Similar in most ways to the less expensive Brother MFC-7360n ($200 street, 3.5 stars) that I recently reviewed, the Brother MFC-7860DW ($300 street) adds a slightly faster engine, WiFi, and a duplexer (for two-sided printing). The additions serve as more than enough justification for the higher price. More important, they make the MFC-7860DW just a little better fit as a shared printer in an office, which is to say it’s a reasonable choice as a personal mono laser MFP, but its natural home is on a network in a micro office.
The MFC-7860DW offers all of the basic MFP features most offices need, starting with printing, scanning, and faxing from a PC as well as working as a standalone copier and fax machine. It also offers a 35-page ADF along with a flatbed, which lets it handle multipage documents and legal-size pages.
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Brother MFC-7860DW Setup and Speed
The MFC-7860DW measures 12.4 by 15.9 by 15.7 inches (HWD), which makes it smaller than many inkjets, but large enough so you may or may not consider it small enough to share your desk with. If not, it’s certainly small enough so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a spot for it nearby.
Brother MFC-7860DW Specifications
- Brother MFC-7860DW Printer Category
- Laser
- Type
- All-In-One
- Color or Monochrome
- Monochrome
- Brother MFC-7860DW Technology (for laser category only)
- Laser
- Connection Type
- USB, Ethernet, Wireless
- Brother MFC-7860DW Maximum Standard Paper Size
- Legal
- Direct Printing from Cameras
- No
- Brother MFC-7860DW Rated speed at Default Resolution (Mono)
- 27 ppm
- Standalone Copier and Fax
- Copier, Fax
- Print Duplexing
- Automatic
This speed is far from impressive. TheCanon imageClass MF4450 ($249, 4 stars) came in at 12.9 ppm on our tests, even though it has a slower engine rating than the Brother printer, and the Editors’ ChoiceCanon imageClass MF4570dn ($299 direct, 4 stars) came in at 12.3 ppm. However, the printer isn’t unreasonably slow either, and the measured speed is appropriate for the 27 ppm engine rating.
Brother MFC-7860DW Output Quality and Other Issues
Not too surprisingly, given the similar print engines, the MFC-7860DW pretty much matched the MFC-7360N for output quality in our tests—good enough for most business needs, but not particularly eye catching. Text quality is a touch below par for a mono laser, but unless you need high-quality text for desktop publishing applications or you have an unusual need for small fonts, you should find it more than acceptable.
Graphics quality is at the high end of the tight range where most mono laser MFPs fall. Depending on how demanding you are, you may or may not feel it is good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like, but it’s certainly suitable for any internal business need. Photo output, like text, is a touch below par. You may or may consider it good enough for printing photos for, say, a client newsletter, but it’s easily good enough to print recognizable photos from Web pages.
Although the MFC-7860DW doesn’t stand out for any particularly impressive capabilities, it still manages to offer an attractive balance of speed, output quality, size, paper handling, and functions. It delivers everything you likely need in an office MFP and it does everything well enough or better. That’s more than enough to make it a potentially welcome addition to a personal desktop or typical micro office.
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