Review by P. Nguyen:

i have used this paper with the HP color laserjet CP1518NI and here is my impression:

(1) can print on either side (less confusion)

(2) better gloss, color, resolution, overall photo quality compared to inkjet photo paper having same weight/brightness.

(3) however, overall photo quality is slightly less than a good inkjet printer with inkjet high-gloss photo paper.

recommended this paper for the color laser printer.

Review by R. Martin:

This paper looks and feels to be good quality, but it did not perform at all with my Samsung 310-series laser printer. The ink variously smudged, lifted, smeared and flat out refused to adhere to the paper. It worked out much better in my Kodak inkjet (where I have had no issues with any type of paper). Apparently this paper was designed only to work with HP ink and printers, so if you are using any laser printer other than an HP, do not invest in this product.

Review by R. Hartberg:

[...] Yes, you have to buy a separate USB cable and its probably a good idea to buy extra ink cartidges, so the price does go up a little, but that’s pretty similar to most printers.

For 9, I was very surprised at the quality of my pictures. Vivid, clean, sharp pictures. I had to almost kiss the photo to see that it was printed off of a printer and not developed. (Pictures taken with a 3.2 MP Nikon Coolpix). Another great thing was that the setup was a sinch, so I was able to print pictures quickly. Lastly, this model (over the 7850) gives you the option to link the camera directly to the printer or insert your camera’s memory card into the front of the printer so that you don’t even need a computer. (There are some editing limitation with this option, but at least there’s the option.) Lastly, there is an extra paper tray for borderless 4×6 photopaper. Nice.

The only complaints I have are that the software is not super intuitive, but I would only dock my rating about a quarter point for that, because the software does offer some nice options like making calendars or brochures, etc. Also, for great B&W photos, you’d have to buy a third cartridge (though there is a storage space built into the printer for an extra cartridge).

Overall, excellent printer for the price.

Review by Christine B:

I was in the market for a new inkjet and finally settled on this printer. The photo output is awesome and it’s very fast!

There are only two things I would comment on that new users might not be aware of. I was ready to return the printer as I thought it was defective until I found out what the problems were.

1) When the cartridges dry out, it will tell you that the cartridges are incompatible. This was confusing as I did have the correct cartridges in the printer. A “replace cartridge” message would have been less ambiguous.

2) The printer has so far appeared “dead” once. When I went to turn it on, it would not do so. The solution is on HP’s website – you must remove the rear door and do a hard reset. I did this and the printer worked fine again.

The printer does not come with a USB cable, but those can be easily bought for -20.

Review by Guapo Gringo:

Our TV is a Samsung, so we thought we’d try out this printer b/c of the price. Print quality is pretty good, setup is quite easy, and it’s very quiet. It’s also a networkable printer (Ethernet and WiFi) so it was a no-brainer on which one to get.

The only “gripe” I have w/ this printer is the wireless setup–it is not very easy to do and the manual wasn’t as detailed as it should have been. Basically, the printer uses 802.11b/g to connect to your wireless base station.

The easiest way to setup the printer that I’ve found is to do the following…

Install the software (Mac or Windows)

Change the IP address to a static one on your network that is compatible w/ your router (ex. If your router is 192.168.1.1, then make the printer 192.168.1.2).

Set the gateway to point to the router(ex. 192.168.1.1).

Restart the printer, and you’re in business.

This was NOT how it was explained in the manual… it ended up taking longer following the instructions in the box, than it did to just do it myself. I’m no genius, but you can tell that the people who wrote the manual were not the people who were using it, or had done it so many times that they forgot a few steps.

Excellent printer, just tread lightly when setting up the network/wifi connection.

Review by tamacn:

Purchasing supplies for my inkjet printer was running up the $$$. Remembering the old days when we had the office Laserwriter, reminded me how many prints you could get on one cartridge.

We stopped by the local Office Max to see what was available. I thought I was in the market for a mono laser printer. The knowledgeable sales person showed us the 315. I asked him to print a couple of pages and was satisfied with the output. I would have purchased it on the spot, however they didn’t carry the 315W… and I wanted a wireless printer.

This gave me time to come home and check it out on the net. The reviews ran the gamete from “Great” to “Don’t buy”. After consuming reviews till I was dizzy, I decided to place my order on Amazon. I had the printer in 3 days…all in good order.

After trying it out for a few days here is what i Have found out.

Negative reviews. I really don’t get this… Anyone who has been around laser printers knows that inkjet photos are far superior. I didn’t purchase this with great color printing in mind. I’ll use my Canon inkjet for that.

Set up for WiFi is very difficult. This I completely agree with. I have a Mac (long time user) and I finally had to give up and call Samsung.

Samsung tech support is worthless. I think they finally got tired of hearing this. I talked with a bright young fellow who nursed me thru the WiFi maze. Come to find out my cable has a dynamic IP and is always changing. He helped me switch it to a static IP. After that it worked perfect. Yes, he even knew all about the Apple Airport router. I would give wireless setup a try, then call before you blood pressure gets too high. It was a good experience.

After I got the printer going, I was able to connect my MacBook immediately.

Smell on start up… Yes it does, but by the next day it was gone.

Print quality poor. I don’t get this one. If you are printing monochrome, It’s as good as most laser printers. If you are printing a jpeg image that has black type in it… the image is seen as color and you get some haloing around the letters. Some documents are fine some are poor. I lay out my printed matter with this in mind and get great looking prints.

Toner… You can find pretty fair prices on the web. I’ve decided to give refilling a try. It doesn’t look to difficult. It sure beats the cost of replacing the cartridges. We’ll see what happens.

Instructions. Print out the PDF manual. Pretty good info there. The printed matter that comes in the box is next to useless.

There is plenty to be said on the plus side. How can you beat a color laser printer for 0?

I’m very satisfied with the quality of the printer and the looks of the printed page. Now let’s see how much the cost per page drops.

Review by M. Madej:

I bought the Canon imageCLASS MF3240 about a month ago, and so far it has exceeded my expectations. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is in the market for a multifunction device without the need to print in color. If you prefer getting your digital photos printed by an online or in-store photo processor, a laser multifunction is usually the way to go — since it’s a lower cost per page, it’s faster, and the output is better quality than an inkjet.

APPEARANCE/CONSTRUCTION:

You can tell that it’s a sub-0 machine by the construction. Don’t expect the same kind of solid feel that you’ll get from a much more expensive piece of equipment. A few of the plastic parts feel a little flimsy, like the paper tray. But they all seem to work fine, and I don’t have any concerns about durability. Unless you’re really tough on your office equipment, you should be ok.

The MF3240 isn’t the sexiest looking multifunction out there (if you’re looking for a great looking device, try the Canon PIXMA MP830, which uses inkjet technology so you can print in color too). In fact, my wife keeps saying the MF3240 looks like a cooler sitting on the desk. But the buttons are laid out logically on the keypad, and from the investigating I’ve done into a lot of different multifunction devices, the footprint on this one seems to be a reasonable size.

PERFORMANCE:

So far, so good. If you’re really a stickler for the highest output possible — if you need the most crisp, darkest text and flawless images — this probably isn’t the machine for you. Don’t get me wrong…the output is very good, borderline excellent. But you can tell that it wasn’t printed on a ,000 heavy-duty laser printer.

This baby is fast! Total time for the first page to arrive in my hand after clicking the Print button (including warmup time) was 13 seconds. It’s considerably faster warming up than my old HP laser printer.

It’s not the quietest machine I’ve ever heard, but I wouldn’t call it too loud either.

It has a toner saver mode, but I’d call this an annoyance. You’re supposed to be able to set the toner saver either directly on the printer control panel or through the printer driver. I’ve tried a number of times to set up two profiles: one that uses toner saver and another that doesn’t. It works sometimes, but other times it’ll end up in the wrong mode. Even when I get it to work, I don’t notice much of a difference in output between toner saver mode and the regular mode.

I’ve also been having a minor problem with the fax. I have the MF3240 hooked up to my phone line, and a phone extension hooked into the fax machine. The fax machine is set in Manual mode, so it shouldn’t do anything unless I take action on my own. But I’ve had one or two phone calls on the extension that’s hooked up to the fax where the machine hangs up on the person I’m talking to after about 10 minutes! If I can’t get this problem to stop, I may end up getting a splitter for the phone line and hooking the phone extension into the line separately.

SOFTWARE:

It comes bundled with a light version of OCR software. I tried it once, and it seemed to recognize every single word on the page I scanned. I was quite impressed — much better than older versions of OCR I’ve tried (although I must admit this is the first OCR software I’ve tried in at least 6-7 years, so I’m sure the technology is much better now).

It also installs a piece of software called Canon Multifunction Toolbox 4.9. This is the most pleasant surprise I’ve experienced with this printer so far. It allows you to click one button, go through a couple simple settings, and then get a scan and go straight to an e-mail, or straight to a PDF, etc. The smartest feature is that it allows you to pick a target file size, and it’ll adjust the resolution to achieve that file size. So it eliminates trying to scan something and then finding out the resulting file is 20MB, then needing to go back and re-scan it at a lower resolution before you e-mail it. You simply pick your target file size (let’s say 1MB) and the software will scan your document at the proper resolution to achieve that file size. Very smart!

OVERALL:

Amazon has even knocked ten dollars off the price since I bought it…now it’s going for about one hundred fifty bucks…so it’s an even better value today. This is a very good multifunction device for light/moderate home or home office use. Given the chance to do it all over, I’d definitely buy the MF3240 again.

Review by C. LI:

Pros:

- Inexpensive (I paid 5.99/free shipping here at Amazon which is amazing considering all the functions I get from this solid machine)

- Good computer printing… it does what a b/w laser printer is supposed to: great on text and ok on graphics. It does a comparable job as my previous HP LJ1100 laser printer. Internal paper tray which holds 250 pages is an improvement over my HP.

- Appropriate scanning result. Good for document archiving purpose. I tried to scan an old color photo and print it in another color inkjet printer. The result is beyond my expectation.

- Copier does what it is supposed to. Pretty easy to operate and configure different settings.

Cons:

- FAX function in general is a dispointment. First, if I connect the printer with my phone (i.e.,in-line or serial), the printer “wakes up” from idle mode whenever I pick up the phone. I have to use a splitter to avoid this nuisance. As a result, I pretty much need to set it to Manual mode for FAX. Also, as other people mentioned, there is no auto feeder for FAX. Fortunately I only use FAX occasionally.

- A little too loud for my taste. I have seen many other models that are much quieter than this.

Bottom line:

If you are like myself who does not use FAX that frequently, you will love this unbelivable bargain. It does everything I used to get done at Kinko’s at 6!

Review by Artemis:

The photo paper appears to be the same quality in every way as the kind my photos have been printed up on at the drug store.

If that’s what you’re looking for, buy with confidence.

Review by J Diamond:

Just wanted to let people know that the pictures come with removable tabs on the photo paper. Makes the pictures look cheap!

Review by P. H. Sherrod:

I am very pleased with my Brother MFC-9440CN. Here are some positive and negative points:

— Positive –

It is very easy to set up. I have it configured for access through Ethernet, and it was far easer to get set up than other network printers I’ve installed. Other setup options are easy to understand and set. It also supports USB and parallel connections. No printer cables are provided. Software installed quickly and without problems under Windows XP.

Black and white print quality is outstanding — as good as any printer I’ve ever used.

The print speed is very good.

Is a very solid machine (it takes two people to lift it). It feels like it is built to last. (see negative comment below)

Copying is easy, and there is an option to collate copies of multipage documents (they call this “stacking”).

Toner cartridges are reasonably priced on a cost/page basis.

It has a front auxiliary paper feeder that can be used for envelopes or other media. I find this extremely valuable.

I haven’t had any paper jams.

I have successfully printed color CD labels using Neato label material. It handled the thick material fine, and the image was good.

Faxes are easy to send.

— Negative –

It takes 30 seconds for the first copy to be completed when you do the first print while it’s cold. I have an HP 2420d that gets the first copy out in 7 seconds flat.

The machine is heavy and large. Don’t try to move it by yourself. (see positive note above).

The color saturation is not as deep as I would like. Don’t misunderstand, the color is good, but when printing something like a bar chart with deep, solid colors, the colors aren’t as deep as I would like. There may be some setting to adjust this, but I haven’t found it.

The machine makes more noise than my HP 2420d, but the noise is not objectionable.

The machine draws a lot of power. My room lights dim when it is warming up.

Overall summary: Very fine color laser printer that is easy to set up, easy to use, fast, and solidly built. I have no regrets with the purchase.

Review by Ovidiu Predescu:

I was looking for a device to replace my aging HP OfficeJet D145, which started to have problems printing color. I was looking for a multi-function device that can print, fax and occasionally scan. I also wanted duplex capability, so I can save paper by printing double-sided.

I read great reviews of this unit, and I saw it in action in a local store. The only thing which I wasn’t clear about was the duplex capability. Amazon lists it as having this capability, but Brother’s own web site does not. Since I bought this device I can positively confirm it does NOT have duplex capabilities.

Nevertheless I was not willing to step up to its bigger brother, the 9840cdw, since it’s just bigger, heavier and in my opinion not as nice looking as this unit.

I was looking for a silent machine, both when it’s printing but also during its sleep time. For a home office printer I don’t want more noise in it. This unit is rated at 30db noise. It’s whisper quiet while sleeping, and not too loud when printing. It’s certainly louder than the D145. There is a big fan on the right hand side of the printer that makes a lot of noise. When the printer boots up or prints the first page after it’s been waken up from sleep, it tends to make a lot of noises for about 40 seconds. When not in sleep mode, the first page comes out in some 21 seconds, which is really fast and exactly as stated on Brother’s web site.

The print quality is excellent! If you’re using an inkjet for your day to day prints, you should look at outputs from laser printers. I’ll still be using my Epson printer for photo prints, but for quick pictures for my kids to take at school, I’ll be using this machine.

This device comes with 64MB of RAM inside it. You may want to buy some more memory if you’re printing graphics intensive pages. This should help speed up the printing process quite a bit. Since I couldn’t find specs on what memory works within the printer, here is it. You need PC-100 or PC-133, 144 pins, SDRAM memory chips of 128MB, 256MB or 512MB. If you have a computer older than 3 years that you’re thinking of recycling, it’s very likely the memory from it will work in your printer.

I setup the printer with a static IP address in my home network. I have mostly Macs, but also few WinXP and Linux systems. On Macs you need to install the PPD package only, to get the minimum printing functionality. On WinXP adding the printer manually and pointing it to the driver on CD will do its job. On Ubuntu Linux you can simply add the printer, and the system will recognize its type and indicate to you the manufacturer and its type. What an easy setup, it couldn’t have been easier!

By comparison, I struggled few days to get my old HP working on MacOS X when I got the new Intel systems. Their drivers were PowerPC only and were working really badly on Intel. Even their PowerPC versions were years old and no longer maintained, making switching to a new major OS X release a major pain. A networked printer such as this Brother makes it so much easier to integrate in your network.

You can manage the printer in multiple ways. By far the most convenient way is via your Web browser. This way you can access the printer from any computer in your network, without having to install anything.

One bonus feature I found is the ability to scan a set of pages and have them uploaded via ftp to a machine in your network or on the Internet (I would advice against doing that). This way you can scan your documents and have them uploaded on your main machine without having to start an application on your computer. If you want to do this though, there is a bundled application that you can run on your computer, that connects over Ethernet to the machine and scans your documents. I tested it on MacOS X and it works great.

One weird thing is not with the printer but with Amazon. I decided to buy this printer when I saw it drop to 0. With Amazon Prime I got free 2-day shipping, so I decided to buy the unit. After I got the machine, I noticed the price went up to 0! So if you’re not in a hurry, you may want to wait until the price drops some more.