Brother MFC-L3730CDN Colour Laser Printer – All-in-One, USB

Value for money not the fastest print speed but good quality if you use the write paper. Easy to install but recommend buying a USB cable just in case WIFI goes down. Strong signal and clear display. This company I would buy from again.

Not the cheapest but easy to install, seems good quality and the starter toners have a reasonable capacity

See the note at the end about extracting from packing carton.

In this 3000 series, Brother has produced a ridiculously easy printer to set up and use, which gives crisp and accurate results. The printer is quiet in operation, though there are mechanical clicks in feeding, etc. It is quicker than any consumer inkjet as well as far cheaper to run. It works well with the cheapest paper, even double-sided, and gives superb results with heavier papers and thin card – there’s a straight-through feeder if needed, though you’ll need plenty of space behind for that.

Some rival models have cheaper-to-use ‘official’ consumables, a few have cheaper-to-use remanufactured toners.
But if you buy remanufactured high-capacity toner cartridges and then refill these several times, in the way that U-refill Toner Ltd. recommends, it’s about as cheap as any colour laser printer gets. There are no cheating lockout chips which prevent using third party consumables or refilling.

Operation is very straightforward: press ‘on’ and allow a few seconds warmup (the failing of all laser printers, though these are actually LED , not laser), then print from your USB, wired or wireless network; it can (I think) also be set to print wirelessly from a phone. Copying and scanning are as straightforward: a few seconds after switch-on, press the touchscreen for what you want and feed the originals in. No messing about unless you want something awkward, in which case the manual is voluminous and online – I downloaded it as a PDF and have it ready in the computer.

This model is ‘basic’ in Brother’s L5000 touch-screen controlled printer/copier/scanner/fax series; the top model is faster and is the only one with auto-duplex copy/scanning as well as the duplex printing all models have. Worth 100 more? Your call. They share consumables with the MFC-L basic printer-copiers and and HL-L printers, including new drum units at 18,000 cycles, waste toner box similarly and transfer belt and fuser unit at 50,000 cycles. That’s better than most rivals, and low-volume users will probably not get to replacing the last two before wanting a more modern replacement – 100 packets is a lot of paper!

The paper draw (the usual half-packet paper load) is at the bottom of the printer. Single sheets can be fed in from a drop-down tray just above the paper draw – all very convenient. The 50-sheet auto-feed scan unit lifts up for flatbed copying, and rises to accommodate books and hold them flat ; below it, the paper is delivered onto the top of the ‘works’ in the centre section. Paper is fed from front to rear, and unless the ‘straight-passage’ exit is opened at the rear, paper then exits forwards between the printer and the scanner; there’s plenty of space for a pile of copies.

Unpacking and setup is similar to other lasers, beginning with getting rid of plenty of sticky tape, and removing the securing whatchamacallits – Brother has allowed for serious mishandling during shipping across the world. There’s a driver CD in the info pack and a fold-out setup sheet, but best to go online for help. The instruction sheet is OK, and the YouTube setup videos meticulous.

The central ‘works’ of the printer includes the four “drum unit + toner cartridge” sets, the paper transfer belt below them and the fuser at the back. A latch opens up the whole scanner and top of the printer to replace these; they’re very easy to get at – drum/toner units just lift out. Essentially, to set up a new printer, each of the four drum unit/toner cartridge assemblies needs to be taken out (just slide the lock tabs and lift), the securing cradles removed and disposed of, then the units dropped back in, one by one. Takes a few minutes. Note that, as with all lasers, don’t touch any roller surface or gold electrical contact or you’re likely to damage it with finger grease. While they’re out, check one for how to pop out the toner cartridge on its own – by sliding the green tab on the right when pulling the handle. This is what you’ll replace when toner runs out. Only a ‘Toner Value Pack’ starter is supplied as new – typical these days.

Finally, a WARNING.
The lifting points of the printer (it’s quite heavy, though much less than older models) are at the BOTTOM SIDES and nowhere else. Unlike some other brands, there are no warnings or help at all for where to lift the printer out of its box (except on the printer, so only visible when it’s already out!) The correct lift points are difficult to access and not at all obvious, deep in the box. I found ‘secure’ points halfway down, but they turned out to include the handle to open the printer, and by lifting there, the safety catch is operated, so that only the securing tape then holds most of the weight. If this breaks, the printer falls apart – which can destroy it! In the end, I discovered that the strong bag in which the printer is packed in the box can be used to lift it out safely – though it needs to be pierced to construct handles.

Initially had this on the far side of a room a floor above the router. The wi-fi connection was unreliable (bought a “travel router” to do the wi-fi and talk to the Brother DCP-L3550CDW printer through the ethernet port.
Once moved to almost directly above the router (in the room above) the wi-fi had no connection problems.
We have had this for well over a year and have otherwise had no issues with it.

I already have a trusty Brother laser printer which i’ve had for years. It’s done masses of printing and hasn’t put a foot wrong. I wouldn’t even be buying this printer were it not for the fact that my daughter needs the colour option for her school work. Given my Brother laser has been the best and most long lived printer i have ever owned ( and i’ve owned a few) i didn’t actually consider another brand. I selected this simply because it was a Brother and on the functions i require.

The printer arrived safely in it’s original box well cushioned in frames of polystyrene. I ordered it from the UK to be delivered in France. Happily it came with a continental plug rather than the uk one so for me that was great ( i despise rewiring plugs!)

The downside was it came with instructions in german…not so good. However i persevered and continued with the installation. There were numerous bits of blue tape securing things. These were easily removed. It came with 4 preinstalled colour cartridges which required the guard taking off (HINT move the yellow tabs to the side to release the cartridge and they pull out easily).

With all this done i powered up. The touch screen is good although i’d like to see a firmer screen more akin to a modern smart phone. This screen has a bit of give but it’s fine. Navigation is easy.

You aren’t provided with a cable to connect it to the computer but i have about a thousand of them collected over the years so not a problem. My plan is to have this wifi anyway so i’ll only use that if i have to.

A google search on the matter advised me to download the “brother printer app”. I’m on android and this was quickly found on PLAY. Then i had to just follow the instructions and link up the two. This wasn’t intuitive and i would not have worked it out without the internet instructions. The info was easy to find so don’t be put off by that. The app is easy to navigate and with 10 minutes of powering up i had my first wifi colour print out in my hand. The quality of the print is pretty good. All that remains is to see how well the cartridges last.

Pros
Minimal junk in the box
Easy to set up based on simple internet instructions
Good print quality
Sturdy build quality

Cons
Lack of instructions in english (easily solved with internet search)
Lack of cable to link to PC but as wifi this is largely a moot poi

Upon opening the box and checking the contents, I was surprised and a little disappointed to find instructions only in French and Dutch. Fortunately I can read and speak some Dutch so it wasn’t a major problem. The mains lead was a two-pin continental connection. Although wi-fi seems to be the preferred connection, I wanted to do it USB. There is a USB socket on the back of the printer but no USB lead is supplied. I have amassed a collection of connections including USB and three-pin mains leads. Setting up the printer was easy, I was stepped through the process after inserting the CD. Print quality on ordinary plain paper is good but not as vivid as some printers I have looked at. Due to the lack of English instructions and UK mains lead I could not give it five.

I like this printer a great deal. It’s an ideal printer for a home office or small business with mid-level printed output — the recommended duty cycle is 300-1500 pages per month. The printer is not by any means small, and the box it comes in is absolutely enormous. This is a heavy printer, and may need two people to lift it. The printer is supplied with a complete set of 4 full-sized toner cartridges. This printer can take two sizes of toner (manufacturer codes TN243 and TN247 — roughly 1,000 pages at 5% coverage per cartridge, and 2,500 page coverage at the same level). The toner cartridges supplied with the printer are the smaller TN243 size, but nonetheless full-sized products rather than reduced size starter versions.

This is an efficiently functional, boxy, but pretty rugged all in one wireless printer/scanner/copier. The plastic it’s made from is matt and for the most part fairly pale in colour, although around the output, flatbed, and controls, there’s a darker contrasting grey.

I connected this directly to my router from the machine itself. Setting up in this way is slightly fiddly as the on screen keyboard is tiny, making selecting the correct characters a bit awkward. Apart from this, the printer has a fairly easy to use combination of touch screen and button interface, although it does feel a little odd to have to use a physical back button rather than an onscreen one. The screen is decent enough for the job it does — but in quality terms not remotely comparable to the touch screen on a smartphone.

The printer is supplied with a software installation disc, but can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website if you don’t have a drive — indeed, as long as your broadband is decent speed, this is probably easier than faffing about with the usually out-of-date software supplied in hard format with a new printer. I didn’t need to install any new software as my preceding printer was from the same brand, and I’d kept my software up to date — to connect, I just sought out a newly available printer with my iMac, and it connected without issue. The software isn’t always intuitive/as easy as it could be to navigate. Features such as double-sided or reduced quality printing aren’t available from the top-level menu. Draft/resource-saving options could be made more prominent.

You can also print to this from a smartphone/tablet, if you install the Brother app. I have an iPad and an Android phone. The app was easy to install on both, and with this in place the printer could be identified immediately. The space/memory saving interface of the app isn’t my favourite thing ever, but works reasonably well — and even using this you have options to make resource-saving choices such as printing multiple pages to one, and using the duplexing unit to print double-sided. The problems I have discovered with using the app to print are that this does seem to impose constraints on printable file size that aren’t present when working from my desktop, and processing files for printing can be quite slow.

Output speed is a reasonably quick 18ppm (at 5% coverage), though if duplexing function is used this does work rather more slowly.

The copier function works really well, using either the flat bed or sheet feed options with A4 pages, and can also cope with reproducing book pages (though thicker books need to be opened out well to prevent light bleed from turning the centre of a copy black). Adjustments to copying settings can be made fairly easily via the touchscreen menu.

We have been looking for a replacement for our Canon Pixma MP990 MFD, for quite a while now -and after analysing our “use case” these days, it seems the hassle of ink jet systems for the occasional Photo printing requirement, could not really be justified any more. I was looking for a) Colour Laser b) MFD like options and (as best as possible) c) photo printing. After a fair amount of Googling, I understood how the ink jets are always going to have superior colour rendition, as they are capable of generating more colours than a Laser printer.

It was then a case of deciding could we get a half decent DRAFT quality print out of it? – which if we liked, we’d then go ahead and get an online service to print properly.

In short, yes. If you stand a few feet away from an A4 print, it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as some people suggest ( in our opinion ) – It won’t win Photo Competitions for sure, but it prob meets our requirements for photo printing at this stage. Every other aspect of it seems top notch!