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The Brother MFC-L5800DW ($399.99) is a monochrome all-in-one printer for small or home offices that is relatively fast and performs well overall, plus, it’s loaded with convenience and productivity features. These strengths, combined with a competitively low cost per page, make it a good value, but the image and graphics quality are just so-so, and the MFC-L5800DW ($474.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) lacks a duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF). For many would-be buyers, our current Editors’ Choice, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M426fdw ($799.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , is a better bet.
Design and Features
One of the MFC-L5800DW’s more impressive features is its large (70-page) ADF for feeding multipage documents up to legal size to the scanner. Unlike this model’s more expensive sibling, the Brother MFC-L5900DW ($529.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , the MFC-L5800DW does not have a duplexing ADF, meaning it can’t scan two-sided multipage documents without your having to turn the originals over manually. The MFC-L5900DW lists for $50 more, or $449.99; if you plan to scan two-sided, multipage documents, that’s $50 well spent.
Directly beneath the ADF you’ll find a 3.7-inch color touch screen anchoring a context-sensitive control panel that, depending on the function you select, configures itself to the task at hand. When you choose Fax, for example, a number pad appears to the right of the touch screen.
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Measuring 24.8 by 23.6 by 20.7 inches (HWD) and weighing a stout 37.9 pounds, the MFC-L5800DW is too big (and noisy) to share your desktop with you. It requires its own sturdy countertop or table. But since this printer supports Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and USB, finding a place to put it should be relatively easy. Also available for peer-to-peer routerless connections is Wi-Fi Direct, and you can scan to and print from several popular cloud sites, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, and OneNote, to name a few. Keep in mind when placing your printer, however, that while connecting directly to a PC via a USB connection is quick and simple, it is not a direct connection to the Internet, which this and all other printers require to provide access to cloud sites and several other mobile functions.
The MFC-L5800DW comes with a standard paper capacity of 300 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main paper cassette and a 50-sheet multipurpose tray for printing envelopes and other media without your having to remove the main drawer, empty it, and then reconfigure it. If that’s not enough, you can purchase additional drawers with 250- and/or 520-sheet capacity, until you reach 1,340 sheets. Now we’re talking high-volume.
Print Speed
Brother rates the MFC-L5800DW at 42 pages per minute (ppm), and that’s exactly what PC Labs got when printing our lightly formatted text document. When printing an aggregate of heavily formatted business documents with embedded business graphics and photos, as well as the aforementioned text document, the MFC-L5800DW churned at 20.3ppm, which is actually a little slow compared with its MFC-L5900DW (21.7ppm) and MFC-L6700DW (23.8ppm) siblings. Even so, this is one fast $400 laser printer.
We can’t directly measure these scores against those from printers tested with our old suite, which had a much higher percentage of pages with complex graphics and photos as opposed to text, but we timed the HP M426fdw at 16.4ppm on it, and that is fast for a monochrome MFP at its price.
Print Quality
The MFC-L5800DW’s print quality was a bit of a mixed bag. Text was superb, readable all the way down to 4 points in some fonts. Even decorative type kept its shape and remained legible at small point sizes. Photos and graphics also looked good, but not always. Seemingly dependent on the content at hand, banding and other symptoms of uneven toner application showed up too often.
See How We Test Printers
For the most part, except when you require high-quality graphics, the MFC-L5800DW’s output is acceptable, especially if you print and copy primarily text. In addition to the banding, some fine lines (aka hairlines) came out broken and unattractive. Mostly, though, these were not glaring issues, but defects that show up only on examination.
Running Cost
One of the best features is a reasonably low cost per page (CPP), which, based on Brother’s list price of its highest-yield toner cartridge plus drum unit, comes out to about 1.9 cents per page. It is one of the lower CPPs for a monochrome all-in-one printer in this price range, matching that of the Brother MFC-L5900DW.
The similarly priced Canon imageClass MF414dw delivers a CPP just shy of the 3-cent mark. This penny-a-page difference can cost you big bucks if you print in high volume. Look at it this way: A 1-cent difference in the cost per page between two printers will cost you $100 for every 10,000 pages you print. The more you print, the more you save.
Conclusion
Brother’s business printers are just that: strictly business. Typically, they print excellent-looking text and mediocre images and graphics—which, for a laser printer is much better than mediocre text and excellent graphics. If you want the latter, consider an inkjet printer. Still, the MFC-L5800DW is fast and prints well, and it does so at a competitive per-page cost.
As long as you can get by without the auto-duplexing ADF and don’t require superb graphics, we can’t think of many reasons not to buy this printer. If you do need the ability to scan and copy two-sided multipage documents automatically, then you might want to consider either of two slightly more expensive printers, the Brother MFC-L5900DW or the Editors’ Choice HP M426fdw. The latter model offers slightly better graphics quality to boot.
3.5
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Brother’s MFC-L5800DW monochrome all-in-one printer is fast, has a competitively low running cost, and performs well overall, but subpar graphics reproduction and a non-duplexing ADF reduce its otherwise strong value.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/brother-mfc-l5800dw