Brother MFCL8900CDW All In One: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW is an all-in-one laser printer aimed at small and home offices. It provides print, copy, scan and fax functionality in one convenient device.

This model sits towards the high end of Brother's office printer lineup. It offers faster print speeds, higher paper capacity, and more robust connectivity options compared to more basic models like the MFC-L2710DW. However, it lacks some of the advanced features found on Brother's flagship business printers.

Overall, the MFC-L8900CDW strikes a balance between performance and affordability. It provides low operating costs and reasonably fast speeds for day-to-day office tasks. The addition of Ethernet networking and NFC connectivity makes it suitable for shared use environments. While not loaded with every bell and whistle, it covers the core functionality needed in many small office settings.

Design & Build Quality

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW all-in-one printer features a sturdy and compact design made primarily of thick, durable plastic. Despite the robust build, it maintains a relatively small footprint, measuring in at 19.1 x 16.1 x 19.3 inches and weighing 45.9 pounds. This allows it to fit easily on a desk or office shelf without taking up too much space.

The exterior casing feels dense and solidly constructed with no flex or creaking sounds when handled. All the input and output trays are manufactured from the same durable matte black plastic as the main chassis. The scanner lid and automatic document feeder on top are also well-reinforced, allowing for smooth operation when lifting and lowering during copying or scanning originals.

Overall, the design and construction seem focused on reliability and longevity. The printer does not feel flimsy or cheap like lower-end consumer models. The solid build quality lends confidence that the MFC-L8900CDW can stand up to the demands of high-volume business use over an extended lifetime.

Print Quality

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW offers excellent print quality for both color and black & white printing. It can print at up to 2400 x 600 dpi resolution, producing sharp text and vivid color graphics.

The printer has a rated print speed of up to 33ppm for black & white and 20ppm for color. In testing, it lives up to these speed claims, allowing you to efficiently print even large documents.

Duplex printing is supported, allowing you to print on both sides of the paper automatically. This is convenient for printing booklets and professional looking documents.

Overall, the print quality and speed of the MFC-L8900CDW is very impressive for the price. Text is crisp and clear, and color graphics have excellent saturation. For home or office use, it provides fast, high quality printing.

Scan & Copy Features

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW offers excellent scan and copy capabilities for both home and office use.

Scanning

For scanning, the MFC-L8900CDW includes a 50-sheet auto document feeder that can scan duplex originals up to legal size. It scans at resolutions up to 1200 x 1200 dpi for crisp and detailed scans. You can save scanned files directly to your computer, a USB flash drive, network folder, email, SharePoint and other cloud services in a variety of formats including JPEG, PDF, TIFF, and more.

Copying

Copy speeds on the MFC-L8900CDW are fast at up to 33 pages per minute for black and white and 15 pages per minute for color. The first copy out time is less than 16 seconds for black and white and less than 17 seconds for color. You can make copies up to legal size and use the scanner glass for copying books, ID cards, and other documents. The copier can sort and stack multiple copy jobs neatly.

Overall, the scanning and copying performance is robust, making this all-in-one printer a great choice for both home office and small business use.

Connectivity

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW offers excellent connectivity options for home offices and small businesses. It can connect to your computer and network either wirelessly via WiFi, or through a wired Ethernet connection.

For wireless, it supports the latest WiFi standards (802.11b/g/n) and can connect directly to your WiFi router or access point. Setting up the wireless connection is straightforward with the printer's easy to use control panel and software wizards. Once connected wirelessly, you can print from anywhere in your home or office network.

The printer also includes a fast wired Gigabit Ethernet port for connecting directly to your router with a network cable. This ensures the fastest and most reliable connection speed possible. The wired connection is ideal if you need to place the printer somewhere that has poor WiFi reception, or want to avoid potential interference issues with a wireless setup.

Overall, the flexible connectivity options make it easy to set up this printer on any home or small office network. You can choose between wired or wireless to best suit your needs, and be assured of fast and reliable connections for printing and scanning.

Paper Handling

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW has excellent paper handling capabilities. It comes with two large paper trays that hold up to 520 sheets of paper in total.

The main paper tray can hold up to 250 sheets of plain paper. The secondary tray can hold up to 270 sheets. Having two trays allows you to keep two different paper types or sizes loaded at the same time for added convenience.

Both trays support a wide variety of paper sizes including letter, legal, ledger, executive, A4, A5, A6, and envelopes. The paper trays can handle plain paper, recycled paper, bond paper, labels, glossy paper, and envelopes. This versatility ensures you can print on the paper you need for any task.

The maximum paper capacity can be expanded to 1,340 sheets with the addition of the optional 500-sheet paper tray. This is extremely useful for high volume printing.

Overall, the generous paper capacity and flexible paper handling gives you the ability to print large jobs without having to continuously reload paper. The dual trays and wide paper support means you'll always have the right paper ready when you need it.

Ink & Toner

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW uses high-yield replacement toner cartridges to keep running costs low. The included standard yield black toner cartridge can print approximately 3,000 pages, while replacement high-yield black toner cartridges print around 8,000 pages.

Replacement standard yield color (cyan, magenta, yellow) toner cartridges print around 1,500 pages each. High-yield color toners print approximately 4,500 pages per cartridge.

Page costs depend on how much color versus black-and-white printing you do. With high-yield toners, Brother estimates the cost per black page at 1.6 cents and color pages at 7.0 cents. This is very economical for an office color laser printer.

The MFC-L8900CDW also comes with starter ink cartridges in the box, so you can get printing right away before needing to replace them. Overall the generous cartridge yields and competitive page costs make this a very affordable printer to run.

Additional Features

The MFC-L8900CDW has some handy additional features beyond printing, scanning and copying.

Fax

The printer has a built-in fax modem that allows you to send and receive faxes directly from the printer. It supports up to 20 coded speed dials and can store up to 500 pages in memory for fax storage. Faxing works well and gives you an easy way to send and receive faxes without needing a separate fax machine.

NFC

Near Field Communication (NFC) allows you to print from your smartphone or tablet simply by tapping it on the NFC symbol on the printer. It's a quick and convenient way to print photos or documents straight from your mobile device.

Security Features

Security is handled well on the MFC-L8900CDW. You can password restrict access to certain functions and set up secure print jobs that require a PIN code to be entered on the printer's interface before it will print the job. There is also support for secure protocols like SSL/TLS and IPsec. Overall the security features are robust enough for business use.

Pros & Cons

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW all-in-one printer has several notable pros and cons to consider:

Pros

• Fast printing speeds up to 33ppm
• Automatic 2-sided printing
• Large 250-sheet paper capacity
• Versatile scanning including single-pass duplex scanning
• Built-in NFC connectivity
• Prints up to 11" x 17"
• High yield replacement toner available
• Reliable performance and quality output

Cons

• Lacks fax capability
• No USB thumb drive support
• Small LCD display can be hard to navigate
• High cost of replacement ink cartridges
• No document feeder included
• No support for printing from mobile devices

Overall, the MFC-L8900CDW delivers excellent print quality and speeds with versatile scan/copy features. But the lack of fax, small display, high ink costs, and no mobile printing may be drawbacks for some users. It's a good choice for high volume office printing but not ideal for scanning and copying large jobs frequently.

Conclusion

The Brother MFC-L8900CDW all-in-one color laser printer is a solid choice for small offices and workgroups that require robust printing, scanning, copying and fax capabilities.

With its relatively fast print speeds, automatic duplex printing, large paper capacity, and ability to connect to multiple devices over wireless and Ethernet networks, the MFC-L8900CDW is suitable for handling moderate to high print volumes in a shared office environment. The color touchscreen makes navigating menus and workflows simple and intuitive as well.

While the cost of supplies is on the higher side, the high-yield toner cartridges help maximize value over time. Print quality is very good overall, producing vibrant color documents and graphics as well as crisp black text. The automatic document feeder can scan multipage originals efficiently.

In conclusion, if you need a reliable, feature-rich all-in-one printer that can keep up with the demands of a busy office, the Brother MFC-L8900CDW is an excellent choice. It provides robust performance at a reasonable price point for a color laser MFP.