J. Peterson on Amazon 7 years ago
12/13/2015, 02:30 AM
Easy to set up and use; great results
The Brother HL-3180CDW color printer/scanner is one of those rare products (for me) that immediately impressed me as being "right."
It was very easy to set up and get running, and it worked immediately. The whole process took me about 10 minutes, of which the hardest part was lifting its 50 pound bulk up and out of the shipping box. I didn't need or use a USB cable for this - the wireless connection worked fine. I did run the installation utility on my PC from the included CD to load the appropriate device drivers, but then finished the installation from the printer's touch-screen control panel to manually configure a static IP address which is what I prefer to use on my home network
I admit to approaching the Brother with a bit of skepticism. I've been a diehard HP LaserJet user since my first LaserJet IIIP; I have tried to avoid the need for printing stuff in color especially due to the cost of color consumables; I generally don't like multi-function devices; and I was concerned about the amount of time required to print the first page. So I started out with a "show me" attitude, but after a few hours of using the Brother for various jobs, I was very happy with all aspects of the product. Let's look at each of these:
HP vs. Brother: Long ago HP was the clear market leader and standard-setter, but the HP units have become "cheaper" while the others have long since caught up or surpassed HP. The Brother has a pleasing appearance; is easy to use; and just feels substantial (in contrast to the cheap, plastic construction of recent HP products). The Brother has nothing to apologize for.
Printing in color: I can still mostly live without this, but more and more stuff is in color these days, and I admit that it is nice to have good color printing capability (see my last paragraph). I have had an old color ink jet printer around for the odd color job, but it is glacially slow - and takes up space - so have high-quality color printing available is nice. The cost of the consumables is still somewhat of an issue, though. This unit, with its 4 included standard-capacity cartridges, sells for around 300 dollars on Amazon, but replacing those 4 cartridges with genuine Brother replacements will run about 200 dollars, and more like 260 if you opt for the high-yield cartridges. So like most color printers these days, you're getting the mechanism for an initially low cost that obscures the total lifetime cost of ownership. A few other notes about the consumables:
- While researching the cost of replacement cartridges, I was puzzled by why the 3 color cartridges are offered in both standard and high-capacity versions, while the black cartridge is only offered in standard - that is backwards of what I would have expected. The explanation is that the standard black cartridge is rated for more pages (2500) than even the high-capacity color ones (2200).
- Each of the cartridges comes with quite a bit of bright orange plastic protective covering that you need to remove and discard. From all 4 cartridges this yielded quite a mass of material for the garbage. If you are worried about saving the planet, this might be a concern. My HP laser printers always used cartridges that were activated simply by pulling out a thin strip of material, in contrast to this.
- Besides the 4 cartridges, there are several other consumables that apparently will need to be replaced eventually, including a drum unit set after 15,000 pages, a belt unit, and a waste toner box. Just part of the additional complexity of a color printer, I guess.
Multi-function device: I do a lot of printing and quite a bit of document scanning, so having both functions in one unit seemed appealing - provided they both worked well. And in this case, they do. The scanner is a manual-feed flatbed unit just under the top cover. Compared to the Canon scanners that I have been using, this one is *much* faster, and yields color scans that are much higher quality and with much smaller PDF file sizes. So at this point it looks like I will be able to free up some desk space by replacing my scanner and B&W laser printer with this single unit. Oh, and the Brother also has lots of various fax capabilities.... does anyone use fax anymore?
Amount of time to print first page: Compared to black & white laser printers, this is an issue for all of the color LED or laser printers I have ever used. I admit that I am impatient: When I press print in an application, I expect stuff to start printing immediately. My recent LaserJets have all been really good about this, but I have a Dell multi-function color unit in a remote office and it takes forever (20-30 seconds) to start printing. The Brother is spec'ed at 16 seconds for this, but despite some lag, it's actually OK for me.
Some additional comments and observations:
* Mine came with firmware level R, which I immediately updated to the latest level S by downloading and executing a program from Brother's web site. This was very simple and easy to do, like everything else with this unit.
* After the Brother finishes printing, it remains on for a few minutes, emitting a low amount of audible noise. I work in a very quiet office and hate any kind of noise from fans and blowers, so this was a little bit annoying at first, but its not all that loud and does stop fairly soon.
* I really love that it can connect wirelessly, which means one less cord in the rats-nest of cords to deal with and one less USB port to use up or one less ethernet cable and port to deal with.
* To help you get started with the scanner, Brother throws in a special edition of PaperPort (I believe version 12). I didn't install that because I use PaperPort 14 for my document management thus didn't want to mess things up for it. I was very pleased that the Brother's scanner appeared automatically in PaperPort's scanner list, and worked perfectly with no further configuration or fussing around. (Side note: I have used PaperPort for all my PDF document management for many years going back to version 9. I'm now usingPaperport Professional 14.0, and even though many reviewers have had bad experiences with it, it has worked very well for me. I operate a nearly paperless office, and relentlessly scan all paperwork into PaperPort to get it off my desk or file folders, and also to make in searchable via PaperPort's automatic OCR.)
Once I got it all set up, it was put to immediate good use: My spouse had just finished creating this year's Christmas letter that included a number of color photos, so I ran them off on the Brother. Print quality was superb and the whole batch of letters printed very rapidly.
4.7 stars, which rounds up to 5.