Brother MFC-L3720CDW Wireless Digital Color All-in-One Printer

Normally I don’t write reviews, but I bought the Brother MFCL3720 printer and my experience has been great. We have a multi-OS home office setup. My wife uses Windows, I have a Linux desktop and Linux laptop, we have Android phones and when my son or daughter visit they have iPhones and Macs. We have tested the apple products yet, but I needed something that would work well with all of these.

Delivery: exactly on time, delivered right to our front door, the box was clean and free of “crunches” or any evidence of mishandling.

Unboxing: lots of good packing and shock-absorption in the box, the printer is a bit heavy for one person to lift, although the delivery woman managed it. We got it unpacked and just followed the 7/8 step “quick setup” sheet. We removed internal tape and packing material, re-installed the toner cartridges, put some paper in and plugged it in.

Setup: super simple, the automatic connection to the network didn’t work for me (perhaps due to my eero wifi router) but manually selecting the network ssid and entering the password was easy and well-explained in the setup sheet. Once that was done it connected right away to the network.

Windows: relatively easy, used the “add printer” capability accessed through the control panel; it took a while to download the driver and go through setup, but once completed it connected right away and printed no problem.

Android: scanned the QR code from the printer LCD screen and downloaded the Brother mobile connect app from the Play Store. This went fine. I tried opening a photo within Google Photos and print. I did have to select the Brother printer but it produced a nice large color photo.

Linux (laptop and desktop): this worked astonishingly well, either because of the capability of Linux, or of the Brother printer support, or both. I opened the Settings..Printers menu and the printer was already there! I didn’t have to install anything, it just found or downloaded the appropriate driver and worked to print immediately. Very impressive.

Features: duplex (two sided) printing worked immediately as an option in the “print” dialog of applications. I have scanned a few pages using the very useful “VueScan” utility available from Hamrick and again it just immediately worked flawlessly, no fussing.

The entire setup and testing took 25-30 minutes. Based on the first day of ownership at least, I give it my highest recommendation and look forward to years of use.

Brother printers count toner by pages not by measuring toner. You can print all black and white and have your 3 almost full color cartridges show empty. Unlike most other printers Brother doesn’t let you reset toner life and the machine won’t print until you replace the very expensive still full cartridges with new cartridges. Brother is stealing a lot of the customers money! Anyone who buys a Brother Printer that doesn’t let you reset Toner life is an idiot after reading this. Call their tech support and ask. Any Printer where the physical back button and X button was removed has lost the ability to reset Toner life

We used to have good memories of Brother but this thing is a money hole. We’ve only been printing in black and white and have even set the printer to black and white in the menu. This thing manages to blow throw the color toners anyway. Worse yet it will not print in black and white if one of the color toners is low. We’re just outside of our return window otherwise this thing would be going back. We’ve spent double toner than what this thing cost in one month. As it stands its going in the trash.

Some said they had it set up in 5 minutes. It took longer than that to just get it out of the box! Took a couple of hours to get it all together and registered and all that, but I was expecting that, so no problem. I didn’t realize it printed double sided, so was pleasantly surprised when it did. It is nice, because it just sits in the corner, hooked up to my wifi, no other wires or hook-ups (except for the electrical plug,) of course.
So far, I am happy with it. Had it about 2 months, and don’t use it often, so when I do, I just send the document and it prints it. Very quiet.

I did not want a inkjet and get mad at HP or ink prices. Initial impression is a great printer. Easy to setup. No issues with Mac.

Bought this brother as I needed something with scanning and wifi printing capabilities. Set up was a breeze and I was printing in no time. Came packaged nicely but it is pretty heavy so you may need a hand when moving. First time trying a Brother printer and so far I am pretty impressed. Have not needed any tech support yet. Hping I get many years with this printer. It did come with “starter” toner cartridges as well. Will have to buy some standard ones soon I bet.

Finally took the leap and invested in a laser printer for home. I rarely need a printer at home so every time I did need to use one the ink jets were dried out and had to be replaced or cleaned or whatever – basically it was so unreliable that it was like not having a printer at all. Now, my daughter is commuting to college and I work from home at least once per week so I wanted something I could count on when I needed it. This was SO EASY to set up and start using. Quality is definitely good enough for documents, don’t plan in doing photos. Also super easy to print from my phone wirelessly. It’s still new so I’ll update if anything starts going wrong.

Cons:
– Lack of linux driver support
– Abandonment of Windows 7/8 drivers
– No ethernet port
– Wireless printing only seems to work of you are attached to the same access point.

Pros:
– 50000 page drum life
– Feeder tray fits a wide variety
– Multipage scanner saves time

This 3720 is my replacement for a well-used HP. It’s ok, but there are 4 negatives that I wish I’d known:

1. The TN-229 XX cartridge will not work with it. They don’t tell you that. Wish I’.d known before I spent all that money.

2. The paper comes out sort of wavy. I guessing the heat causes that.

3. If you need to print over 125 sheets it will push out the overage on to the floor or desk.

4. And worst…this printer uses WAY, WAY too much ink!!! I’m having to replace a black cartridge about every 4-6 weeks!!! About twice what I had to do with my previous printer. And as I mentioned in my first point, the XX cartridge won’t work with this!!!

UPDATE!

I’ve changed my mind. What a piece of junk!!! I don’t think I have ever hated an inanimate object as much as I hate this thing. Aside from what I mentioned previously, I have to reboot it at least once a week, sometimes more. It invariably stops printing because it requires some sort of action like cleaning the drums (which I’ve sometimes had to do 4-5 times a day even though I use Brother toner). It can’t decide if it wants to connect with my wifi or not. Oh, and did I mention before how much toner it uses!?!?!?! Ridiculous!!!

Plus, try to connect with someone at Brother for help!!! Good luck!!!

I’m gonna have to bite the bullet on this one and find another printer. This thing is a bad lesson learned!!!

I have given 3 Stars because I read the other reviews which were mostly positive. I cannot respond yonits overall performance because I re-boxed it immediately upon discovery that it will perform duplex scanning; my principal need. The product description, whether intentional or not, is misleading as it describes the duplexing feature and the scanning feature but uses the phrase “duplex printing”; very easily overlooked or misunderstood. Very annoying. It will NOT print or scan from double sided originals. It will scan single sides; then print duplex. The document feeder does NOT have duplex capacity.