Brother MFCL2710DW Wireless Monochrome Laser All-in-One Printer - Print, Scan, Copy & Fax | High-Speed Duplex Printing | Mobile & Cloud Printing | Home Office & Small Business Essential

I just bought this printer to replace a piece of garbage HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 in my office (as in my actual place of business). Our paralegal has a similar Brother MFC (6 years old), and we have a smaller Brother MFC in our home office (8 or 9 years old). Both of them have been great work horses, and although they have some limitations (the biggest being that they're not wireless), we've been generally happy with them. Given that I went through 2 HP printers in 3 years in my office, I figured I'd go back to Brother, and the price was right. I even chose the L2700DW over a newer model that was twice the price (MFC-L2740DW) because even though it was faster, it didn't seem to offer anything additional that I felt justified doubling the price. (Parenthetical update on December 2, 2015: the MFC-L2700DW has come down $20 on Amazon since I bought it, and the MFC-L2740DW has come down about $60. If, when I bought this machine, the prices were as they are now, I might have sprung for the newer model.)On the whole, I'm happy I went back to Brother. The speed of printing, scanning, and copying are hugely improved over the HP. I don't need to print in color, and I was getting increasingly annoyed by the fact that, in the HP, somehow your color ink gets depleted even if you never print in color, meaning that it would refuse to print, even in black, unless I had color ink available to it. You know that ink's not cheap, either. With this Brother, I obviously don't have that problem because it only has black toner. Now the toner is expensive (because when is it not?) but with our other Brother MFCs, I've shopped everywhere, including Costco, and found that nearly 100% of the time, if not 100% of the time, Amazon has the best price on Brother toner.I do have a couple of issues with this MFC, and I've got an e-mail in with Brother in hopes that they can help me fix them (Edit: please see update from 12/9/15 at the bottom):1. Deep Sleep Mode - This model does NOT have an option to disable Deep Sleep, only set it to a chosen time interval, the longest of which can be 50 minutes. According to the interwebs, older models do have the option to disable it. The problem lies in that this MFC is supposed to "wake up" from Sleep or Deep Sleep mode when you send it a print job. Pressing buttons on the printer is also supposed to "wake it up." However, neither works for Deep Sleep mode. My only option is to turn the printer off and back on again. (To its credit, my HP was screwing up and making me do that multiple times a day, and it took a lot longer to reboot.) However, even though I set the Deep Sleep mode to max out at 50 minutes, it keeps resetting itself to 01 minute, meaning earlier today my multiple print jobs that were 2 or 3 minutes apart required full restarts of the MFC in between. This is incredibly inefficient, and if Brother can't help me fix it, I'll be returning this machine. (PLEASE NOTE THE UPDATE ON 12/9/15 AT THE BOTTOM REGARDING THIS ISSUE.)2. Stack/Sort (a/k/a Collate) - This MFC is set to "Stack" copies, meaning if you are making two copies of a 2-page document, it will print in this order: page 1, page 1, page 2, page 2. Multiply this out for longer documents/more copies, and you can see how inefficient and frustrating this could be. (Seriously, I hope you have a big table/counter and some time to organize all your copies.) I looked it up and discovered that you can change your copy options to set it to "Sort," meaning it will collate your copies (page 1, page 2, page 1, page 2, for two copies of a 2-page document). Great, right? Well, it would be if I could set that as a permanent setting, but I can't. I can only set it to Sort with each individual copy job. I can tell you that when I'm copying certain documents, that is going to get really old, really fast. My old HP required it for each copy job, too, and it annoyed me then. My guess is that collating requires that the printer use memory, then print it in order (which is why collating doesn't work fully on very large copy jobs). Stacked copies mean it doesn't store the documents in its memory, just prints them as it scans. I'm checking with Brother to see if I can set the MFC to Sort permanently, though based on my experience with the lack of permanence of the Deep Sleep mode setting, I'm not holding my breath. It's not a deal killer, but in my opinion, if they give you the option to collate at all, there should be an option to keep it that way long-term. If this is of utmost importance to you, you may need to buy a higher-level machine or an actual copier.Overall, I expect this printer to be as reliable as our older Brother MFCs, but many of the limitations that exist in the older models still appear to exist. If they'd fix the two issues I mentioned, they'd have a perfect 5-star machine. It's hard to complain for the price, but, like I said, if they can't fix the Deep Sleep problem, I'll have no choice to send it back. I just don't have time to reboot my printer for every single print job that comes more than 1 minute past the last one.TL;DRPros: solid printer, decent speed in print/copy/scan, will likely last a while, price is goodCons: Deep Sleep mode keeps resetting to 01 minute, no option to disable Deep Sleep, issues waking up from Deep Sleep (PLEASE SEE UPDATE BELOW FROM 12/9/15), no option to collate copies as a rule instead of with each copy jobUPDATE (December 2, 2015): I have gone back and forth with Brother customer service over the aforementioned issues. They have not addressed the collate issue with copying, but I suspect that is just something I'll have to live with (and can live with). As for the Deep Sleep Mode issues, I have updated firmware, I've reset factory options and reconnected it to my network, then reset the options, I've set it up to access printer settings remotely from my computer, etc. Basically I've done everything that Brother has told me to do that they expected would fix the problem. About 50% of the time the machine will "wake up" from Deep Sleep mode if I send a print job to it, but even if I have the machine set not to go into Deep Sleep Mode for 50 minutes (the max allowable), every print job resets it to 01 minutes. So even if I just send it one page to print, I have to remember either to go to the printer itself and reset Deep Sleep Mode or to do it from my browser. It's getting very old, very quickly. Brother is allegedly going to call me to help me with this. If they cannot help me, I will be returning this machine, and I may try the MFC-L2740DW in hopes that a better machine will mean better performance and no Deep Sleep issues. I will update further.UPDATE (December 9, 2015): I have upgraded my review to 5 stars from 4. I got a call from Brother yesterday after a bit of phone tag, and they were super. The tech was incredibly nice and friendly and didn't talk to me like I was an idiot. He didn't make me repeat the steps I'd already been instructed to do and immediately jumped to the weird fix that - get this - actually fixed the not waking up from Deep Sleep problem! The phone call was all of 10 minutes, and that included time waiting to make sure the fix worked. So far, so good. Deep Sleep Mode still resets to 1 minute after each print job, even if I set it to 50 minutes, but I don't care now that it wakes up properly when I send a print job. The tech still didn't know why that happened, but I told him that it wasn't worth trying to fix if it was waking up as it should. Also, he said that there is a way to disable Deep Sleep Mode that they had to figure out because the engineers in Japan didn't tell them about it, but I didn't care to ask further about it now that everything is working properly.All in all, I'm very pleased with the way the issue was handled and resolved, and I am keeping my machine :)This is a good printer as suggested by its popularity. It is economical, prints fairly fast, and the text is very crisp and clean. It is economical to use and has a good third party toner following. It does what it is intended to do - print a relatively large number of text documents at an economical price. It does that very well. The scanner works fairly well, albeit pretty slow. At 1200 x 1200 a scan of an 8 x 10 will take almost 2 minutes. I know that isn't bad for a high resolution 8 x 10 scan but compared to high end scanners, it isn't all that great either. I know, I know, this isn't a high end machine, it is an economical machine! Take a break, I gave it 4 stars because it does what it is suppose to do. This review is really about taking the printing to its limits and comparing it to a higher end machine. Nothing wrong with that. Better to compare it to a better machine and know what you are getting than to have you dreaming about getting a Mercedez at a Ford Focus price. This is not a Mercedez and it was never presented as such, so don't get all bent out of shape. Let's look at its print quality for anything other than text.I am a teacher and a professional photographer. I have been teaching for 12 years and I have been a professional photographer for 25 years. So what you say? I present this only as information to show that I know something about printing - especially images. I know, I know this is not a photo printer - I get that. However, as a teacher, we often include photos and clipart on our student worksheets. I need to be able to print a decent photo that I can send to my copy lady, run it through the big copier, and print 500 copies with descent quality images. I am not talking photo quality. I can't afford a top quality photo laser printer for this purpose so I need a relatively economical printer that can print descent photos for a worksheet.So I purchased this printer and am comparing it to the much higher priced HP Enterprise M605 printer. The M605 prints nice smooth gray scale photos that copy just fine. I don't have one of these at home, where I do most of my work, so I was hoping the 2700 would fit the bill. It does not. The images below were printed and then scanned using the 2700 scanner at 1200 x 1200 DPI. The images were brought into Photoshop, cropped to the same resolutions and adjusted using a black point set and a white point set, nothing else. The image is a professional calibration image provided by a professional photo lab. It is clean and represents the entire range of hues and tones contained in most photographic images.Photo one below is the full image from the M605 printer. Notice the image has a full range of tones from white to black. Look particularly at the girls, the skin tones are relatively smooth. Look at the calibrated tonal range bar on the right - Nice smooth gradations from white to black.Now look at the 2700 image number 2. The first thing you will notice is that the girls hair and the black end of the tonal range bar are blocked up. The blacks and near blacks get run together. The tonal ranges are not smooth. They are streaky and again, the last two black and near black squares are run together. If this image were used in a worksheet, it would need to be adjusted before insertion while the M605 would not need any adjustments at all.Now lets crop in and enlarge the part of the print with the girls. The third image is the cropped image from the M605. Notice that you can clearly seen the limitations of the printer. The M605 is not a photo printer either. But the skin tones are smooth and the tonal range is good. The fourth image is the crop of the D2700 print. Again, the blocked out blacks can easily be seen. But look at the skin tones. They are not smooth. There is clearly more streaking in this image than in the M605 image.I keep saying, this is a fine printer and I am trying to get it to do something it isn't designed to do. I acknowledge that. Most people who buy this printer are not going to print photos on it, but I have a special need to include small images in my student worksheets. I will say that it does a good job with graphs, most clip-art, and of course text. The papers I give my students are leaps and bounds above the purple ink mimeograph worksheets I had as a kid. So I will keep this printer and either continue my search for an affordable laser that will meet my needs, or I will use this one for text and print on the school M605 when I have images in my documents.Buy this printer and use it knowing it does a great job for the price. Just know its limitations and if you need to insert photos in your documents, you many need a different or a second printer.My old scanner was dying and page scans were very slow - 1 min per 8 1/5 x 11 paper sheets. It was a lengthy undertaking. So being a heavy HP printer guy I went to Best Buy to compare units. The current HP all in ones looked cheap and seemed to need a wide birth to operate once all the holders and trays were extended. I still have an LazerJet 2100 TN and that is a horse. However, I saw this unit. I was impressed. The 2700 DW needed little space. Had easy access to refill the paper, handy slots for letters, scanner feeder, plus it offers duplexing. So a all in one fax - scanner - printer for $130.00! Not bad.I checked Amazon same unit was $99.00 with free shipping. I will say I was very weary about having a delicate device shipped like that but I when my unit arrived the box was pristine. Amazon shipped this with such care. The other great feature is that you can hook up the printer to you wireless router and allow other people in the house to print their documents. I preferred the USB method. One note: if you have Kapersky Total Protection it will disable the Brother All in One software from being installed. You can try to navigate Kapersky's labrynth of sub menus or simply disable the protection for 15 minutes.But this device is now my go to printer. Sorry HP but Brother has you beat with this sturdy and well designed printer.I've been looking around for a good All-In One Laser Printer and managed to snatch this Brother Laser Printer when it was on sale for $113 after doing some research on the Brother Brands. As far as installation goes, it was a piece of cake. Basic guidelines are provided on how to install the Ink Cartridge and to install the printer and I've had absolutely no issues with it. One of the bonus reasons as to why I've bought this printer was for its wireless function. It's 2015 and who wants to have cables running through their table to the printer. Setting up the wireless connection between the computer to the printer was so simple. The instruction manual easily guides you through the necessary steps to setting up the Printer's wireless function. I've installed two other computers to the printer and they all print perfectly and have yet to see any issues with the wireless function. One of the things that separate Brother from other Printer Brands is how cheap Ink Cartridges are and how you can install Third party Cartridges. You can buy the Ink Cartridge from Brother for $60 or buy a Third Party Ink Cartridge for $25 which do the same thing. This is a printer that will last you a long time and save so much money in the long run for Ink Cartridges. I am very pleased with my purchase and I would absolutely recommend this printer if you are in the market looking for one!I needed a more heavy duty printer for the home office, this printer was on sale for $130 and got decent reviews in 3-4 tech websites. Can't beat the price, arrived quickly and as described. The scanner and printer both work great. Love the automatic duplex printing. Is a bit annoying that they only send you a starter toner cartridge. Found some high capacity replacements off of EBay for $30. Print quality and speed are more than you would need for a home office. The copy function is quick and works well. Hooked up to my Windows 8 system without a problem. Also connected via wireless network with minimal setup. Just make sure to download the most uptodate drivers from the Brother website.Cons: The printer takes significant power, it makes the lights dim on the circuit that it is plugged into.Expédition et réception ultra rapide, colis reçu en 24 h !Arrivé EN FRANCAIS, avec guide en français.Je n'ai pas utilisé le CD fourni qui ne propose pas de pilote pour Win10. Aller sur le site du fabricant, télécharger le fichier spécifique.Je ne suis pas enthousiaste pour le Wifi, au 3e ordinateur j'ai eu des problèmes de liaison.Aucun problème en réseau, connection sur la box ou sur câble réseau du routeur.Remarque : sur certains ordis, la fonction "scan vers ordi" ne fonctionne pas... Dans ce cas, aller dans les paramètres réseau pour que l'ordi soit reconnu de tous les autres ordinateurs du réseau.Fonctionne très bien, comme toujours, la cartouche semble faiblement chargée, elle réclame rapidement d'être changée.Et comme toujours, un petit tour sur Internet permettra de la faire patienter jusqu'à ce que NOUS décidions qu'elle n'écrive pas correctement (simple petite manip dans le menu, rechercher "changer le tambour" du modèle concerné).Perfect for Piano sheet music! I bought 67lb 8.5x11 cover stock paper, 250 sheets for like 13 bucks from staples, works very, very, well. Sheet music quality is great! It's a bit noisy, I question if a business would appreciate the very weird noises that come out of it.If you are a tech, or a techy person. You should have no problems. (Don't know if printer sharing works. Also have not used the printer via USB or ethernet)Very, very easy setup. I literally plugged it into the wall, turned on the wifi. Added the printer through devices. It immediately printed after installing drivers from windows update.Installed the drivers/software from the website. Scan to worked immediately. You may choose scan to file (pdf) or image. Perfect!I cannot comment on printing speed. I use high quality settings with thick paper so it prints slower then normal but an acceptable speed.If I was printing 100 pages at economy speed and ink saver settings, I think it would probably be pretty quick. Again, don't take this with even a grain of salt.Cons:No backlight in the display. I would pay another 50 cents to have this feature. LED's are so cheap there's no excuse for no backlight but whatever, it's still worth the 98 dollars. You have to look straight onto the screen to see the display. (You will not be able to read the display if you are standing beside someone).My Wi-fi password only has numbers in it. It was difficult inputting the password. If you press the "1" key, you have to first scroll though "abc,ABC" before you get the number 1. While this was frustrating, it is only frustrating once, which is acceptable. I wish the numbers came first then the letters, but we can let this one pass. (the keypad is like trying to text on a cellphone. If you want the letter "b" you press the number 1 twice.)The output tray, it super sucks. Atleast for me it does. My special paper comes out bent. (not the printers fault) Which makes it impossible for the next page to output without me pulling the previous one out. Which is fine, I print 1 page at a time. I think it's good enough for office use though.I don't know if there's a way to fix this. Again, not really the printers fault.Conclusion:It's a mighty fine printer! Easy to setup, driver install is easy. Printed from my phone too! (Android nexus 5 lolipop latest version)PC Specs:Windows 8.1 (tested on windows 10, it worked. Software may have been a bit different then windows 8.1 software)Intel i5-45708 GB corsair white lp ram