Brother Color Laser All-in-One Review

Is it any wonder that HP is looking over its shoulder now and seeing printers that, just a few years ago were considered only the "low-cost competition" breathing down their corporate neck as those "low-cost" printers handle more capacity and are more capable than the older HP?

This is especially true to Brother's MFC-9979CDW color laser all-in-one printer with wireless networking capability built-in, as well as standard networking ready-to-go and because of the fact that all it takes is a standard USB 2.0 cable and a fast PC and you have yourself a networked print server.

Further, the Brother offers color printing, as well as the ability to copy, fax, print and scan, something you my not find in your mid-range other brand color laser printers, just yet. At least not on in a workgroup/company-oriented printer.

The Brother can handle up to 30,000 impressions per month at a speed of 30 pages per minute, just a little slower than the HP and, while the speed may be somewhat slower, you still get color capability.

One thing that one should know from the start about the Brother is that it is not a "small footprint" box. At 20.7 x 19.3 x 20.9 inches, this will need considerable territory wherever you set it up and while it does handle up to 300 pages in its standard paper tray, you can up the ante by just about 800 percent when you install the 800 page paper drawer option, giving you a total of 1100 pages of printout. However, at 62 pounds this is not exactly a machine that will be moving anywhere very quickly. Indeed, if it needs service, the chances are two field service engineers may show up to work on it. It is a big machine.

What more can one say about a printer that not only handles printing, scanning, faxing and copy, except to say that this will likely be one of the busiest, if not the busiest printers in your office so, you may want to max out the memory in any printer server devices to handle the output. Further, you'll have to keep an eye on the fuser wire as this is the key to the whole printer and if this goes, you are looking at some fairly expensive item to replace it. And, from what we have heard from heavy users of these machines, Brother is following HP's example by keeping the cost of the printer as low as possible, but charging heavily for the replacement cartridges. It happens all the time in the inkjet world.

Still and all, the Brother is a great office/workgroup printer that has some features that other major brands just don't have yet and, though, they will likely have them soon, the Brother has them now.