Brother MFC 8660DN

The multifunction device has had a successful few years recently. All of the major players in the printing industry seem to be getting in on the act and releasing their own versions. The Brother MFC-8660DN is one of those, and a strong entry into the market.

The chassis of the MFC-8660DN is pretty much the same as all the others in the MFC-8*** range. A pretty compact chassis with overhangs at the top to allow full legal sized copying and scanning. It is quiet in operation and will happily sit there and churn out pages of print for months at a time.

The Brother site says this printer will produce up to 30 pages per minute at a standard of 1200 dpi. There is an automatic duplex feature for printing only, and it would have been nice to see it include copying, but at this price point it isn’t a negative. While many companies cite money saving as the main reason for using duplex printing, we print lots of leaflets, e-books and other double sided documents, so it is a must for us.

The print quality was good, with no visible bleeding, naps or errors on our test document. Grayscale appeared a little faint, but overall was of a high standard. Scanning and copying also produced positive results with excellent reproduction.

The control panel is clear and easy to follow. Each function has a discrete set of buttons to avoid any confusion. There is also a clear five line LCD screen which displays messages, errors and menu choices. This is one of the clearest screens we have tested so far.

The standard paper capacity is a modest 250 sheets. This can be expanded by adding another 250 sheet tray. The multipurpose tray on top also holds 50 sheets, and didn’t jam once when we filled it up and ran it through. That’s quite an achievement as many of its competitors jam regularly.

The toner cartridge is easy to access and change. A replacement costs around $36 from Quikshiptoner.com and will be good for 7000 pages. A drum will last around 25000 pages and is currently around $68 to replace. Both consumables offering good value for money.

As you would expect from Brother, the MFC-8660DN is a good product. It is easy to set up, use and maintain. The fair price of cartridges makes the cost of ownership and cost per page reasonable enough to consider this a strong candidate for the small business.