Brother MFC-8890DW High-Performance All-in-One Laser Printer With Wireless Networking and Duplex

This is the newer version of the MFC-8860 from Brother, and is a step up from the MFC-8480 as the 8890 provides full duplexing on scanning, copying, and faxing. The MFC-8480 only provides duplex on printing.

I have Macs--several of them--so I've been looking around for a while for a multi-function laser machine I could use for printing, scanning, copying, and the occasional fax. I'm thoroughly impressed with this machine so far, and following the install from CD, everything just plain worked. The printer driver was installed, it included a fax option right in the driver itself (on one of the print option tabs), and so was the TWAIN driver for scanning, and so was their ControlCenter software, which provides access to all the settings for the printer, documentation, and a bunch of customizable presets for the different functions of the printer (most useful for scanning different kinds of documents to different apps on the Mac, including an OCR capability).

The duplex is great--the auto-document feeder reads both sides of documents for copying, scanning, and even faxing. Most less expensive models (like the 8480 and a Canon MF4370 I recently tested) will only duplex on printing, but the 8890 will both read and produce 2-sided docs for any function.

Network capabilities for Macs is also top-notch, with both wired and wireless network capabilities, you can use every function of the machine over the network, with seemingly quick transfer rates, even high-res color scanning. By the way, my previous favorite printer vendor, Canon, does not support network scanning to Macs on ANY of their multi-function printers, but this is not apparent until you buy one and try to do it--their support has since told me this is true. I think the only thing the Brother 8890 doesn't do via network to a Mac is faxing--it supports some kind of Windows fax server that Apple has no equivalent of. But since you can simply scan a document and have it sent to your Mac over the network instead, I hardly care.

So, if you want a fully network-capable machine that works with Macs, this is your machine. The 8480 is a bit less expensive, but does not fully support duplexing, for those with simpler office needs.

I bought this when I opened my own law practice. I have a small real estate law practice, but I do go through a lot of printing and copying, and this machine has been reliable. I use it with my laptop and wifi. I bought the extra tray for legal size paper, which was pretty easy to install (although you have to lift up the whole printer and set it down just right on top of the 2nd tray, kind of a delicate and tricky operation) and it reliably chooses the right size paper automatically.

The good: it has been reliable. I've had no major jams or breakdowns in a year and a half of use. I can print 100 pages or more at a time, several times a month. It is my only printer/copier/fax/scanner, and when I've got clients waiting on me to print/copy things, it is good to know I can rely on it.

The mediocre: maybe this is just how my IT guy set it up, but it's not great for scanning. It scans each page as a separate image doc, so I really can't use it for scanning docs more than a few pages. Some people also can't open the image attachment. I also can't get it to scan legal size, so I have to copy and reduce to letter size before scanning. Maybe it scans legal just fine and I haven't fully read the instructions, but at least scanning legal size is not "user friendly", because I haven't been able to do it yet. I stress again though that it's possible this is a problem with my setup or just "user error."

The bad: It will not duplex copy on legal size. What the heck? If I have front and back on legal size, I have to run the front, flip the whole doc over and run the back, and then sort through and put the copy pages together. Also, I really have to "babysit" the machine when printing or copying a large volume. In both the originals receiving tray on top, and the copy receiving tray underneath, even when you flip out the extra "tongues", which are meant to keep papers in place, it still sometimes begins to push documents out onto the floor. Even worse, I have had copies get pushed out onto the bypass tray and actually get sucked back into the bypass intake, causing it to print on top of the copy and then jam. Not cool. I've come in to work one morning after someone sent me a large fax, and found various pages of the fax scattered all over the floor.

Needless to say this is all a big pain. For large volume printing and copying, you have to keep watch over it, and when it starts to push pages out, you kind of have to shove them back in so they don't get out of order, fall onto the floor, or get sucked into the bypass tray.

However, I've worked in other firms with the really fancy, high volume printers, and they have plenty of their own issues with jamming, etc. Quite the contrary, with this machine repair and toner replacement have been very easy. I've had virtually no "mysterious" jamming or repair issues like the big expensive machines have all the time. when there is a jam or toner needs replacing, the machine is pretty simple, so unjamming and toner replacement have been very easy.

So, bottom line, for the price I would recommend this printer. It's reliable and a good value.

I would also definitely recommend the high volume toner. I've been getting it on amazon, which is a lot cheaper than buying it in the office supply stores.

This is my 3rd or 4th All-in-One from Brother. I've always had good luck with the brand and so far this one is no different. Worked great out of the box, although setting up the wireless LAN wasn't exactly simple. But even I, a non-techy, got it to work after an hour or so of tinkering. Plus I got the incoming FAX setup to work well with my 2-line remote-handset phone with built-in answering machine (always a nail-biter).
Regarding the envelope wrinkling problem, just follow the instructions of another reviewer that posted here (thank you!); open the back door, and push down on the two levers marked with the envelope symbol. I now run my machine with those levers down 100% of the time with no issues whatsoever. Prints well on plain paper, labels and envelopes. The scanner works well for business documents and the duplexing option is really very cool. I don't use the Fax very much, but incoming faxes are working just fine.