After many months of ownership, I'm upping the rating another star. The printer has proven itself in many ways-- including daily use in printing and copying, wireless printing from Macs, iPhones, and iPads, printing double-sided copies from the Mac or iPads, copying multi-page documents via the document feeder (much smoother and consistent operation than other printers we've had), solid scanning (even wirelessly), handling address label sheets, and even envelope feeding. Those qualities, and getting used to the printer's idiosyncracies have turned it into a solid buy.
PREVIOUS REVIEWS
Raised the rating a star after finding a solution to the envelope issue (see below). Also, the document feeder is sturdy and closes, unlike many printers where things are exposed and collect dust.
Also, added additional observations in response to a request for an update (see comments). That includes a solution to the problem where the printer won't print multiple copies of a Word document (update the printer driver--you can download it for free from the Brother support site).
Alas, one other thing… the printing is not that dark! I discovered this today when I noticed that the documents seemed a bit on the faint side. [NOTE; "on the faint side"--not "faint" per se. It's usable, just not as dark as other lasers we've had or the Brother inkjet we also use.]
I had happened to print the exact same page earlier in the day on a Brother inkjet (475) and that was *dark*, crisp and much easier to look at. Not sure what is going on. The cartridge still has a fair amount of ink in it. I even upped the settings to 1200 dpi, increased print density well above the default, selected text, etc. No dice. While slightly better, still not dark; still not as good as the 475's output. I'll report back on this if I figure out what's going on...
Still not as dark with a generic cartridge, even with higher DPI settings and toner saver mode turned off. May just try a genuine Brother toner cartridge at some point.
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Overall, this seems a good printer, but also has a set of disappointments. We're veteran Brother printer users (as well as having had HP, Canon, and Epson). We bought this to replace a venerable Brother DCP-7020, which, like Timex watches, just keeps ticking, or like the Energizer Bunny, just keeps going! :-) However, the 7020 is not wireless and when its toner expired, we figured it was time to get a new AirPrint-capable, multifunction device instead. Hence, our purchase of the 2740.
By the way, what's with Brother's naming conventions? DCP, MFC, 2540, 2700, 2720, 2740, etc. They also have far too many printers that barely differ. You go to their website and look at a feature comparison and they are virtually indistinguishable! It's a nightmare as a consumer trying to figure out which one to buy! We did figure out that DCP stands for Digital Copier Printer-- i.e., without fax capabilities; while MFC = Multifunction Center and includes fax.
PROS OF THE 2740
1. Wireless set up was easy.
Brother must have listened to the complaints because there is a fold out sheet of set up directions included. You do have to download the latest Brother drivers and software. Tip: On the Brother website, you have to click on "Search" even if it is already showing you your OS. Also, in the installing process, when the screen with the additional software shows up, click on each to install, even though it looks as if you should click on Next!
2. AirPrint from iPhones and iPads works like a charm.
3. Printing and copying are fast.
4. Controls are intuitive.
5. 250-page paper tray--although actual capacity needs to be determined--it's often less and one never should fill the tray to the top or you rich paper jams.
6. Inexpensive generic toner cartridges ( as low as $15) with good reputations are available, so operating costs should be excellent.
7. Wonderfully knows to not print black borders around pages when copying! That's great when copying pages from books. UPDATE: TURNS OUT TO HAVE BEEN A FLUKE! Have not had luck in latest copies.
8. Turns on very quickly--i.e., when power is completely OFF (i.e., not in standby, but from when it has been shut off).
CONS OF THE 2740
1. Printer is loud-- it's noisy both on wake from sleep and during printing. This is true even in quiet mode. No doubt those in busy offices or noisy homes-- or, those who attended too many ear-damaging rock concerts when young :-) -- will find it OK.
Note: Clearly, people vary in their hearing sensitivity, so this judgment will vary by person, but if you are someone who has good hearing or is sensitive to noise, you will likely find this printer on the noisy side when in operation--it's definitely louder than some older Brother printers. It's probably something one can get used to. It's silent when sleeping.
Note: I just printed wirelessly from the living room to the upstairs bedroom and it's loud enough that I could hear the printer! That's actually good, though, as it let me know that the print job took!
2. -----> DISCOVERED A FIX FOR THIS ISSUE. READ ON!
Envelope printing is a convoluted, unfriendly, inefficient mess. Unlike older Brother printers where you could simply put an envelope in the front open feeder-- and out it would come--this printer requires opening up front and back trays and 15 or so total steps! Here are the problems with that.
To use the straight-through path requires opening up the back output tray-- however, if, as most of us do, your printer is up against the wall, that requires moving the printer out. But then, you also have to poke around and find the envelope levers well inside, which are not visible unless you rotate the printer to gain access! (Even if you have room to lower the tray in the back, the printed envelope still will shoot out hitting the wall!). But now the printer has to be re-rotated to lower the front envelope *input* tray--which dismally takes only ONE envelope at a time! After printing, you need to go through the whole rigamarole in reverse order because those envelope levers in the back need to be raised back to their usual up position. It's doubtful that one will want to print envelopes much given all that. I'd much rather live with the slightly curled envelopes of the older printers than go through all of that. (Perhaps envelopes will work with the regular output path...)
OK, TESTED THE REGULAR PATH!
It works like a charm. Just feed in the envelope from the front and let it print normally. There's but a slight bend to the envelope--far less than on the 7020. So, one can ignore the straight-through, 15-step song-and-dance! (Note: You can open the front feeder in a jiffy; the front sliders can be already set for envelopes; and you're off to the races.)
3. Copying from magazines or books has a major gotcha! If the rest of the magazine or book hangs down (which is almost always the case), the copy "button" in the touch screen is covered up. There is no physical copy or start button on the far right of the machine as there was in the older Brother multifunctions. The older design is MUCH better. Here you have to lift the pages to get to the button and that makes it harder to keep the page (or hold down the book) in place to be copied.
Making things worse, the numbers are touch-pressure sensitive (they are not physical buttons) and, when a page of the mag or book brushes against a number, it is all too easy to inadvertently raise the number of copies to 12 or 16 or 19! Today, when I tested this to double-check it, the copy # ended up at 33! Given how fast these modern printers print, you're liable to end up with gobs of extra copies you don't want. Yes, the solution is to always monitor the number that's been set, but one may forget, especially when all you want to do is make a quick one-page copy. Brother should change the sensitivity of the numbers on the touch panel-- and add a Print/Copy button on the lower far right side of the printer.
4. The Home icon button pulses when the printer is sleep mode! That's a distraction. There is no option to turn that off. (The pulsing icon is not needed because one knows the printer is on because the Wi-fi icon is lit up.) Oddly, at times it goes off completely, then mysteriously starts pulsing again (that hasn't happened for a while).
5. The touch screen intermittently lights up even when in sleep mode! Not a major complaint; just weird. That also hasn't happened for a while.
6. Wireless printing takes time--the printer is a slow riser from its naps! :-) We have a Brother inkjet that is definitely faster. No doubt this is related to warming up the laser fuser for printing, but it's worth noting.
7. The printer stinks, especially when printing! It reeked enough that we opened up our study windows even though the temperature was 10 degrees outside! Several days later and it still stinks on printing.
8. How long will the touch screen last? That's a concern and a gamble, whereas the sometimes hard to read LCD screens have a long reliability history.
BOTTOM LINE
We're on the fence about returning it. Can we get used to these irritants and deficiencies? Or, to quote Tina Fey, are they "deal breakers"? Will any other printer solve them? Or, as is likely, will they have their own miserable trade-offs?!
UPDATE AND CONCLUSION
We kept it and really like it! Its plusses well outweigh the minuses, glitches, and oddities.
I purchased this to replace an inkjet multifunction printer for my home office. I ordered this model based on my experience with a Brother printer in the office, and because it was the lowest priced model to have a duplex scanner with ADF. So far, so good. Only two negatives so far: 1) Unlike my printer in the office, this model doesn't let you add a 2nd paper tray; I use the one in the office for legal paper and automatically switch between that and letter. 2) My old HP inkjet would scan to e-mail. This model can scan to FTP but not e-mail, as far as I can figure out anyway.
Also, the dunce who posted a 1-star review because they thought this was a color printer should learn to read; I'm not sure why they need a printer at all.
In some ways I love this product. Set up is very easy, prints look good, and scans work very, very well. I'm very pleased with the Automatic Document Feeder, in particular. I can just drop in 30 corrected tests, press the "scan" button, and automatically get a folder full of high-quality two-sided scans.
That said, I HATE that I can't use it as a replacement to my 2340, which is a standard Brother printer. With this printer, if you print more than 20 or 30 pages, whether it's one long document or a short document printed many times, it will say that it's out of memory, and cancel the print job in the middle. Keep in mind, this is just printing word files, not complicated graphs or pictures. Even if there was a way to fix that, the paper tray is not large enough to physically fit much more. Totally stupid design, and I can't recommend it for general use for that reason.
Recently my Canon mx892 just died, and I decided to finally get away from ink and go laser for the improved costs and reliability. Ink costs about 20 cents per page and ink expires about 9 months once opened, but monochrome laser is 7 cents/page and the toner doesn't really expire. Back to the printer, let me cover the basics:
Pros:
* It's super fast printing, with duplex multi-sided
* The ADF scanner is also lightning fast, scanning both sides at once (single-pass)
* Scan to "Searchable PDF" which also allows you to copy-paste fields from out of the PDF. (great OCR abilities)
* Scan to Google-Drive and Evernote makes life so much easier!
* The touchscreen makes user interaction easier
* Didn't need to install any special software for Windows 10 to be able to print/scan over WIFI
* Has far more on-board memory than the MFCL2740DW, which should fix some of the previous complaints about slowing down when scanning a huge multi-page job.
Cons:
* It's not any larger than the Canon mx-892 except that it's much taller by 5-6 inches
* The touchscreen UI is a little disorganized: lots of scrolling/paging to get to the right options
* The envelope printing is a bit of a pain: single feed only and requires opening the special back panel behind the printer.
Overall, this is a perfect home office productivity machine and worth the investment to me.
Special note: the person that left a one-star because it's not color confuses me... how did he do all the research to find this gem of a printer and not read the title?
QUICK SUMMARY: No more ink cartridges! And a printer that always stays online! Hallelejah!
BACKGROUND: I've used many makes and models of ink jet printers over many years. The latest was an Epson, before that, HP and Canon. In all, they were all disappointing for two reasons. One, the just didn't last very long before they stopped printing correctly -- the ink jet printer head would gum up and couldn't be cleaned using the expensive-to-use "clean printhead" option; two, the cost of ink jet cartridges was just crazy -- so, so expensive.
Our last Epson frustrated us with automatic software downloads onto our computers, popping up all the time saying the printer was out of ink, and going offline constantly. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I researched Amazon extensively and selected this Brother replacement laser all-in-one. What a blessing it has become! After using it for several months, it finally just now ran out of the laser toner, which was just a sample cartridge. I've installed the high capacity toner cartridge and I think that'll be it for the rest of this year!
The Brother was *immediately* recognized by Windows 10 -- I didn't even have to search for a new printer, it was already there, waiting for me to select it. And now that it's my default, it's always ready, everytime.
The black-and-white print is perfect, what you'd expect from a laser printer.
No, I don't have color prints anymore, but there's an Office Depot a mile away if I really need a color print-out.
I'm done with ink jet printers and the high cost of inkjet replacement cartridges.
Thank you, Brother, and thank you, Amazon customers, for up-voting this make and model! You were right!!!
Feature Product
- PERFECT ALL-IN-ONE - The MFC-L2750DW developed for the busy home or small office, Brother's latest compact laser all-in-one printer features advanced printing at 36 pages per minute(1) as well as faxing, copying, and scanning capabilities
- ENGINEERED FOR PRODUCTIVITY - This replacement for the MFCL2740DW helps save time with single-pass duplex (2-sided) copying and scanning via an up to 50-sheet automatic document feeder along with multi-page copying, scanning, and faxing functions
- PRINTING ON THE GO - Send print jobs wirelessly from your desktop, laptop, smartphone, and tablet(2). The "Touch to Connect" printing with NFC gives added convenience(3)
- CLOUD-BASED PRINT & SCAN - Print from and scan to popular Cloud services directly from the 2.7" color touchscreen, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneNote, and more(4)
- WIRELESS PRINTING & EXCEPTIONAL SUPPORT - Easily connect via wireless connections from your laptop, smartphone, desktop, and tablets. We provide free online, call, or live chat support for the life of your printer.Copy Resolution:600 x 600 max. dpi. Power source-AC 120V 50/60Hz
- Scan driver compatibility: TWAIN, WIA, SANE and scan file formats: JPEG (JPG), MAX, PDF single-page/multi-page (PDF/A, high compression PDF, TIFF single-page/multi-page (TIF).AMAZON DASH REPLENISHMENT ENABLED: Upon activation, Amazon Dash Replenishment measures the toner level and orders more from Amazon when it's low
Description
Updated to improve office efficiency for the small or home office, the new Brother Compact Laser All-in-One includes multiple features to streamline the office experience. The up to 50-sheet automatic document feeder helps you save time with single-pass duplex (two-sided) copying and scanning. The MFC-L2750DW also features multi-page copying, scanning, and faxing. It leads the class by delivering lightning-quick printing of up to 36 pages per minute with exceptional quality. This new model is the replacement for the dependable MFC-L2740DW.
This all-in-one laser printer offers “Touch to Connect” printing and scanning with the NFC feature that permits added consumer convenience. Users can print from and scan to multiple Cloud-based services directly from the 2.7” color touchscreen, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, OneNote, and more. This all-in-one printer is designed with a 250-sheet paper capacity tray that helps improve efficiency with less refills. The MFC-L2750DW can handle letter or legal-sized paper and prints with exceptional quality. You can also save money by using Brother Genuine high-yield (TN-760) or super high-yield (TN-770) replacement cartridges, which are available through Amazon (also compatible with TN-730 replacement toner cartridge).
The Brother Compact Laser All-in-One comes with a 1-year limited warranty and free online, call, or live chat support for the life of your printer. At Brother, we want to ensure that your experience with us is exceptional. If your home or small office is looking for an efficient and user-friendly all-in-one printer, add the Brother MFC-L2750DW to your Amazon shopping cart today.
(1) Based on competing in-class monochrome laser multifunction printers under 300-dollars. Print speed specifications gathered from manufacturer websites as of 1/9/2017.(2) Requires connection to a wireless network.(3) The mobile device must have NFC capability and run Android OS 4.4 or later.(4) Requires an Internet connection and an account with desired service.(5) TN-770 Super High-yield vs. TN-730 Standard Yield. Up to three times more prints and lower printing costs based on yields and MSRP. Standard yield and Super High-yield cartridges sold separately.(6) Approx. toner cartridge yield in accordance with ISO/IEC 19752 (letter/A4).(7) Reprinted from PCMag with permission. Copyright 2017 Ziff Davis, LLC. All Rights Reserved.(8) Approx. 300 pages per month in accordance with ISO/IEC 19752 (Letter/A4) using the 2 toners provided in box.
Printing is quiet, fast and nice, even duplex printing. Installation was a breeze, or as a friend says "stupid easy".
My work laptop uses the USB port and my personal laptop using Ethernet; one is Windows 7 64-bit and the other is Windows 10 64-bit. I have the printer connected via a UTP cable to my desk's Gigabit Ethernet switch - I haven't tried the wireless option.
I'll use maybe 500 sheets of paper in one year - I'm a light printer.
I downloaded the latest software (~450MB) from Brother.com before installing. Just too lazy to find my USB CD/DVD device to connect to my laptop, and this made sure I had the most recent software.
I don't do a lot of scanning, a few pages a week. When using the sheet feeder, scans are slightly crooked. No matter how hard I try to make SURE the sheet fits snugly in the sheet feeder and straight, it is off a bit. If I'm not very careful, it can be crooked by a 1/4". Using the scanning bed is fine.
I called support and went through a cleaning process. Still crooked. A new printer was sent quite quickly (kudos Brother!) and it too has the same problem.
IMHO and from my experience if you do a lot of sheet feeder scanning and it is important pages are scanned straight, I'd think twice. Maybe the ones I've tried came from a defective manufacturing run as I returned the first device in less than week. I may wait a few months before logging another warranty issue and see if the problem was a defective manufacturing run that has been corrected.
If others who have the MFCL-2750DW are not experiencing this problem, when you received your unit. Hard to believe I'd get 2 that have the same issue unless it is a temporary manufacturing defect. Brother isn't some off-name brand.
If do another warranty return, I'll provide an update.
I did quite a bit of research on printers and finally chose the Brother MFC-L2740DW. I absolutely love this printer.
To begin with, let me give you some of the requirements I had:
(1) Home/Personal use - I think this might still be great in a small office though.
(2) Wireless - I didn't want to bother trying to connect via a cable to the printer
(3) BW vs Color - I decided that if I really wanted to print in color, I could take it to a real printer shop!
(4) Double-sided - To save paper and to save time, I decided that double-sided printing and scanning were key features.
(5) I didn't research fax capabilities because this was not important for me.
What I have noticed after owning this for a few months.
(1) Printing pictures isn't ideal, but it still looks pretty darn good.
(2) Scanning works easily - I did make the mistake of choosing a high resolution which made it take much longer than I expected.
(3) Printing is great. It is much faster than I would have expected.
(4) I love the wireless capability. Can't say that enough.
(5) Easy to set up and easy to use.
Needed a new printer, was going back to school and expected to be printing a lot of text, so opted for a B&W laser instead of typical color inkjet. I bought the package deal that comes with 2x toner cartridges (2500pp and 4500pp). Just finished the 2500pp cartridge so figured I'd take a second to review. So far, zero jams or other issues. You can compare the pages per minute to other laser printers, I don't know how this thing stacks up in that comparison, but from my perspective after going from an inkjet, this thing feels lightning fast. It's also very convenient to have a printer that does 2-sided without having to manually flip the pages, and holds a ton of paper. Although I occasionally miss the ability to print color, this thing is ideal for the current application. If I find my self in a situation needing the occasional color print, I'll likely buy a cheapo color augment this one.
So far I've only scanned about 50pp, which worked great with no problems (2 sided autofeed color scanner is mighty convenient compared to having to lift a tray or flip pages for 2 sided documents). For printing, I started with the 2500pp cartridge, which is rated based on 5% page coverage (I think that's an industry standard). I got 2160pp, but my pages averaged over 6% coverage (easy to check in the web interface if you network the printer), so pretty close to what I'd expect. The drum unit lasts longer than the toner (I think they are rated at like 12,000pp or something, the % left on the drum unit seems to correlate pretty closely with the amount of pages I've printed, so I don't forsee any issues with early replacement there.
Overall, would highly recommend, especially if you need to print a lot of pages of text.
I could nit pick some things, but for $200, it can't be beat. It's a powerhouse with great time-saving features, a lot of configurability, and fits right into a cloud-based, wireless way of working.
The best part of this printer, much to my surprise, is the Internet connectivity. I can scan directly to Evernote, Google Drive, DropBox... darn near every major online service. I've created four shortcuts, so each member of my family can put a document on the scanner and with one button leave it in their preferred location - OneDrive for my wife, Evernote for me, Google Drive for my kids' Chromebooks. Setup of this is a little involved, but the assistant makes it pretty straightforward, if a little time consuming.
Scanning is very solid - color is reproduced accurately, and duplex scanning from the document feeder is spectacular, especially when paired with dropping documents directly into Evernote. An awesome "paperless office" accessory (and cheaper than a lot of dedicated document scanners).
Printing is good quality and has sharp text, but it certainly won't fool you into thinking it's a photo printer. Both printing and scanning could be faster, but they're entirely acceptable for a SOHO level device, and faster than most inkjets.
All in all, after fifteen minutes to set it up and get it on the network, I put in about another half hour getting all the online services I wanted set up, getting the faxing configured so it wouldn't mess with my home phone line, setting up Google Cloud Print for my tablet, and installing drivers on my many computers. My whole family is now printing and my kids are having a ball scanning all their old artwork and making Google Slides out of them.
Feb 28th first test:
Took me less than 10 minutes to set up and the wifi direct printing is the great feature that I love. There were a few reviews mentioned the printer will not wake up or will not connect. I was expecting the same thing that I may experience but the machine runs like a champ. The noise compare to the ink jet printers and the low noise of the laser printer is consider quiet. The print quality is amazing and the default setting is double sided printing.
I am glad that I connected the machine with the wireless network once it was turned on and the firmware update was done first. The machine is a bang for the buck and I am happy with what I paid for. We do not use landline and we have no intention to use the machine as fax machine. The duplex or double sided scan is the amazing option to have since we have a special child in elementary school who loves the copy machines.
The paper tray stayed flush with the machine, the touch screen is responsive and the ADF is smooth and I haven't try full 50 pages scan or try a little more than 50 pages.
The machine comes with toner for first few print jobs and I bought the after market toner without chip as stand by. I hope it works without issue.
I will update later if there is any findings.
March 2nd,**
The machine is a tough cookie to work with Mac. It works flawlessly with PC but when printed with Mac, the machine is out cold sleeping like it never slept before. The automatic two sided printing make things good sometimes but when printing legal documents, it become a hassle since I printed 70 pages file for 3 copies and found out the machine still printed both sides. The setting was set to turn off the two sided print job but it still printed.
The simple fix was saved the file in PDF format and print.
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