Brother MFC-7840W Wireless All-In-One Laser Printer Review

The Brother MFC-7840W wireless all-in-one laser printer while costing more for the initial investment, actually costs much less for printing than most printers out there. Our choice of Laser over Ink Jet is because we do a lot of printing, and when you use an ink jet printer, they go through ink way too fast, and good ink cartridges are expensive. It is easy to spend $40 for a cartridge that may not even last through a ream of paper. The Laser toner cartridge on the other hand is normally around $60 and will print 3600+ pages which is more than 7 reams of paper.

Because our kids home school online, and they have to print many assignment sheets, my wife does a lot of work online for printing, as do I, instead of having a of of wires running around, we got a wireless network version of the printer, (which brings the price up about $100), for the convenience of wireless hook-up.

During the summer months we live in a campground with free wifi, and I was unsure how well this printer would work when using a wifi network system, but the set up was really easy. First you have the printer connect to the wifi network, (including punching in the password), then you install the software on each computer. During the set up process, you select wireless connections, and it installs the wireless drivers and then brings up a list of items that may be on the network, you simply select the Brother MFC-7840W wireless all-in-one laser printer and proceed with the installation and Voila! you have a wireless printer.

The printer has very intuitive controls, you can print, scan, and fax either from the printer panel itself or from any computer that is hooked up to the printer. It has an automatic sheet feeder for copying and faxing as well, so if you have a group of papers like a contract or other documents, hit the copy button and it automatically pulls in one sheet at a time, copy's and prints it.

The printer itself is a little large, (but worth every inch and then some in our opinion), measuring 16.9" x 15.6" x 12" and weighing in at 24.5 pounds. It is Black and White only, prints 23 Pages per minute and prints at a resolution of 2400 X 600, which is a very nice clean print. With a duty cycle of 10,000 pages per month it should last the small home / office at least two years.

The Brother MFC-7840W copies at 23 ppm, prints up to 23 ppm, scans at 600 X 2400 and enhanced to 19,200 by 19,200 dpi. It also faxes at about 2 seconds per page and has memory for a 600 page fax.

On top of having a standard 250 sheet paper tray, you can also insert heavier paper like Card stock, through the back so it runs a straight paper path so as not to crinkle or damage your heavier work.

In the end, we give this printer two thumbs up, or 5 stars. We made our purchase on this printer from NewEgg online for a total of $260 which included an additional ink toner cartridge. It serves our family well and does so inexpensively.