Home > Consumer Reviews > Brother MFC-7840W Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless and Ethernet Network Interfaces

This is one of those wonderful products that 'just works'. I'm a mac and PC user - I now have all four computers in my house networked to print wirelessly - 2 macs, 2 PCs. No glitches in software - easy loads. I used to have a Brother MFC-4800 which was a total piece of crap. It almost gave me reason to never buy Brother again. I'm glad I got over that - this really is a sweet machine. It does have a big power draw if waking it up from a sleep. Strongly suggest putting on different circuit than you computer to avoid electrical noise.

Done with inkjets. So happy to have a good laser again. Chose Brother because price and quality now better than HP. It's quiet and gets used all day, everyday. Never jams, even the top and bottom paper feeders which was a huge problem with HP products. Reliable WiFi. Simple set up. Reliable faxes. Compact desktop size, but sturdy.

I recently went through the hassle of setting up a home office and have always used HP printers in the past. I bought three separate HP printers and was entirely unsatisfied with each of them, and ended up returning all three - either they took too long to warm up, were faulty and froze, and or the interface was complicated and frustratingly difficult. Even on my very first test page, the paper got shredded and stuck in the rollers. After brining the final HP back to the store for return, I spoke with the manager who recommended the Brother. I've just started using it and love it - it is a true small business machine, fast, excellent quality, easy to set up, and solid - it even fells more sturdy and bomber than the flimsy plastic HP multi-use printers. Sure it only does black and white, and it does not have a legal size flat bed, but it is a work horse - prints quickly - the feeder is solid and most importantly, it has a very small footprint and takes up little space, while providing great utility. Don't search for anything else, learn from my lesson and go straight to the Brother.

This printer works great wireless. It's not too big and has some decent features. For the money, it's hard to beat. Now these are the things you may want to consider before purchasing this printer.

Pros
-Wireless printing/scanning
-Price tag
-Price tag of toner cartridge

Cons
-Wireless scanning, the process is not quick, data transfer via wireless is slow
-No double-sided scanning/printing
-Controls are not intuitive. Not hard to work, just not easy either
-Software can be a little tricky to install

If you purchase this printer and want to setup your laptop for both wired and wireless printer options, you have to install the software suite for a wired connection first, then install the software suite for a wireless connection second.

I have now been using this MFC for well over a month. The biggest issue has been networking it with multiple PCs on my home network, or even one laptop for that matter. It is still not clear to me what it is picking what it is not picking from the wireless network and I end up using a straight IP connection or USB cable instead of what should be a more intuitive link through the MFC's own interface. This is killing my main reason of purchasing this MFC i.e., wireless networking. Hopefully, I will be able to figure it out one day.

Second issue is scanning which is painfully slow. Just scanned a 20-page long document and seemed like ages for it to complete. The software package, PaperPort, provided with the MFC seems dated and again not very intuitive, though it works once you figure out all the menus.

On the positive, print quality and speed are quite good. Have not tried fax as yet.