 Good all in one unit |
| Review Date: November 18, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Me, Denver |
I've had this unit for two years and love it. The software is a little quirky but once you got used to it and have no problems.
I mainly use it to print and scan. I have it hooked up to my home network and use it without incident on my work laptop (wireless), wife's laptop, and my home PC (via ethernet wire). |
good product for good price
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| Review Date: April 15, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Picky, PA |
for little business based at home all what you need.
even my 2,5 years old doughter know to operate it.
and its laser print,real thing. |
Great Printer
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| Review Date: April 1, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ryan Bortner, St. Louis, MO |
I have owned this printer for about 2 years, and it is the best printer I've ever owned. I went through ink jet printers like they were disposables, but this printer is great. It has jammed once, and even though it was not easy to reset after the jam cleared, the web site gave simple instructions. It scans, copies, and prints well. Even better, my wife can work from her laptop upstairs and print to the printer downstairs. The quality is great, and it's so much better paying 1 or 2 cents per page instead of the $0.20 per page with an ink jet.
One of the reviews said they were not able to get additional pages after the low toner message came on. Mine came on last night, and I shook it, and it's still functioning...but I doubt it will get too many more pages.
Overall, this is a great great printer. I bought it refurbished, for a fraction of the new cost, and it has been an outstanding product. |
Solution to "Back Cover Open" Error
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| Review Date: December 29, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Q. Marsh, Texas |
My bought one of these printers from a co-worker about a year ago. I worked well for until he had some issues with a paper jam. I won't go through the paper-jam issue in this post. Others have beaten that drum enough. Once he cleared both the physical jam on the printer and cleared the printer queue, the printer displayed the "Back door open..." error. He was wanting to take the machine to a repair center to have someone look at it. I asked him if I could, "Just for fun." He agreed and after twenty minutes of research (these reviews were more helpful than the Brother website), I focused my examination on something, anything that physically resembles a switch. Turns out that the design team opted for an optical sensor instead of a contact switch. The optical switch is "closed" when something breaks the beam. A beam of light (can't see it with the naked eye) shoot from one of the small, square brown block to the other.
If you want to find it yourself:
1. open the back door cover,
2. pull the tab to open the rear chute cover,
3. follow the edge of the rear chute cover until you see it end in between the slot it travel in (it should be a rectangular tab that visibly stands out from the silver/white background in the slot),
4. take about 1/2 inches of the sticky part of a post it and wrap is over the black arm in way that make it stick out in front of the tab about 1/4 inch,
5. let your eyes follow the slot (its a curve) until you see the two brown block I mentioned earlier,
6. close ONLY the rear chute cover until your paper trim is in between the two blocks (make sure the power is on, you should see a light come on to warm the roller),
7. if that does the trick, carefully open the rear chute cover and add a little tape to make sure your modification stays put,
8. close up everything and continue printing.
This fix costs next to nothing. A post-it and some scotch tape. The main issue I had was with the design. I know that a contact switch would work as well as the optical one, but I think Brother was shooting for the printer to work a long time. I used to design assemble tools for some the the electronic components in it. My experience tells me that the problem with this design could have been mitigated in pcb design or the a small modification of the rear chute cover. Oh well. A pretty decent printer got a bad rap because of what I'd consider a simple oversight or an easy to fix home solution. |
The perfect buy for the money.
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| Review Date: December 12, 2008 |
| Reviewer: J. Geller, Cambridge, MA USA |
I have had this printer for only two weeks, but so far it has performed admirably. Although it does have some limitations, one expects these with such an inexpensive network all-in-one printer. Only a few things have bothered me about this printer, and one of them is software based.
First, this printer does not seem to be able to print on 24# parchment paper, even if there doesn't seem to be any texture to it (I can't detect any, at least). I have tried changing settings, but nothing appears to make any difference, and ghosting occurs every time. Oddly enough, the printer ghosted on everything I printed until I took out the toner and cleaned it.
The other major problem I noticed was in scanning multiple two-sided pages, but this relates to the software. The pages get messed up, no matter what order I put them in. I flip them over, and the pages go backwards on one side. Frustrating if you want to copy a two-sided packet.
But, on the other hand, the printer has some excellent pros. First and foremost is that this was the cheapest network all-in-one laser printer I could find. Our former printer was not networked, and we had to have my wife's computer on to print, which was a pain. Having it on a network means we can print with either of our computers on as well as wirelessly with our laptop.
Also, while the curling up that others have reported has occurred, the pages, as long as they're not too moist, flatten out quite quickly afterward. The prints appear to be great (after cleaning the toner up), and the paper feeder has not given me any issues (yet).
This printer will not function like a $300-$400 printer, but that's to be expected. For the money, this printer is fantastic, except for the caveats I've noticed. |
Wow! Great Multi-Function!
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| Review Date: November 8, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Jason, Northern VA |
| I bought the Brother 7820N 9 months ago and love it! I would highly recommend this MFC to anyone that wants a multifunction device and does not need to print in color. It is cheap to operate and is always ready to go. No cleaning, no purchasing new print cartridges. I plan to pick up this same printer for my father for Christmas. |
PERFECT but Does Not Copy Well b/c Skips Pages if More Than 5 Pages
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| Review Date: October 6, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Hallie, Bellevue, Idaho |
I am a solo attorney and have to copy peoples documents and documents for court. I use about 1000 sheets per month in the Bother 7820n and a bother hl-1440 so my use is below requiring a corporate copier.
BAD COPYING/SCAN/FAX OF MORE THAN 5 PAGES AT A TIME.
If I copy, scan or fax 5 or more pages I have to either hold each page as it goes through the copier or count the pages when it goes through. It misses a page by throwing 2 or more through at a time every time I do more than 5 pages.
BAD ENVELOPES
In addition it does not do envelopes because it crinkles them and ghosts (slightly lighter duplicate imprint in a different position). I use a separate printer for envelopes.
GOOD EVERYTHING ELSE
If copying is not important there is no better machine. Cheap great machine. I have not replaced it in the year that I have owned it but rather held the sheets as they go in.
FAX TO EMAIL ROCKS
This machine has a really really easy scan to email or fax to email function where you can press the scan button on the machine then down to select email or click an icon in brother's program from your computer. It makes it into a PDF and opens an outlook new email. It can use the sheet feeder for multiple pages. You title the email and address it and click send. My clients love it. I love it. It can take less than a minute to email smaller documents from scan to email sent. |
Great machine!
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| Review Date: September 25, 2008 |
| Reviewer: RF, |
| After a month, the machine is great. Setup is a bear though. I have one XP and one Vista machine on a home network. Sales literature promised easy set up with the included disk through the home router. Not so for either machine. I ended up plugging a USB cable directly from the printer into the XP machine and connecting the Vista machine to the printer through the network using a network cable. After many, many hours of trial and error installing, uninstalling, and re-installing the included software, I finally realized the print and scan functions would never work on the Vista machine if I used the supplied install disk. I called Brother support and they did nothing but take me through the steps I had already been through. Finally, I manually installed the printer and scanner on my Vista machine using the Vista utilities in Control Panel and it works fine. PC fax works good too. Everything works now after a little sweat, setup, and trial and error. Print quality is excellent. Speed is excellent. Scan quality is great. Copy quality is great. Power drain is noticeable (house lights flicker). Footprint is good for my desktop area. Stylish, modern design. Overall excellent machine so far. Buy.com has best price on OEM toner I could find. |
One way to get around toner low issue
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| Review Date: September 15, 2008 |
| Reviewer: S. Ahmed, CA, USA |
| This printer refuses to print when the toner low signal comes on. Simply take the toner out, look for two holes on the side of the toner and put a tape to block one of the holes. It will fool the printer and you will be able to get the printer going. This will also give you time to order a new toner. |
Does everything but make breakfast
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| Review Date: September 13, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Mary A. Mcwhirter, mission Viejo CA |
| I had had it with cheapo printers. Especially the kind that say they do everything. Well I decided to buy a really good laser printer. I couldn't be happier! With an added wireless hookup I am in printing,faxing coping and scanning heaven. Granted it only does black printing, but I never saw any reason for all that added color gobbldegoop anyway. If I need to print pictures I will take them to the store. I works like a dream and FAST! WOW! It has so many functions that I haven't yet discovered them all but the ones that I have work 100% of the time w/o a glitch. I love this machine. |
Excellent Printer
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| Review Date: September 7, 2008 |
| Reviewer: SamTheMan, Atlanta,GA |
| Printer works great as I expected from Brother. The PC Fax features are very useful. Print quality is exceptional. |
Excellent Value
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| Review Date: September 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: GB, Iowa |
| This machine performs numerous important functions, and a great value for the money. Easy to set up. We have it for home use and haven't expected it to make more than a few copies at a time. Quality of printing is all I'd expect from a home machine. |
Great product. Great support.
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| Review Date: September 3, 2008 |
| Reviewer: techmuscle, Madison, WI |
I have had this printer for the past 11 months and is perfect for my home office. I have had no problems getting this to work with Mac, XP, and Vista operating systems. Print quality is excellent. Scan quality is excellent. Having a networked printer is fantastic and I'll never own a non-networked printer after owning this.
In the 11th month my printer started making a loud grinding noise. I called Brother support and a new printer was shipped out. I wish other companies had product support as good as Brother's.
All in all, great printer. I'm very happy with mine. |
Great AIO printer, little disappointed with build quality
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| Review Date: September 2, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Hank, |
Purchased in June, 2006. Unit performed great while it worked but paper feed mechanism broke in August 2008. Toner low message just started showing so I estimate usage at ~2,500 pages over the past 2 years. Closer examination of unit shows that plastic hinge holding down plastic gear is broken causing gear to not make contact with screw mechanism. Plastic gear also shows some wear from use. Unit is 1yr 3 months out of warranty.
I'm a bit torn as to whether I'll send the unit in for repair or move on to a new unit. I've been very impressed with it while it worked but was hoping that it would last for more than 2,500 pages before breaking. IMO, it was a poor design choice to use cheap plastic on such a high stress part. |
works fine - except the networking / software is kind of buggy
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| Review Date: August 31, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Allen K. Yu, Mountain View, CA United States |
| Overall system is good. But there are several limitations - some of which are mentioned in other reviews. One problem is that if you want to receive fax to pdf, you must also connect the printer by USB to a computer - you can't just have a standalone network/ethernet set up. And if you connect the printer to a computer by USB, you can't have that same computer be part of the scan to group over the network (you can only have that computer be configured to scan to by USB). There are other little problems - quirks with the software. But overall I think it's a decent system. |
Very good deal
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| Review Date: August 23, 2008 |
| Reviewer: G Smart, |
I've been using this printer for more than 3 months and so far haven't had any issues with it. It's very easy to install and use.
If you are using a network connection and software doesn't detect scanner, then you need to setup printer network configuration manually. Don't use default "auto" setting, instead enter your network parameters, including network speed and duplex.
Printer does curl paper, but very slightly. It hasn't been a problem even when printing 100 of pages. Paper jams or overlow are very rare. Automatic feeder works without problems with 20-24 lb common stock. The manual feeder is very poorly designed, the printouts often come out skewed. Otherwise it's a very solid and very inexpensive device. In my estimates printed page costs about 1.8 cents (at current toner prices), or about 2.5 cents when drum replacement cost is taken into account.
So far I've been using the starter cartridge rated at 1500 pages. The printer showed the first "end of life" message after about 1550 pages. After shaking and reinserting the same cartridge twice I've been able to print another 170 pages.
Printer is pretty fast, just a few seconds warmup time, and print speed is pretty much in accordance with the spec. Regarding the noise level -- it's just everage, like most other printers in $200 range. |
great for Macs too!
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| Review Date: August 21, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Jonathan E. Barnes, Tennessee |
| I set up this MFC-7820N as a network printer using my Airport Express' ethernet port (only activated if the Airport Express is a WDS client, by the way) -- everything that I need, copying, printing, and scanning works really well. Time will tell if the toner lasts as long as we need it to, but for home use this looks to be a great purchase. |
Excellent experience
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| Review Date: August 11, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Travel Bluey, Los Gatos, CA United States |
This all-in-one has been excellent to us so far ....about 2 months of use. It prints very well, scans, copies and the fax functionality work very well. We were able to setup the networking with ease and also hook it up with an answering machine set-up, no problems at all. The only minor downfall is that each time a fax comes in, there is a voicemail on our home phone with the fax voice details....which does not bug me at all.
It is true that the pages come out a bit curled.....which is totally a non-issue. The pintouts are a bit off center, if you stare at it long and hard.
But the price you pay for it as opposed to an HP printer is totally worth it. I would highly recommend this product. |
A warning for Vista users
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| Review Date: August 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Andrew, |
This is the 5th Brother printer I've owned and love them all. But this is the first printer I've bought since getting Microsoft Vista.
Unfortunately, the Paperport software that comes bundled with this computer does not work on Vista (confirmed through Brother support). In other words, when you want to scan you have to do it through the basic OCR and imaging software Brother provides. Paperport is a great product and makes scanning files possible on this computer; the traditional OCR tools are pathetic and make the scanning feature virtually worthless. |
Great Printer
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| Review Date: July 13, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Brandy Fortune, Altanta |
I have had this for a year or so now, and love it. The scanner works well, the copy machine works well and it works great on our network with 2 macs and a PC. I did a lot of research before buying it. The printer cartridges last a long time and aren't to bad because they aren't color (price I mean). We just had to purchase our second cartridge and the first one lasted at-least a year or more. It's been fine and never had any problems. Very happy with it.
I also like it because I can use it with my Print Gocco and that required a specific type of printer/ink to be used and this happen to be standard with the type I needed. (A print gocco is a hand held screen printing tool which uses prints to create a master screen which uses the dark ink on a laser print to burn the screens by flashing the print and the screen with heat, then you can use the screen to silk screen t-shirts and paper etc). |
MFC that works with all OS
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| Review Date: June 25, 2008 |
| Reviewer: M. P., Ventura, Ca USA |
I bought this because we have a multi-OS household.
My wife is a die hard Windoze XP user and I have everything Linux.
(I use Fedora 8 and 9).
This is one of the only network printers I have found that actually
works with Linux. This includes CUPS printing and scanning using the XSane app. I can now print from my the Linux
laptop without all the faffing around of having SMB printers attached
to Windoze machines...hurrah !
Speed and quality are fine for what I need.
I'd have given it 5 stars if the Brother printer drivers had worked for Linux straight out of the box. But for some reason the first page after every power up was messed up. So after some experimentation I found the generic postscript driver had to be used. This works every time. |
toner life end
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| Review Date: June 23, 2008 |
| Reviewer: bangla 1971, NJ USA |
| Beware of 'toner life end' message after the life of starter toner catridge. I purchased this product after seeing four star review in AMAZON. Now I got lesson that good review doesn't mean that you will get a good product. I couldn't make this product working after starter catridge run out. I replaced two brand new tone catridges. But everytime I got the message "toner life end, please replace with a new toner'. My unit is still under warranty and when contacted with Brother, they did an excellent job by sending a refurbished unit. Unfortunately I got same message from this new unit. I don't know what to do now!!! |
Works Great
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| Review Date: June 21, 2008 |
| Reviewer: S. Bonsignore, New York, NY USA |
| Relatively easy to set up and was printing, copying, and receiving faxes about 20 minutes once out of box. Machine is easy to use and is rather user-friendly. My only complaint about this machine is that when loading paper into the top loader, the copier doesn't always suck them in straight. Sometimes it will pull them in at a slight angle either causing a jam or a crooked scan. You have to be somewhat careful when getting some copies ready because of this. Make sure the page holders are keeping the paper in firm. |
Good Printer
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| Review Date: June 19, 2008 |
| Reviewer: S. Michael Occhialini, Central Texas |
| Good printer - Have not tested all features yet but so far so good. Using this on a wired network running XP and Ubuntu. Fast shipping and good price from Amazon. Would buy this again if needed. |
Great printer with excellent TCO compared to ink jet
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| Review Date: June 19, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Jason A. Cyr, Tampa, FL USA |
| I purchased this printer for my home office after giving consideration to other b/w laser printers as well as color laser printers and color ink jet printers. After realizing that 1 (~$60) toner cartridge will print over 2000 pages and that this printer included a starter cartridge that will print 1500 pages, I gave further thought to my need for color printouts vs. lots of b/w printouts. b/w won and the low cost replacement toner was a winner as well. Print quality is what would be expected from a laser printer. speed is impressive (relative to other laser printers I have used and ink jet printers I have owned). The scanner capability works great as well as the scanner software included with the printer. Setup was simple and I was able to connect all 3 pcs in my ofc via my wireless router without any difficulty. I haven't used the fax capability yet, although I was able to set it up and test it w/o difficulty either. The doc feeder is a winner also...feeds docs straight, quickly and without jamming (what else can you ask for?). |
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July 5th, 2009
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