Small footprint, well integrated Ethernet access, large paper storage space, inexpensive (compared to HP) toner, and a document feeder, all at a very low price. In my past experience with Brother printers and fax machines they are extremely reliable and easy to setup and that is why I chose to go with a Brother. With a infrequently used copier the inkjet versions will clog and as the ink dries out in the print heads and they are a lot slower and in the long run a lot more expensive with the cost of consumables.
Setup was fast and easy and the Nuance scanner software is great and an improvement over that provided with older models from Brother and the software from HP which is so bloated that it often fails to even install properly.
Nice feature is the ability to register a PC by name when installing the software. Then when scanning a document you can select the destination computer from the Brother and push the scan to the desired PC. Very easy and very slick implementation and it works!
Nuance software also provides for scanning to the customary TIFF or JPEG formats but by default will scan and output a PDF file which is a real timesaver for scanning a document to email to someone. I would pay for the free Nuance software for this feature alone.
Printing to the Brother MFC7360N wakes it out of sleep mode (actuall "deep sleep") and outputs a page in seconds. It is roughly four times as fast as my HP 4000TN printer to output the first page. The Brother does suck up a lot of power when it comes out of sleep mode and the alarm goes off on the UPS that is on the same circuit. I suspect it probably should be on its own circuit or a 20amp circuit to avoid any problems with other devices.
Scanning is very fast and with standard large images works as expected. With text pages though the borders have a shadow pattern on the page on both sides that is generated within the machine. For OCR or most images this is not going to be a problem but not great for making scans of text pages for electronic archival purposes. This problem only affects scans and does not happen when making a copy of the same printed page so it may be a problem with the Nuance software.
It also is extremely noisy with a loud hum and loud fan noise when it is first turned on or after a page is printed. It goes into standard and then sleep and then deep sleep mode and the fan does not shut off until it reaches "deep sleep". The MFC really needs to be in a separate room with a door you can close. Turning the unit on and not even printing or scanning it goes into standard mode and I timed how long it took for the fan to shut off. It takes a full 11 minutes before the machine goes into deep sleep mode and its very loud fan shuts off. Has to be a defect in the design as the cooling fan cycles even when the MFC7360N is first turned on and nothing has been printed. This could be fixed with a firmware upgrade but apparently Brother has not bothered to produce one.
I paid $179.97 for this printer on August 24, 2011 and a week later it is priced at $114.99 which, if you can put it in a separate room, makes this a good value with the low cost of the Brother consumables.
The noise is loud and atypical of laser printers. Most recently I bought a Canon 4570dn all in one and after it prints a page it shuts down immediately and it is completely silent. The 11 minutes of fan noise from the majority of Brother laserjet printers is a fairly recent defect as I have had other laserjet printers from Brother that did not exhibit this behavior and were extremely reliable.
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89 of 96 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Monochrome Blues, March 27, 2011
This review is from: Brother Printer MFC7360N Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax and built in Networking (Office Product)The field of monochrome all-in-one AIO laser printers lags behind the more ubiquitous inkjet AIO units. I needed an economical solution for scanning and printing documents. It didnt' make sen$e to keep buying expensive ink replacements from the inkjet printer. I settled on the Brother MFC-7360N. The unit is somewhat noisy when using ADF (auto doc feeder) and acceptable when printing. Construction is plasticy but so are most printers these days.
Some other drawbacks:
- Cannot change the default directory where images are stored on your computer
- Takes about 30-min to install the drivers & sw on one computer. sooooo slowwwww
- The little display window is hard to read even at its highest contrast setting! Wow, bizarre.
- M-F (no weekend) customer support
The printer is acceptable and not too expensive. The software for Mac is quite full-featured but not robust. UI is a weak point. I learned to workaround its quirkiness. The printer is great if you just want an efficient machine at a modest price. Once you get used to the software, it will allow to be quite productive. Scan multi-page docs to create single-file PDF (had problems scanning 6 pages, insufficient RAM??) but no problem combining scanned pages later to gen PDF.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Brother MFC 7360N, June 14, 2011
This review is from: Brother Printer MFC7360N Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax and built in Networking (Office Product) Only had this printer for about three weeks but I like it so far. Warm up is quick, about 15 seconds from cold start to the first printed copy. Have it installed as a network printer so I can print wirelessly from my notebook through my router. I like the fact that Brother has one of the less expensive toner cartridges on the market. I would recommed this multi-function printer to anyone in a home enviroment (where I use it) to a small office. We have several Brother printers similar to this one at work and use them mostly for fax and some light copying.