Today at Computers.Woot, instead of one thing in the daily deal spot, we’re giving you ALL THE BROTHER MULTI-FUNCTION AIO PRINTERS AND MOAR BROTHER MULTI-FUNCTION AIO PRINTERS!!
And since it’s a special kinda sale, we thought it needed a special kinda discussion place that you can find here.
Brother Multi-Function All-in-One Printers
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I have a J870DW sitting on my desk, and I am quite happy with it. Nice, fast printing (double-sided). Good scanner, flatbed or sheet feeder. Decent ink life, and seemingly no strong attempt to stop you from using third party refills.
The cloud services it can perform are nice, as well. Printing from and scanning to Google Drive, Evernote, etc. can be pretty useful.
I bought my Brother MFC6490CW as a refurb from Staples a couple of years ago, in part because Brother offers the same 1-year warranty on its refurbs as it does on new printers. So the Brother factory-reconditioned AIOs in today’s deal should also have a 1-year manufacturer’s warranty.
(It’s also relatively easy to get cheap generic ink cartridges for Brother AIOs – although Brother would rather you bought their name-brand cartridges, of course.)
Office Depot appears to have the Brother® MFC-J470DW on sale for $50 ($40 off through 4/18), with very limited quantities for in-store pickup in Northern Virginia.
Edit: OD price is $60, not $50, but for a new unit.
Actually showing free delivery as an option.
I own a Brother laser printer and love it. I have owned HP, Epson, Canon, and other printer brands and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. My Brother printer has been the most reliable so far.
Beware, if the ink is very low and the indicator says it’s out (but there’s easily enough to get some things printed) you WILL NOT be able to print anything until you replace it. I ran into this when needing to print time sensitive documents, I needed a couple more pages and if they were slightly gray instead of black I wouldn’t have cared. Instead I had to goto fedex/kinkos and pay to have things printed.
I called customer service at brother and explained I just needed to print and they said theres no work around.
After switching to a color laser, there is no going back. Initial price may be higher but the cost of consumables will even it out and get you ahead in the long run. No more dealing with clogged ink cartridges. Better printing and way less hassle make it well worth the initial expense.
$200
http://www.staples.com/Dell-C1765nfw-Color-Laser-Multifunction-Printer/product_122140
Cartridge type:
LC101 or LC103
I’d love to believe you, but I can’t back a blanket “laser is better” statement.
I went with a Samsung 315 color laser a few years back. True - it is a relatively cheap model. It would jam if using anything beyond 20lb paper and the consumables were drained quicker than I imagined and required a home equity loan to replace.
I went back to an economical ink cartridge all in one and don’t regret it. I donated the Samsung to a local charity thrift store.
Inkjet is so 90’s.
My wife lays out books for a living and covers, etc., require color. Got an HP laserjet for $149.95 on sale and it is so much better than inkjet. She has a separate Canon flatbed Lide scanner that also does negatives and slides.
I cannot tell you how many broken all-in-one’s my friend who buys estates has tossed out.
There’s exceptions to everything.If you calculate cost per page toner is way cheaper, even compared to generic ink refills. In my experience with Canon, HP, Lexmark and Epson inkjets is that you have to use them continuously (not more than 4-5 days between printing) or else the heads get clogged, the ink dries up and you have to run multiple cycles to get decent printing. Not the problem with laser. I still have the starter toners in my laser printer that I bought a year ago and it gets a fair amount of use. The toner is more expensive- mine go like $70 a color (unless I buy generic then it’s like $20 each). The amount of pages printed is like 10-20x what a inkjet cartridge gives you, and you don’t have to worry about the print head clogging. Laser text looks better than inkjet also. Bottom line is you can pay upfront and get better quality with less hassle with a laser or you can nickel & dime yourself to death with an inkjet that requires much more user intervention.
Here’s the compare:
www.brother-usa.com/MFC/ModelCompare/4/MFCJ470DW_MFCJ870dw
For $10 more you get a few more options, including a slightly bigger LCD display, 1.7 vs 2.8. Form factor on the desk looks identical.
I’ve owned HP and Brother for years. Brother is by far much better. HP has a ton of driver issues, and is much more expensive to run long term. I also like the ink jets because I find they do a better job at printing photo’s on photo paper. The lasers are much better on charts an other things.
You can edit the URL and add other brother models. I’m comparing it to my old Brother here: http://www.brother-usa.com/MFC/ModelCompare/4/MFCJ470DW_MFCJ870dw_MFC5890CN#.VTETepMw00x and the newer models seems to be a litle slower, but I pick up other features like wireless, etc.
We’re dropping our price to $54.99 to remain competitive! We’ll be refunding the difference to everyone who already bought.
I’ve worked at a print shop before. There are benefits to BOTH inkjet AND laser. Calling inkjet 100% inferior as a blanket statement is silly to me.
That being said, I -do- prefer laser. Mostly because the images are waterfast unlike inkjet, and thus won’t “bleed” if you spill a drop of your beverage (or rain) on your print.
I’ll be the first to admit that an inkjet will print a photo on photo paper far better than what a Laser printer will do. But when I print photos, it’s easier and cheaper to just do them at Walmart, Sams club…So at home, in my experience, a laser has many more benefits based on the majority of printing done (reports, charts, graphics, documents). It does not pay to print your own photos at home (photo paper, archival inks), when compared to what they cost to be done at a store.
Inkjets (in general–don’t know about this one) are still better for printing pictures.