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Brother MFC-L2750DW All-In-One Printer, Scanner, Fax

Brother MFC-L2750DW printer, scanner, fax all -in-one

About a month back, I wrote about how I was switching from HP to Brother printers because of the cost of replacement ink, and the use of color ink while printing a black only document, meaning I ended up with a load of black cartridges with 20-30% ink remaining, because the color cartridges were depleted.

So, here are my thoughts on the Brother MFC-L2750DW, not a review as such, I didn’t do any specific tests, to compare to other printers, I just used the “machine” as Brother likes to refer to the L2750DW. Please note, that I will not be going in-depth about the interface, just the core functionality.

I’ll start with the build quality, which I would describe as generally good with some flimsy, rattly parts, namely the touchscreen, which rattles when touched, but it works fine, despite the lack of quality feel, and the print and scan catchers (is that what they are called?) which feels cheap and plasticky, but it stops the prints and scans from falling on the floor, so it does its job, but for $300, I’d expect a little better.

Print quality is acceptable for our use case, which is printing mostly text documents. But, I have noticed some small issues, for example, when I print something with a lighter color solid background, there is a little inconsistency of toner application, with a darker line despite the background on screen being a solid color. And, when there is a darker image, with darker highlights on screen, it prints as a mostly black box, losing the detail of the image. Again, we did not buy the machine for photo printing, so it’s not really an issue, just be aware that less contrasty images may print with a less defined result than on screen.

Now we get to the issue I have with this machine, the unscannable area on the flatbed scanner. If I place a document against the frame at the back left of the flatbed glass as described in the manual, it cuts off 0.12in at the top and right of the document. I know of unprintable areas, this is standard for most printers, but I have never seen unscannable areas on a flatbed scanner. I have owned many scanners over the years, and none had this issue, so I question why the Brother MFC-L2750DW has this issue?

If I use the auto document feeder (ADF), it does not have the same issue with the unscannable areas. I contacted Brother support and they said this behavior is normal, pointing me to this help article. The Brother iPrint&Scan software has options to deskew scans, but it seems not to work in my testing, placing a document on the flatbed glass further away from the plastic bezels scans the whole document just fine, but it does not deskew or straighten the scan. Normally, I’d use the plastic bezel surrounding the scanner glass to align the document to be scanned, this is a no go with the unscannable area.

I have found a 3rd party scanning software called NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2), which does all the things that the Brother scanning software fails to do, which makes the MFC-2750DW better, mitigating the hardware shortfalls of the scanner, which I primarily use the machine for, I don’t print much.

The printer and scanner ADF does allow for full duplex printing and scanning, this feature works just fine, although on some occasions while scanning the rear side of the document, it scans skewed, I have had this issue with multiple brands of scanner over the years, it does not happen a lot, so I can live with it. I never used the fax functionality, as I don’t have a landline, and have not sent a fax in more than a decade.

Overall, it’s a decent all-in-one printer, scanner, and fax, it gets the job done, but knowing what I know now, would I still buy it, probably not! The unscannable areas of the flatbed glass would be a deal breaker for me. But, as I already have it all set up, with the help of NAPS2, I can live with it.

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