Brother HL-L3290CDW Wireless Color Laser Printer

Printer is fabulous. Based upon what all it does for the price, it is marvelous. People who complain about photograph quality have absolutely no background to understand these things! It’s like buying a Toyota Avalon and complaining because it can’t haul enough gravel in it to effectively surface their driveway. Inkjet printers on glossy paper is what you need for near photographic look. I’ve had wonderful experience with that—absolutely superb prints on Canons of the day (but boy have they changed—I’ve gone from loving them to hating them!), but that was a few decades ago. I HATE inkjet printers now, because if you don’t use it for a week or two (much worse when you have a month or two gap), it keeps using up all your ink (to keep it flowing instead of stopping up the jets—and mfg’s think gold is a major ingredient of ink, I think)! You can spend over $100 on cartridges for which you are “supposed to get 1,700 pages” [this is for HP printer, which was supposed to be cheaper per copy because of large ink cartridges--HAH--better use them fast, because they waste your ink all day and all night while not in use!!!], then by using it very infrequently, be lucky if you get a few dozen prints (or so it seems—who keeps count on low volume usage!). A laser jet you can leave alone for ½ year, then come in, turn it on, and print out hundreds of fabulous quality pages, and in a real hurry! Pictures are quite good as well—IF you understand the kind of quality you can expect from a laser. Things are crisp and distinct, and color looks great on designed patterns, but certainly not photo-quality on faces, scenery, etc. That is NOT what it’s made for. If you understand that, you may be quite satisfied with printed color pictures. Compared to the frustrations of inkjets, I LOVE it!!!But I do have a list of complaints--things I wish Brother did differently on this printer, although if I had it to do over again with only the choices and prices that were available, I would HANDS DOWN buy it again--no question! That's why I give it 5 stars, despite my gripes:--I hate the way the scanner has a gap all the way around the platen! Scanning is NOT just to make copies, so do NOT limit the scanner by the printer’s edge limitation…which by the way, can’t they overcome that in 3+ decades?!--I scan checks into my bank account. I can get around this, but it's a hassle EVERY TIME I scan a check.--I've had to scan in documents that were printed into that gap area on both sides. It caused a hassle!:--I scanned it twice, once fully including the left side into the scanned area, then fully on the right.--Then I went to Microsoft Publisher, overlapped, cut, then matched images, combined, and saved as JPEG.That's a TON of work for what should have been a simple, one-pass scan!If this weren't rare for me, I'd DEFINITELY send the thing back and buy a different printer for the scanner!--I WISH it had a paper feeder for the scanner. This would:--At least solve the top-bottom gap problem.--Enable scanning longer documents.--And most obviously, allow scanning of a stack of documents, instead of one at a time.BUT I suppose this was one of those built-in limitations to force purchase of a more expensive model.Once again, while I REALLY WISH they’d make these improvements, all things considered FOR the price, I’d make the same choice all over again.

We have used multiple inkjet printers over the years. Always, always replacing ink. Expensive ink. Even more expensive if you do not use the printer enough. The print heads dry up from lack of use. Once that happens, you spend lots of time "cleaning" the print heads which means using up LOTS of ink which is very expensive. Finally, you give up and have to buy another printer and all the expensive ink that you bought ahead of time does not fit in your new printer.Then you start the process over again. And then over again. And again. This is all planned out by the ink jet printer manufacturer. They KNOW that you will not use the printer enough to keep the print head from clogging up with dried ink and you will have to buy another printer.This is where you get smart and pay a lot for a laser printer that will NEVER dry up. You can even buy refills that are not OEM are very cheap and work just as good.Now, after wasting thousands of dollars on inkjet printers, you are finally smart enough to save money by buying a color laser printer that will probably last you many, many years. Why did it take so long to learn this lesson? For me, it is because I am cheap and try to save money but, I have wasted so much money on inkjet printers because they ALL DRY UP and become unusable. Take my advice and get a good laser printer. It costs more at first but, you will save money in the long run.We have had two of these printers, one for over a year, and not a single problem.

We purchased this printer to replace our Brother all-in-one inkjet printer that after several years of use has been clogging/drying out. We also have a low cost/efficient Brother B&W laser printer (no copies or scanning) as the workhorse printer. Despite my noting the dimensions and weight of the new printer when ordering, I realized how big and heavy it is when I opened the box. It was very well packed and the instructions for setting it up, activating wifi and installing the software were clear and easy.It is relatively quiet and smooth running when printing and the color toner cartridges, although expensive should last a long time for us (even the starter cartridges). Even better, they won't dry out. as someone else noted, the printer leaves a small margin of unprinted area on either side of the page but this will not impact how we will be using it. Scanning and copying work well but I did notice there is a bit of slop in how the scanner cover closes. If one is not careful, it might not line up with the front of the printer when closing. I think this is the result of the feature allowing one to fit a 1 inch or so book on the scanning glass when copying. This printer might be a bit of overkill for some but we needed a color scanner/copier and there is no longer any ink to dry out.I have had problems with H-P ( wifi connections) and Epson printers ( print head clogging). Brother is great at home printers. I will only buy Brother.