Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 187
 nice MFC, but requires a dedicated 15-amp circuit October 4, 2006
Toology (Atlanta, GA United States)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is a really nice MFC, but with a single 15-amp circuit in my basement/office and a 42" LCD & my P4-based PC hooked up, even with the TV off, when this baby fires up it trips my PC's APC, it basically requires a dedicated 15-amp circuit or anything hooked up to your circuit will probably have a shorter life due to constant power fluctuations (most people won't realize this because they don't run an APC with monitoring software on the same circuit). I ordered an HP 3055 to replace this since it uses 1/3 of the power (300 watts at peak, brother uses 1032 watts at peak). Do a search on google for '7820N amp' (or any brother MFC model with 'amp' or 'watts') and you'll see what I mean, others have the same issue. I think all Brother MFC's suffer from this, it's a shame because it's otherwise a nice MFC for a good price.
 Good B/W print/scans, poor software and color scans October 9, 2006
Ivan Ivanoff (Atlanta, GA USA)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Used this unit for a few weeks and returned.
Annoyances:
Sofware: With ADF scanning, you have to enter scan parameters (paper size etc) again for every scan and it does not have an option to let you to continue scanning more pages then ADF can hold. You will have to use "add to file" function and select all scan parameters again. There is no option to scan double-sided pages as well with using 2 pass scanning. So 3rd party software is definitively needed to get a real value out of ADF scanning.
Color Scanning: While B/W scans are fast, color scanning speed is very poor to me. Scanning stack of color pages could take ages. Slow color scanning speed was observed in both USB and network modes.
FAX: Number of rings before FAX answers is limited to 4 and I found no way to increase that. No good for SOHO.
 Worst paper feed ever May 8, 2007
Jacob Johnston
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
jams all the time, always grabs 2 or 3 pages when it's feeding. you have to watch it like a hawk. Absolute waste of time and money unless you want to audit every fax and copy job page by page to make sure it didn't fee doubles. Horrible machine.
Worked great for 8 months! December 10, 2007
Scott (Athens, OHIO)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
We bought the Brother 7820N MFC in late, 2006. It was an excellently priced MFC (laser) for what you get. It worked wonderfully for about 8 months. We didn't print super heavy on it (I would guess 50 pages per month or so) Then, it stopped working altogether. It just would not print. Luckily, we had purchased the 3 year warranty from Staples for $75.00 or $99.00 (can't remember). I called Staples and they told me that since I was within the first 12 months, I needed to call Brother for the warranty. I called brother, which was very hard to do, to actually get through and talk to a person. The tech rep seemed like he was having a terrible day because he seemed like my call of just wanting to know how to maybe try and fix or troubleshoot the printer set him off. It is hard to troubleshoot on the phone with someone who acts as if the last thing they feel like doing is helping you. None of the troubleshooting worked. It took them several months to actually ship us a new machine. When we got the new machine it didn't even power up. My wife and I were laughing at the absurdity of it, even though it was agrevating, as we had spent $400 on this machine (after adding in the extended warranty). By the time we had gotten the second machine that didn't work, it was past the 12 month period. So now we called staples and they apologized. They sent us a new machine which we received about a month ago. It does work, but every time it prints, it makes grinding noises on the left side toward the back. It will only print if we hold in or bang on the side of the machine and then the grind stops and it prints. Again, we are laughing at the seemingly cheap construction.
Now, since this is our third machine, Brother won't do anything and staples will not replace the machine either. Staples will give us a credit toward another printer for $170.00. At least they are doing SOMETHING, however, we paid $400.00 for a printer for 8 months of use. It could be worse, but we will definately NOT be buying another BROTHER. At least we get the 170.00 from staples. We are going to try an HP.
The reason we bought this printer was due to the excellent reviews. I have become more suspicious of the online reviews of products. I think it is fishy that there are so many excellent reviews of this product and yet 3 of our models ended up not working (granted, the first one DID last for 8 months and worked great). I think that a lot of the reviews come from the company themselves, and I would be willing to bet that many employees are encouraged to get on the site and build the reviews up. I only say that because this is the first time I have ever given a reciew of a product. People are busy and I find it a little hard to believe that so many people get online and post how wonderful their brother printer is. I can understand when people have bad experiences (like me) that they might get on to post a review.
I think it probably boils down to (to a great extent) that you get what you pay for. Brother appeals to low initial cost consumers, without much regard for long term quality, reliability, durability, customer service. I once heard someone say that when trying to decide on which product/ service to purchase, they never go with the lowest bid because they can't afford to. That seems the case here too.
 Exceptional Value and Versatility September 16, 2005
Lou C (Tucson, AZ United States)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Strengths: Versatility, small foot print, easy setup, network ready, decent software bundle, nice scanning, clean printing, Win & Mac CD's included
Weaknesses: Limited paper handling, Win98 install buggy, does not save incoming faxes to PC, somewhat limited documentation on CD
For economy & quality, I use (and recommend) lasers for most of my customers. This is one of the best packages I've seen. I installed in my home as a network printer. Flawless install on two XP machines. I needed to download newer drivers (large files) for Win98SE. Directions are better than most. Packaging is very nicely done. Easy to fax out, print from all my PC's. Works great as standalone fax, copy machine (no PC needed) 5 user license for PaperPort & Control Panels are included. Easy changeout of cartriges, clear access for paper jams.
Limited space for output sheets means you'll need to pickup/monitor large print jobs. I saw no more paper curling than with other inexpensive lasers. Very quick multipage scanning directly to Acrobat. OCR is fairly quick and capable. Nice copies, clear text, graphics are average. Many settings/features are available but you'll have to root a bit to find them.
Considering the price/capability, I haven't seen a better unit for the SOHO user.
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