Brother HL-L3280CDW Wireless Digital Color Printer with Laser Quality Output

I’ve been the proud owner of a Brother MFC-8690DW all-in-one (monochrome/black) laser printer/scanner/copier/fax for more than 15 years now. I’ve never had the first problem with this older workhorse, so it was a no-brainer that I remain loyal to Brother when choosing a color laser printer.

I ordered this printer via my Prime account on a Thursday afternoon, and the USPS delivered the item the following Sunday. The unit arrived packaged in the original box, free of any damage. I followed the easy instructions for unpacking the printer and setting it up. Installing the printer to my Windows 10 PC was simply a matter of powering on the printer and connecting it to my home wireless network; as soon as the printer connected to my network it was “seen” by my PC and was automatically installed within seconds. Installing the printer to work with my iPhone was a simple matter of going to the App Store and installing the free Brother Mobile app. Once the app was installed on my phone it was just a few simple steps (which took less than five minutes) and I was printing directly from my iPhone.

Although there’s no indication that this particular printer is suitable for printing photos, I loaded some glossy photo paper into the 250-sheet paper tray and printed several beautiful 8 X 10 photos. I framed six of them which I intend to hang on the wall in my office.

I feel that purchasing this Brother HL-L3280CDW Wireless Compact Digital Color Printer has given me a substantial amount of bang for my buck. I can’t say enough about the ease of setup and the high quality pages it prints. In a nutshell, I was printing fine, superb quality pages in less than 15 minutes from the moment I opened the box. I highly recommend this printer!

The printer itself is fine it prints quickly, and for a laser style printer. The output is fair. When printing pictures, the color is not saturated like the original. It’s all doll and flat even blacks show up that way, but that’s just part and parcel of the kind of printer it is.

Setting up the printer was needlessly involved. Vendor software is just a shell to download more software, and all of it is designed to just install unneeded components. Got tired of jumping through hoops to just have the printer installed and deleted the vendor software which still hadn’t managed to actually setup the printer.

Adding the printer to the wireless network wasn’t smooth either yet at first wouldn’t detect any wireless networks, and trying to enter a manually was a bust. Fortunately, attempting to set up the wireless network a second time it found the wireless network it was able to connect to the network. From there setting up the printer trivial just added printer. It was found automatically and configured automatically by the operating system.

Through the entire unboxing and set up process the vendor constantly tries to get you to subscribe to a wasteful print supply agreement where you will always and unavoidably throw toner out. This appears to be brothers way of bringing the farce of inkjet printer supplies to laser, printers, and artificially increase the cost of printing, while simultaneously increasing waste, which is bad for the environment.

This extends to the printer itself, which is designed to prevent you from actually using all of the toner and toner cartridge. I knew this going in and had verified that when the printer refuses to use more of the toner the block can be overridden. It’s annoying and has to be done every time for every toner cartridge. Not the end of world but an unnecessary annoyance.

We got this printer back in January. Having and using a Brother HL3040CN for years which was great until they didn’t make cartridges anymore that we could get. We bought this one with high hopes. We use the printer for some color pages & some black & white invoices, but we also print a lot of envelopes. The cartridges that come with the printer were virtually empty. We printed about 60 business envelopes before the Black cartridge ran out and had to replace it. Then without ever printing a color page (except for the first test page to setup the printer) the color cartridges started to run out. Even though we were only printing Black & White the printer locks up until the color cartridge is replaced. Within 2 weeks all 3 color cartridges were empty without being used. Costly to say the least. Also, the printer mangles envelopes. Every envelope comes out with creases down the back of the envelope. There is no way to straighten this out. No adjustments you can make. It also takes forever to get it to start & load an envelope. Then forever to start to print the next envelope. They should go back and look at the design for the HL3040CN so they can design a better printer. All in all, the worst printer we’ve ever bought & we’ve had at least 9 different printers in the last 31 years.

UPDATE!! We now have had this printer for 10 months. I print about 20 to 30 envelopes a week. My wife printed 1 recipe in color about 2 months ago but now the printer says the Yellow Toner is EMPTY!! The printer shuts down and is unusable. Now I can’t use it until I buy another set of color toner cartridges because as what happened the last time the others will show up to be empty also.

As I explained at length the Brother new policy preventing toner counter reset on this range of new machines (using TN 229s) is unacceptable for environment law and finances. Totally outrageous I returned the machine and got an old demo version of a machine using the TN227 and allowing reset! The only way this would be acceptable is if there existed an accurate sensor for toner level… mine was not!!!

Not worth the plastic it was built with. This model forces you to replace the toner cartridges after an arbitrary period, with no method for bypassing this, as in previous models. It WILL stop printing prior to your toner being empty, and there is literally nothing you can do other than purchase a new cartridge.

We’ve had two Brother (laser) printers over the past 25 years and we finally found a duplex-printing Brother (HL-L3280CDW) that we like! It was easy to set up, works great as Brother printers do and duplexes (after some head-scratching set-up) perfectly!! HOWEVER, the thing you should consider before buying this printer is the cost of toner. As mentioned several times in the reviews for this printer, you will be given toner cartridges that are not high yield. Within 3 months of buying this machine, we were given a warning that the black toner was low and a day later, the printer stopped working altogether. Upon review, we noticed that ALL 4 cartridges were low, forcing us to replace all the cartridges at once. If we bought all 4 cartridges through Brother, it would be cheaper to buy another printer. The cost is well over $400 to replace all 4 cartridges – that is insane!! We considered an off-brand toner but upon using it, the quality was terrible. Also, the printer kept reminding us that we were using a non-Brother toner which will cause damage to our machine and void our warranty.

NOTE: the original toner that was included with the printer notes that it can handle up to 1500 pages. However, we’ve only printed 886 pages, which leaves us wondering if there is still toner is the cartridge! When the printer stops printing altogether when it gets to a certain number of prints, it really has you in a bind and not reliable.

I have two other Brother printers and I generally like them but this HL-L3280CDW printer is a joke. It seems that every time it goes idle, it loses its network connection. I spent two days messing with the thing and finally had to return it to Amazon.

Before returning it, however, I was so confident that I could get it going, even though the reviews showed that more than10% of the buyers were pretty much dissatisfied, I registered the purchase with Brother and even signed up for the “EZ Print Subscription”; got confirmation emails, congrats on my new account, and even a “NEWS FLASH: You’re Getting an Extended Warranty!” email.

After returning the printer, I attempted to cancel the EZ Print Subscription, but they have apparently never heard of me. They know my name, phone number, etc. but I don’t have an account set up yet, even though I’ve gone through the entire routine three times. Never was able to cancel the subscription. Brother is more of a clown show than Barnum & Bailey.

Perhaps if they paid more attention to skill and ability and less to D E I, they might be able to get something to work right. If you’re hankering for an ulcer, this is the printer and company for you.

Highly recommend this printer for office or home use. Some useful tips: When you set it up, print your test page to make sure all is working as intended, then change settings to Mono so it only prints B&W. If you ever need to print in color just go into settings and change it back to Color. Also enable Toner Save mode. I have to tip my hat to Brother for providing these features. I’m a really hard sell when it comes to purchases like a printer and they’ve won me over as a loyal customer.