Brother MFC-9970CDW Color Laser All-in-One

• Print and copy at up to 30ppm
• Wireless, Ethernet and USB interfaces
• Automatic duplex print/copy/scan/fax
• 5" Color Touch Panel display
• Up to 2400 x 600 dpi resolution

This printer is great and worth 5 stars based on the printer's abilities alone, seriously, but Brother is a apparently "very enthusiastic" about regularly (and frequently) replacing half-full toners with new Genuine Brother toners, to the tune of about $70-80 each. Yeah, right. I happily bought a refill kit which has worked fantastically in both volume and print quality. I'm not changing, nor am I wasting an extra $150-$200 every 2-3 months for my toners.

I'm writing this review because a Brother Customer Support Technician wouldn't help me reset my toners. After hearing his lecture on Genuine Brother Toners and his adamant denial to help, I offered him an analogy. I simply asked if he went to a car dealership for "Genuine" oil, brakes, service, etc. EVERY TIME he had his car serviced. He of course had no answer after recognizing his own hypocrisy. So, to help others that may end up in my situation, here's how to reset your toners.

If you have the starter cartridges, you will need to buy a refill kit of some sort, and a flag gear, or reset gear (see below for links). If that is done and you are still receiving the "Replace Toner" message, here's what to do:

1Turn on printer

2Open front door to access toners

3Hit the "Start" button for the Black and White copies on the right side of control panel

4Quickly type in the number "10" on the numerical keypad (1 then 0, quickly in succession)

5You will see a toner menu. Simply pick you color(s) and capacities and reset as needed.

You can now refill your toners to a high capacity level for about $20 each, vs. $80 for "genuine brother" toners. Your cost per page probably dropped to about 3 cents each.

THANK YOU Brother Customer Support for motivating me to post this review.

All the best everyone!

ADDITIONAL INFO 2 MONTHS AFTER ORIGINAL POST:

Print quality on multiple types of paper is just as good as "Genuine Brother" starter toners. The photo print quality of this color laser printer is lacking, but that is true for most color laser printers.

I don't have any affiliation whatsoever with any of the following companies/entities, but they posted the info I originally found, so, here's some links to take you step-by-step.

You can get toner and a flag gear here:

OR, I'm sure if you type in "Brother TN-310 or TN-315 toner refill" into ebay or google you'd come up with some links, possibly cheaper, better, etc.

Here's instructions on changing the toner and reset gear (AKA "flag gear"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9esBMg13ek&feature=related

Instructions on changing the flag gear only:I have to say thanks to everyone who has rated this review as "helpful" on Amazon, it keeps it at the top of the listings and allows more printer purchasers to avoid getting taken for a ride on the Brother-Toner-Money-Train.

Take care-

Buy Brother MFC-9970CDW Color Laser All-in-One Now

We previously had 4 laser printers that have lasted no more than a year or so each. After becoming very tired of buying the cheap throw-away units, we decided to replace our old copy machine with an All-In-One. After a bit of research, the MFC-9970 seemed to be be the best choice. Although it is quite large, we have never looked back. It has been the best machine any of us have ever used! Perfect touch screen, beautiful prints, fast, and it seems to do everything and everyone loves it! The only complaint I would have had (that's resolved now), is that the toner didn't seem to go very far before seeing the "toner is low, replace soon" message. We ran it until it refused to print another copy, and then replaced the toner. After following the instructions in the manual to a 'T', we replaced the toner and closed the access door. After the first copy, we got the same message that the toner was low. After looking through the manual and every menu, it appeared there was no place to 'reset' the message. So I called Brother and a helpful tech gave me the instructions below on how to reset the toner.

Step 1.) Open front cover to expose printer cartridges and press #1 on the number keys.

Step 2.) Scroll down to find and select the appropriate toner cartridge to reset:

K.TNR-STD (Standard Capacity)

K.TNR-HC (High Capacity)

K.TNR-S.HC (Unknown)

C.TNR-STD (Standard Capacity)

C.TNR-HC (High Capacity)

C.TNR-S.HC (Unknown)

M.TNR-STD (Standard Capacity)

M.TNR-HC (High Capacity)

M.TNR-S.HC (Unknown)

Y.TNR-STD (Standard Capacity)

Y.TNR-HC (High Capacity)

Y.TNR-S.HC (Unknown)

Now we can run our cartridges until they begin to line out before replacing them! The secret that Brother does not want you to know about. Hopefully this tip will also save others as much money as it has saved us.

Read Best Reviews of Brother MFC-9970CDW Color Laser All-in-One Here

I have two other Brother printers. One is an all-in-one inkjet and the other is a black and white laser printer. I've been happy with both of them and never had any problems. They did a fairly good job, but I wanted something a little better and thought a color laser printer would be the way to go.

This Brother MFC-9970CDW has good and bad points. First, the black printed letters are crisp and sharp. However, the color photos are only slightly above average in quality. Plus, there is some slight banding (lines) on solid prints. The banding is not too bad and hardly noticeable, but it should not do that. And I have tried everything the manual said to correct the problem, but nothing helped. Anyway, I can live with it.

The biggest complaint I have is the curling of the paper. Another reviewer is correct. The heavier weight the paper, the more severe the curling.

The speed for duplex printing is 6 pages in 1 minute and that is with plain text on one side and a map on the other side. Don't get fooled by the claims of fast printing under everyday normal conditions. In contrast, the scanner is extremely fast.

The OCR software with plain text is very accurate. Hand written text is another story and problematic at best. But then, that is to be expected.

Wireless setup was easy. The printer recognized the network then I just had to install the driver on my PC.

This printer can pull through heavy stock paper and the duplex printing is a real time saver. Plus, overall the printer does a fairly good job. However, if paper curl bothers you, then stay away from this printer.

Update on the page curling.

I discovered a way to help undue the severe curling caused by this printer. First take all of your blank paper out of the tray. Then place your printed curled paper FACE UP in the feed tray. Don't use more than about 50 pages at a time. And make sure the green sliding paper guide with 2 little hooks is in place on the end of the paper. This is necessary to hold the paper in place so the printer can pick up the sheets. Then launch a word processor. Tap the spacebar to fool the printer into thinking there is something to print. Set the number of pages to print, then tap print. After the paper runs through, the paper will curl in the other direction, but not as stiff. Take the paper in both hands and gently roll the curled ends back to straighten it. The result will be a nearly flat paper. Sounds like a lot of steps. But, try it and you'll find it only takes a matter of seconds to correct that terrible paper curl.

Want Brother MFC-9970CDW Color Laser All-in-One Discount?

I just received my Brother MFC-9970CDW a little under a week ago. So far, the print quality is significantly better than what I experienced with the Brother MFC-9840. It's almost night and day with regard to color quality. I never liked the quality of the 9840, but the 9970 provides me with much greater color quality. They certainly made an improvement in this area.

The 9970 touch screen is nice to have also. It's not a "Wow" factor for me, but it's something different, but nothing to be desired.

The 9970 seems to be made with cheaper quality plastics, which seems to make the printer a bit more fragile, but we'll see how it holds up...I've only had it for less than a week. But with that said, the 9970 also seems to be a bit more (and only a bit more) slim compared to the 9840.

My only problem thus far with the MFC-9970 is that the installation cd that came with the printer did not work properly on my Windows XP laptop. I had to go to Brother website and download the most recent installation drivers and software package. This delayed my setup of the printer a bit, because I had to restart at least two times before I realized I should just try the Brother website. Once I did, I didn't have any other problems installing the printer drivers.

I can now use my printer for business presentations and not having to run to Staples or Kinkos because the 9840 color print jobs were too embarrassing to show any client. Glad I took another chance with Brother with the 9970 because I'll finally get my money's worth.

I haven't really checked out the Control Center 4 that comes with this printer model, but hopefully they've made some improvements here too.

I'd recommend this printer to a small business looking for an all-in-one copy/print/scan/fax solution.

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I purchased this printer almost six months ago for use in a small office environment of two people. It networked fine with both computers, although I used wired rather than wireless networking. I do not use it as a fax machine or scanner at the moment so I can't really comment on those functions. It works relatively well as a copier. It has page-curl issues like most laser printers, and will occasionally wrinkle envelopes.

Like with most sub-thousand dollar printers, Brother makes most of its money selling toner, not the printer itself. I also have a Brother HL-5340D, and have been using a trick where I cover an eye on the toner with tape to extend the toner life to reasonable levels. On the 5340, my understanding is that a laser is used to measure toner level, hence why the tape works. I purchased the MFC-9970CDW thinking that the same trick would work, but I believe I am mistaken. I have been getting low toner warnings for the past month, and attempted the tape trick. Today, the printer gave a "replace toner" message and would not do anything until I replaced the black cartridge with a new one (which I had on hand). However, it is very obvious that there is still toner remaining in the original cartridge. I put it back in and it continues to print fine without any deterioration in print quality. I will be tracking how many more pages I get out of the original (starter) toner after it quit. It printed 2813 pages before the machine shut down and demanded that it be replaced. Based on other reviews I have read, people should also be aware that the machine will not print anything if ANY of the toner cartridges "need" to be replaced. So, there is no black and white printing if a color toner is bad.

Ross Kendalll's earlier review discussed some toner related issues, and I would like to expand on it. First, from what I can tell, the only way to make the printer believe that a new cartridge has been installed is to insert a new cartridge with a reset "flag gear" on it. This is a little gear on the side of the cartridge, and starter cartridges come without that gear. Because I used my new cartridge to reset the printer and then put the old starter cartridge back in, I suspect that I will need to go in and reset the flag gear on the new cartridge in order for the printer to believe that it is new once I put it back in (when the old one actually does run out of toner). There are plenty of videos online about resetting this gear, and it is also possible to buy just the gears, usually as part of refill kits. I plan to purchase such a refill kit shortly, but have not yet tried to refill a cartridge or reset the flag gear on one.

Ross Kendalll's review also discusses a method of getting into another menu if the printer does not recognize a new cartridge. Below are the instructions for getting to it:

1. Open the front panel door to the machine (as though you were going to replace a toner).

2. When the machine says to close the door, press the number "1" on the keypad. Note that this can only be done if the machine is saying to close the door. If the machine has shut down and is demanding that a toner cartridge be replaced, then I do not know of a way to access this menu.

The menu provides twelve reset options standard, high, and super-high capacity for each toner color. I went through and reset each one of them, but as best I can tell, this did NOT reset the page counters in the unit. More on this in a moment. This seems to be a method for getting the machine to recognize toners that it does not want to recognize.

There is also a "maintenance menu" for this printer. It can be accessed as follows:

1. Go to the "menu" option using the touch screen.

2. Press "* 2 8 6 4" (5 buttons)

This will bring up the maintenance menu. I note that I was not able to access this menu while the machine was demanding that I replace the toner cartridge. Only afterwards was I able to get to it. Pressing "7 7" in this menu will cause the machine to print a maintenance information page with a fair number of details on it that are otherwise not available to the standard user. Pressing "9 9" will exit the maintenance menu and go back to normal. There are other codes that can be used, and I have no clue what they do. The machine keeps an individual page count for each toner cartridge. This is how I found out that my original black cartridge caused the machine to quit after 2813 pages. This is why I also do not believe that resetting the cartridges as discussed above resets the page counts, because they showed up the same on this printout before and after I reset all of them.

I also note that I was motivated to write this after some frustrating contacts with Brother's technical support. They absolutely refuse to provide any information that might jeopardize their toner rip-off scheme. The solution to most problems is to "replace with a genuine Brother cartridge." I asked very specific questions about how I might be able to access the menu first written about by Kendalll, (which I already knew about) and was stonewalled by both chat and phone support. I have personally resolved never to buy another genuine brother cartridge so as to not reward what is essentially fraudulent behavior.

I note that the attempt to rip people off on toner is not limited only to Brother. Buyer beware.

***UPDATE*** Pages finally started to print a bit lighter with the starter black cartridge after a total page count of 4258 and a monochrome page count of 3588. This means that AFTER the machine completely shut off because it claimed the black toner cartridge needed to be replaced, I was able to print an additional 1445 total pages (1050 additional monochrome pages) before the toner got low enough for me to notice a difference in print quality.