Brother MFC8950DW Wireless Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready

Over the past few years I've spent well over $10,000 on Amazon. Just call me an amazon junkie! However, I think I've probably written only one review during that time. I'm grateful for those that do write reviews and I read many, many reviews as I research my purchases. Having said that, this printer is so freaking awesome I can't resist letting the rest of my junkie friends know how wonderful it is.I am a geek. I have used Dell, Apple, Epson, Brother, HP, Samsung, Ricoh, Canon, etc. printers. I have set them up, used them, abused them, and loved many. This Brother MFC8950DW is replacing a HP Color Laserjet 2840. There is absolutely no comparison between the two. Although I should point out the HP was a color laser multi-function printer. I bought a $150 epson multi-function to take care of my color needs and I bought this Brother printer to take care of the high-volume daily needs for B&W laser printing, faxing, copying, scanning, etc.I could go on for hours about the greatness of this machine. However, let me skip to the pertinent details that are not well documented.- This is definitly geared for the workplace.- It has settings locks, function locks, and more.- It comes with all the necessary drivers on CD.Another reviewer dissed it due to not having network drivers. The drivers come on the CD. It's a network printer.It's wifi built-in. I don't know what that guy was talking about. I have 4 different computers all using this printer.All 4 computers use the printer wirelessly. No problems. No errors. No confusion. It was amazingly simple. The sillyCD even finds the printer on the network and does all the installation/firewall/port routing for you. It's really really easy.- It is an excellent scanner. The scanning resolution can be changed depending on your needs, so those that didn't likethe scanning quality need to adjust their settings. Upon receipt of this AIO (all-in-one) I immediately set the employeesup with the task of scanning in 10 pages from 320 files. That comes out to 3,200 pages scanned. Every page had holepunches in the top of the page. We fed the tops into the ADF even though the documentation said not to as the ADFmight jam. Many of the 3,200 pages were dog-eared, wrinkled, or otherwise imperfect. Over the course of 3,200 pageswe had 5 jams. (Jams are super simple to clear) That is simply unbelievably impressive.- All of the scanning was done wirelessly and it effortlessly sent the pdf's to the computer we told it to. It scans into tiff's,pdf's, jpeg's, and more! You determine either at the time you scan or via the control panel how you want it to scan your job.You pick the resolution and the format it's saved into. This is true for the USB capabilities as well.- It can scan to an e-mail address, or a computer on the network.- It has it's own e-mail capabilities. Once I set it up with an e-mail address of it's own, I can scan anything and e-mail itto anyone in the world, without using a computer.- The paper tray hold closer to 550 pages.- Although this is a B&W printer, it will scan and fax in color if you want it to.- The warranty is 1 year, but is an on-site warranty!Pound for pound I don't think there's another MFC on the market that comes anywhere near this one at this price point. Originally I was just going to replace my HP with the newest model from HP. However, when I actually went to a store and looked at the HP models, I was highly unimpressed with the build quality. They felt cheap and had tiny touchscreens. I love that this printer retains physical buttons to navigate it's menus and use it's functions. The touchscreen works like a charm as well, but for heavy office use, I wanted physical buttons as well.I'm sure if you're still reading this, you probably think I'm a fanatic........and maybe I am. This MFC has made me a fanatic. I'm trying to save my personal pennies to buy one for my home. It's overkill for my home, but it's that awesome. It's that well made. It's that easy to use. It's everything I could hope for in a MFC (save color printing capabilities, hence the Epson) and the supplies (i.e. toner, imaging drum, etc.) are cheap (when compared to competitors) and the high yield toner lasts forever! Someone stated that they can't get the toner for this printer. I ordered an extra when I bought this and received it within days. I failed to mention how fast this dang thing is at printing. It is freaky fast at printing. Single-sided and double-sided.If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll try and answer them.**********UPDATED**********January 26, 2016I still love this MFC. We have now purchased 8 of them all in busy offices, and all have been flawless (see below).The original MFC that this review was about now has the following page counts:91,113 Total Pages Printed3,384 Faxes5,614 Copies82,115 Printed PagesThis particular machine has been a workhorse, and the other 7 have been just as strong. As this is the first one we bought, it has seen the most use, and the only issue we've ever had has been a weird page crumpling issue most common when printing double sided. The first time it happened, the machine was in it's 2nd year and out of warranty, but when we called Brother's Customer Service Line they recognized the issue, and sent a repair tech out, with the new part, all free of charge. The second time it happened we called Brother again, now way out of warranty, and they again sent out a repair tech with the requisite part all for free. The second time they told us to quit using aftermarket toner, and although I am/was dubious as to that really being the issue, we haven't had an issue since going back to the manufacturer's toner cartridges. We've never seen this issue on the other machines, so I don't know if it was an early design issue, or if it really was a matter of using aftermarket refills. Either way, we definitely feel like this machine is worth every dollar of it's price and frankly it's been the most reliable piece of office equipment we own!July 19, 2013I'm still raving about this MFC. We have used it in a multi-office environment since purchasing it.Currently we have printed 18,060 pages through it.609 pages of fax949 copiesThe only issue we've had is the ADF jams when employees try to feed stapled documents through it, without first removing the staples. (Go Figure!)It really has worked exactly as advertised and hoped for. We've since purchased another one of these for another office. I'm still saving my pennies for one for my home.

The first Brother MFC8950DW we bought initially worked great so gradually we eventually bought 3 more (1 was a replacement). Two of these MFC's died in less than a year and a half from the time they went into service. By died I mean died. The device won't power on at all. It's toast. This is not a good investment at all. The competing brand that these Brother MFC's replaced had their fair share of problems but they actually lasted for at least 4 years minimum and didn't cause this much headache. The more usage each of our MFC8950DW models gets the more maintenance and hassle it becomes to keep it in working order. The fuser has to be replaced frequently. The toner gets everywhere and messes up the prints. We use genuine Brother toner only! This is an unacceptable failure rate and I will not be purchasing this model again. I may even give up on the Brother brand altogether.My Original Review March 19, 2013:We set our printer up on the network. So far it works great with our Windows Server 2008 R2 64 print server. It took a bit of pain to set up the 32-bit and 64-bit drivers, but it was nothing compared to the difficulties I've experienced with some HP printer drivers. So far no major problems. When I tested the scan to email function, the quality of the scan was horrid. Whenever I changed the default DPI from 200 to anything higher, the printer would give me an 'out of memory' error. I was about ready to pack it up right then and there and return it. I performed a firmware update, tried again and everything worked fine. We've only had this printer for about 1 week. If anything changes I will update my review and rating as needed. The folks at our company that use this printer love it. Its fast! We used to have a color HP MFP. It was slow as hell and would do self-cleans between every print job and then calibrate. It would waste so much toner on the self cleans. I have high hopes for this new printer.-Update-The department that uses this printer loves it. We're keeping it.If you're installing a network printer, I recommend downloading the "Add Printer Wizard Driver" from the drivers they list.-Update 2 (7/10/2014)-Despite updating the firmware to the latest, this MFC printer has a bug that Brother still hasn't fixed. We set the default 'Scan to Email' DPI to "Color 300" using the web interface. On the web interface it says DPI Color 300 but when a user walks over to the device and tries to scan to email, it still defaults to "Color 600 DPI." This becomes problematic when the user tries to scan to email larger quantities of documents. The larger DPI settings means larger file sizes and the email server rejects the email for being too large.