[Best Buy] Brother MFC-L3770CDW All-in-One (AIO) $380 at Best Buy expires May 16/19

Looks like Amazon has matched the price.

The only other negative thing that I found was some have said the toner cannot be reset to print more pages once the printer says that it is empty.

Yeah and free delivery by Sunday (!). Not sure I can make space for it in time though. Maybe next sale.

=aw

I’m beginning to think printers are like mattresses. There’s always a sale somewhere on a model or three, and then the sale ends but other models take their places to continue the cycle.

I bought the Canon MF733Cdw multifunction for $299.99 at Staples (currently $399.99 at Staples and $570 at Amazon). However, its touchscreen was junk so I returned it.

Then I bought the HP M452dw at Best Buy for $264.99 (currently $549.99 at Staples and $289.99 at Amazon). I already have a multifunction Samsung M3870FW monochrome laser so I’m keeping that alongside this HP colour laser printer. BTW, I bought that Samsung eons ago for $199.99. A few weeks later it was >$600 at some retailers IIRC.

If I were buying today, I’d consider buying the Brother MFC-L3770CDW since now it’s on sale. Just be aware though that the drums have to be replaced separately from the toner cartridges so the consumables aren’t quite as cheap as they might seem upon first look.

For example, third party toner cartridges for the Brother are $29.99 but the drum is another $29.99. You don’t have to buy new drums each time but they still need to be replaced periodically. Other brands have the drum built into the toner cartridge. For my Samsung M3870FW monochrome laser I just bought a third party toner cartridge with built-in drum for $29.99 from Amazon. Works great, with excellent quality.

PS. OP, there is a typo in your first post. You typed 3370 instead of 3770.

@EugW I couldn't agree more! Printers always go on sale—so I consider the "sale" prices as what they're actually worth. I think the real money-making part for manufacturers and retailers is in the ink/toner cartridges.

Anyway, I have owned the MFC-3770CDW for about two months now. So far, it's been reliable and hasn't lost WiFi connection, unlike my previous Brother (monochrome) model. Duplex colour-printing is painfully slow by my standards, so I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for speedy print jobs. The Brother MFC-L8900CDW, which frequently goes on sale for $499 and is a bit bigger, would likely be a better bet for those looking for something faster. The 3770 fits nicely in the space I have available, and I have no regrets with my purchase so far. I picked up some genuine high-capacity toners at a good price on Amazon.ca as well, so that's something to look out for if you're like me and concerned about third-party cartidges voiding the 18-month warranty offered by Brother on registration.

What do photos look like coming out of this printer?

Colour laser used to be decent for bar chart colours but I’d love to hear that there has been improvement on photos.

I'm underwhelmed by photo prints on plain paper. Paper-type and calibration are probably paramount when judging a printer for its colour reproduction capabilities. Anyone?

Here's an excerpt by PCMag.com, who reviewed this printer:

The MFC-L3770CDW also did my several sample photos justice, though its imaging prowess doesn't quite rival a photo-centric inkjet. Even so, its photo quality is more than adequate for most business applications, such as real estate marketing material and images embedded in brochures, flyers, and newsletters.

I've attached an image I just downloaded, printed, and then scanned for you using the MFC3770CDW. Although it's only a scan of the print, it's still an accurate representation of what I see. You can see why I'm not overly impressed, but luckily I didn't buy it hoping it printed nice photos. The image was downloaded from THIS colour laser printer test page. I hope it helps you and others, although I think it could probably look better if you know what you're doing To be fair, the image was printed on Hammermill "Premium Multipurpose" 20lb/97 brightness paper that I bought at Walmart for around $7 for 500 sheets.

SOHO colour lasers generally do a mediocre job of printing pictures. In this price range, for pictures you are MUCH better off going with an inkjet.

My HP M452dw colour laser printer is supposedly rated better than these Brother colour lasers for photos, but it's still not great on regular paper. It's supposed to be better on laser photo paper, but still isn't meant to rival inkjet. Put it this way: It's good enough for your kids' elementary school projects, but don't expect to be framing these printed pictures.

However, I have given up on inkjet photo printing. I had a Canon photo inkjet printer, but the cost of ink and paper is high, and ink gets wasted especially if you need to unclog the nozzles. Colour calibration was also an issue. For colour photos I just upload the pictures to Costco and collect them later. It's actually cheaper and much easier getting them done at Costco, and they have their machines colour corrected well enough for home use. The main downside to this is having to wait a few days and having to drive to Costco. However, if you shop there regularly anyway, it's not a big deal. I found my best self-printed inkjet pictures were better quality than Costco's, but it often took me a few tries to get the perfect print (increasing cost) whereas Costco's prints are good enough for basic usage (including framing) and you just pay for them once. The other problem with inkjet in this price range is that the pictures take so damn long to print.

@EugW Good info, especially the tip about Costco. Thanks!

Also, I should point out that I printed and scanned the above picture using Brother's default settings, and genuine Brother toner cartridges, so it is representative of what others should see out of the box.

What’s wrong with Canon’s touchscreen? How do you like this Brither compared to Canon? Thanks

EugW wrote: ↑ I’m beginning to think printers are like mattresses. There’s always a sale somewhere on a model or three, and then the sale ends but other models take their places to continue the cycle.

I bought the Canon MF733Cdw multifunction for $299.99 at Staples (currently $399.99 at Staples and $570 at Amazon). However, its touchscreen was junk so I returned it.

Then I bought the HP M452dw at Best Buy for $264.99 (currently $549.99 at Staples and $289.99 at Amazon). I already have a multifunction Samsung M3870FW monochrome laser so I’m keeping that alongside this HP colour laser printer. BTW, I bought that Samsung eons ago for $199.99. A few weeks later it was >$600 at some retailers IIRC.

If I were buying today, I’d consider buying the Brother MFC-L3770CDW since now it’s on sale. Just be aware though that the drums have to be replaced separately from the toner cartridges so the consumables aren’t quite as cheap as they might seem upon first look.

For example, third party toner cartridges for the Brother are $29.99 but the drum is another $29.99. You don’t have to buy new drums each time but they still need to be replaced periodically. Other brands have the drum built into the toner cartridge. For my Samsung M3870FW monochrome laser I just bought a third party toner cartridge with built-in drum for $29.99 from Amazon. Works great, with excellent quality.

PS. OP, there is a typo in your first post. You typed 3370 instead of 3770.

82 wrote: ↑ What’s wrong with Canon’s touchscreen? How do you like this Brither compared to Canon? Thanks

I don’t have the Brother. I’m just going by reviews, which state the small business HPs sometimes have better picture printing than the competing Brothers, but that neither are actually good at it compared to photo inkjets at that price point.

As for the Canon touch screen, after I started
looking into it I discovered it was a commonly reported issue. There seem to be three groups of users out there from my reading:

1) Those who either don’t have or else don’t care about the touch screen issues.
2) Those who have significant touch screen issues and find them annoying, but who just deal with it because the rest of the printer features are good.
3) Those (like me) who refuse to tolerate a problematic touch screen.

Below is my Amazon review:

Eug
The touch screen is absolutely terrible.

May 4, 2019
Style Name: Printer

I had this for less than one day, and then returned it. It seems like a very feature-rich machine, but the horrible touch screen effectively makes this thing unusable. It's a big screen, with two parts, a touch sensitive screen, and a touch sensitive bezel underneath with touch buttons. The bezel buttons require repeated touches to register and it's really, really frustrating, esp. since one of the buttons is the very necessary home button. For the touch screen portion, it seems inaccurate, and I often would press a button only to activate the button beside it, which of course is also very, very frustrating. The whole touch experience on this Canon MF733Cdw is the worst I've come across in a very long time. I would have been much happier with a smaller touch screen, or even just a 2-line text screen and physical buttons, as long as it worked and was always responsive to button touches. Instead, Canon chose a bigger screen that was subpar.

https://www.amazon.ca/Canon-imageCLASS- ... 06Y1MYQWB/

Keep in mind, this Brother model doesn't allow for manual cartridge resets.



On many of the other models you can reset the cartridges easily to get another 25-50% more pages.

e.g.