Brother DCP-8080dn Digital Copier and Laser Printer w/Duplex Printing and Networking

After my HP laser printer died, our small office needed a laser combination printer-copier that was inexpensive to maintain and highly reliable. Totally unknown to me prior to study: AIO or MFC searches will frequently bring up only printer combos that include all 4 functions: print, copy, scan, and fax.

After an extended search produced poor options, I discovered the DCP line which includes 3 of the 4 functions, dropping only the fax. This one difference from the MFC line meant far faster copy speeds, better quality printing and copying, and generally better quality all around on the 3 functions it performs.

The DCP-8080DN can be connected to a computer by USB and other means; can be networked in a LAN; will copy as a stand-alone (using ADF or manual feed); comes with a full-sized toner cartridge (for est. 15,000 pages) rather than the skimpy initial toner with others. Toner is available in high-yield size that makes cost between 1-2 cents per...Read more

Brother is just dominant in this segment of the market. For the price of a personal laser, this printer can handle all the printing/scanning needs for a small business of up to 20 people. We have it in our home office (just two of us, but one does a lot of printing) and I LOVE not having to buy toner every few weeks. We bought from someone other than Amazon, but now Amazon's price is very good.

Pros:

-- Most economical work group/small business printer in the universe -- toner cartridge that handles 8000 copies is about $80 -- that's one cent per page!
-- Very good build quality, feels and sounds like industrial strength materials.
-- Great performance -- 30 ppm. Relatively fast first page time. Good solid (though not fast) duplexing. Reliable paper handling.
-- Network drivers are very good, very stable. We have installed on XP, Vista and Win 7 and everything -- printing and scanning -- just works.
-- Sheet fed scanner works well --...Read more

We just (yesterday) received this printer from Amazon. It replaces a printer/copier/scanner that we loved but which finally gave up the ghost, a DCP-1200, an earlier generation of this new machine. The 1200 cost us $650 in 2000, and we used and abused it for nine years -- an astonishing life-span in this era of 2-3 year replacement cycles. Between my wife and me we wrote three full-length books in that time period, printing out countless new drafts of each -- not to mention literally thousands and thousands of pages of research materials, plus many documents, support forms, and academic papers as we continued both our part-time business and my academic program. Our new 8080dn has that and more in store for it over the coming years. Surprisingly, the 8080 cost us half what our old 1200 did, yet has many improvements and new features. It does everything the 1200 did, yet copies and prints much faster, offers double the print resolution (if we ever need it!), and has the duplex...Read more