I just bought this printer to replace a piece of garbage HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 in my office (as in my actual place of business). Our paralegal has a similar Brother MFC (6 years old), and we have a smaller Brother MFC in our home office (8 or 9 years old). Both of them have been great work horses, and although they have some limitations (the biggest being that they're not wireless), we've been generally happy with them. Given that I went through 2 HP printers in 3 years in my office, I figured I'd go back to Brother, and the price was right. I even chose the L2700DW over a newer model that was twice the price (MFC-L2740DW) because even though it was faster, it didn't seem to offer anything additional that I felt justified doubling the price. (Parenthetical update on December 2, 2015: the MFC-L2700DW has come down $20 on Amazon since I bought it, and the MFC-L2740DW has come down about $60. If, when I bought this machine, the prices were as they are now, I might have sprung for the newer model.)
On the whole, I'm happy I went back to Brother. The speed of printing, scanning, and copying are hugely improved over the HP. I don't need to print in color, and I was getting increasingly annoyed by the fact that, in the HP, somehow your color ink gets depleted even if you never print in color, meaning that it would refuse to print, even in black, unless I had color ink available to it. You know that ink's not cheap, either. With this Brother, I obviously don't have that problem because it only has black toner. Now the toner is expensive (because when is it not?) but with our other Brother MFCs, I've shopped everywhere, including Costco, and found that nearly 100% of the time, if not 100% of the time, Amazon has the best price on Brother toner.
I do have a couple of issues with this MFC, and I've got an e-mail in with Brother in hopes that they can help me fix them (Edit: please see update from 12/9/15 at the bottom):
1. Deep Sleep Mode - This model does NOT have an option to disable Deep Sleep, only set it to a chosen time interval, the longest of which can be 50 minutes. According to the interwebs, older models do have the option to disable it. The problem lies in that this MFC is supposed to "wake up" from Sleep or Deep Sleep mode when you send it a print job. Pressing buttons on the printer is also supposed to "wake it up." However, neither works for Deep Sleep mode. My only option is to turn the printer off and back on again. (To its credit, my HP was screwing up and making me do that multiple times a day, and it took a lot longer to reboot.) However, even though I set the Deep Sleep mode to max out at 50 minutes, it keeps resetting itself to 01 minute, meaning earlier today my multiple print jobs that were 2 or 3 minutes apart required full restarts of the MFC in between. This is incredibly inefficient, and if Brother can't help me fix it, I'll be returning this machine. (PLEASE NOTE THE UPDATE ON 12/9/15 AT THE BOTTOM REGARDING THIS ISSUE.)
2. Stack/Sort (a/k/a Collate) - This MFC is set to "Stack" copies, meaning if you are making two copies of a 2-page document, it will print in this order: page 1, page 1, page 2, page 2. Multiply this out for longer documents/more copies, and you can see how inefficient and frustrating this could be. (Seriously, I hope you have a big table/counter and some time to organize all your copies.) I looked it up and discovered that you can change your copy options to set it to "Sort," meaning it will collate your copies (page 1, page 2, page 1, page 2, for two copies of a 2-page document). Great, right? Well, it would be if I could set that as a permanent setting, but I can't. I can only set it to Sort with each individual copy job. I can tell you that when I'm copying certain documents, that is going to get really old, really fast. My old HP required it for each copy job, too, and it annoyed me then. My guess is that collating requires that the printer use memory, then print it in order (which is why collating doesn't work fully on very large copy jobs). Stacked copies mean it doesn't store the documents in its memory, just prints them as it scans. I'm checking with Brother to see if I can set the MFC to Sort permanently, though based on my experience with the lack of permanence of the Deep Sleep mode setting, I'm not holding my breath. It's not a deal killer, but in my opinion, if they give you the option to collate at all, there should be an option to keep it that way long-term. If this is of utmost importance to you, you may need to buy a higher-level machine or an actual copier.
Overall, I expect this printer to be as reliable as our older Brother MFCs, but many of the limitations that exist in the older models still appear to exist. If they'd fix the two issues I mentioned, they'd have a perfect 5-star machine. It's hard to complain for the price, but, like I said, if they can't fix the Deep Sleep problem, I'll have no choice to send it back. I just don't have time to reboot my printer for every single print job that comes more than 1 minute past the last one.
TL;DR
Pros: solid printer, decent speed in print/copy/scan, will likely last a while, price is good
Cons: Deep Sleep mode keeps resetting to 01 minute, no option to disable Deep Sleep, issues waking up from Deep Sleep (PLEASE SEE UPDATE BELOW FROM 12/9/15), no option to collate copies as a rule instead of with each copy job
UPDATE (December 2, 2015): I have gone back and forth with Brother customer service over the aforementioned issues. They have not addressed the collate issue with copying, but I suspect that is just something I'll have to live with (and can live with). As for the Deep Sleep Mode issues, I have updated firmware, I've reset factory options and reconnected it to my network, then reset the options, I've set it up to access printer settings remotely from my computer, etc. Basically I've done everything that Brother has told me to do that they expected would fix the problem. About 50% of the time the machine will "wake up" from Deep Sleep mode if I send a print job to it, but even if I have the machine set not to go into Deep Sleep Mode for 50 minutes (the max allowable), every print job resets it to 01 minutes. So even if I just send it one page to print, I have to remember either to go to the printer itself and reset Deep Sleep Mode or to do it from my browser. It's getting very old, very quickly. Brother is allegedly going to call me to help me with this. If they cannot help me, I will be returning this machine, and I may try the MFC-L2740DW in hopes that a better machine will mean better performance and no Deep Sleep issues. I will update further.
UPDATE (December 9, 2015): I have upgraded my review to 5 stars from 4. I got a call from Brother yesterday after a bit of phone tag, and they were super. The tech was incredibly nice and friendly and didn't talk to me like I was an idiot. He didn't make me repeat the steps I'd already been instructed to do and immediately jumped to the weird fix that - get this - actually fixed the not waking up from Deep Sleep problem! The phone call was all of 10 minutes, and that included time waiting to make sure the fix worked. So far, so good. Deep Sleep Mode still resets to 1 minute after each print job, even if I set it to 50 minutes, but I don't care now that it wakes up properly when I send a print job. The tech still didn't know why that happened, but I told him that it wasn't worth trying to fix if it was waking up as it should. Also, he said that there is a way to disable Deep Sleep Mode that they had to figure out because the engineers in Japan didn't tell them about it, but I didn't care to ask further about it now that everything is working properly.
All in all, I'm very pleased with the way the issue was handled and resolved, and I am keeping my machine :)
| Controller Type | Vera, Amazon Alexa |
|---|---|
| Printer Media Size Maximum | 8.5 x 14 inch |
| Included Components | Laser Printer Toner Cartridge |
| Print media | Envelopes, Paper (plain) |
| Scanner Type | Sheetfed |
| Max Input Sheet Capacity | 250 |
| Max Copy Speed (Black & White) | 27 ppm |
| Display Type | LCD |
| Compatible Devices | PC, Laptops |
| Sheet Size | 210 x 297 millimeters |
| Wattage | 480 watts |
| Duplex | Automatic |
| Hardware Interface | USB 2.0 |
| Additional Printer functions | Copy |
| Control Method | Voice |
| Is Electric | Yes |
| Number of USB 2 Ports | 1 |
| Total USB Ports | 1 |
| Manufacturer | Brother Printer |
| Item Weight | 24.9 pounds |
| Product Dimensions | 16.1 x 15.7 x 12.5 inches |
| Item model number | MFCL2700DW |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Number of Items | 1 |
| Manufacturer Part Number | MFCL2700DW |
