the printer has waked up, the first print comes out in about 12 seconds. I'd say pages then print about 60 per minute. Pretty quick * The auto duplexing (2 sides) is fun to watch. The paper comes part way out of the printer, then gets sucked back in, as though it had changed its mind. Works like a charm. You have to configure that in the Properties dialog, but it's easy. * The big surprise is that it handles booklets automatically. All you have to do to produce a booklet of, say, 12 pages is to go into Properties, decide on a few options (like your paper size) and hit print. It preserves the aspect ratio of your pages, which is a good thing. I haven't run enough pages through the printer yet to know what the cost per page is, or how many sheets I can print before it starts to overheat, but so far I am very impressed. The quality and speed are amazing for the price.I would have expected to pay a LOT more for the features and quality. Even the size is surprising. It is very compact for a printer that has a 250-sheet tray. Highly recommended if you're looking for a color printer that won't ruin your budget.