Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was my first Brother printer; I've been wanting to try out the Brother brand for a while, as they've made decent and reliable small business printers for years (at least as far as I know of them). It seems they're really pushing into the consumer territory, and with the major manufacturers (HP, Canon, etc) all having their various failings, now might be the best time to switch to a different brand. Overall, let me just summarize at the top that this printer is functional, does everything it should quite well, except the print quality is pretty mediocre and the plastic paneling is very very cheap. Now, that may sound like I'm unimpressed with the printer, but that would be wrong. I think the cheap paneling isn't that big a deal so long as you treat it with care, just don't go and plop something heavy on top or else you'll probably obliterate the thing. My previous printer was a Canon MX700, and the plastic was very thick on it and the printer lasted for years (but scanned pretty poor quality). I don't have kids or anything that might break the printer so I'm not too worried, and for a personal printer it should be fine, I just wouldn't have it necessarily as a printer for a whole small office due to its brittleness. The print quality gets the job done, but I wouldn't expect even high quality prints of documents (that are meant to show to prospective clients for example) and certainly wouldn't even attempt photo printing. But, if you need high quality color documents, FedEx Office/Kinkos/etc are always there, and WalMart/Costco will print photos that will blow away all but the highest end printers (which would cost thousands, I know I used to work for Costco's photolab and now work in digital media). In fact, the printing of this machine reminds me of the old color dot-matrix printers (even makes that irritating "rrreerrr" noise as the print head moves back and forth). Speaking of noise, its pretty quite, but does make that high-pitch noise as the print head moves around, but its pretty muffled and certainly acceptable. Other pros of the machine include its rich feature set (duplexing, ADF, wireless, etc). The wireless worked easy for me; I did have to install software from the CD and it installed some irritating taskbar software with popups for updating (didn't remember seeing that listed through the install prompts). I like the paper tray being within the machine in the front instead of paper sticking out the back like many consumer machines, and the print cartridges are really easy to replace as the door is located in the front of the machine (no having to prop up the lid to change cartridges). Like I said, the cons aren't really a big deal nor a deal breaker, just don't expect this to be a shared frequent-use high-quality printer. It fits its niche quite well, and for all of its cheapness it seems intelligently designed (like my Civic, cheap parts but also designed to run forever). I'm satisfied with it for the price, and have no problems recommending it to people needing a cheap all-in-one printer for their personal use.