The Brother MFC-L3770CDW ($399.99) is an entry-level color laser-class all-in-one (AIO) printer designed for relatively light use in small and home-based offices and workgroups. It has the same list price as our current Editors' Choice, Canon's Color ImageClass MF634Cdw. But compared with that Canon, the Brother model's paper input capacity is higher, it prints faster, and it supports near-field communication (NFC), the protocol that allows you to connect a mobile device to the printer by simply touching the former to a hotspot on the latter. Overall, it provides better value for your company's money—just enough to edge the MFC-L3770CDW into the Editors' Choice slot for entry-level color laser-class AIOs.
A Laser by Any Other Name
The MFC-L3770CDW is part of a seven-machine upgrade to Brother's line of LED (light-emitting diode) printers. Instead of deploying lasers to etch a page image on to the imaging drum prior to transferring it to the paper, LED printers use an LED array to achieve the same results. From the user's perspective, these two types of machines work identically and achieve the same results. Printer manufacturers like Brother, and especially OKI Data, sometimes deploy LED arrays in their machines because they cost less to manufacture and are smaller than traditional laser-imaging mechanisms, allowing the companies (theoretically anyway) to make smaller, less-expensive machines.
However, you couldn't tell that by comparing the MFC-L3770CDW's size and girth with its Canon MF634Cdw ($935.98 at Amazon) competitor. The MFC-L3770CDW measures 16.3 by 16.1 by 20 inches (HWD) and weighs 53.9 pounds. That's an inch here and there larger and a few pounds heavier than the Canon model, but slightly smaller and lighter than another somewhat costlier and beefier Canon AIO, the Color imageClass MF731Cdw. HP's entry-level Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw is, on the other hand, several inches smaller in all directions and weighs about 10 pounds less than the MFC-L3770CDW.
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One reason for the MFC-L3770CDW's size is that it holds about twice as much paper—280 sheets versus 151 sheets—as the Canon MF634Cdw. The more robust Canon MF731Cdw holds 20 sheets more than the MFC-L3770CDW, and HP's M281fdw ($839.72 at Walmart) can hold 29 sheets less.
All these AIOs, of course, come with automatic document feeders (ADFs) for feeding multipage documents to the scanner automatically. The MFC-L3770CDW's single-pass ADF holds up to 50 pages, and it scans both sides of a two-sided page at the same time. The MF634Cdw's ADF also holds 50 pages, as does the HP M281fdw's and the Canon MF731Cdw's ($945.00 at Amazon) , but of these three, only the MF634Cdw supports auto-duplexing, and it, too, is single-pass.
Canon rates the MFC-L3770CDW's maximum duty cycle at 30,000 pages, with a recommended print volume of up to 1,500 pages. That's the same as the MFC-L3770CDW, but 20,000 and 10,000 pages fewer than the MF731Cdw and the M281fdw, respectively.
In addition to printing from and scanning to a computer, you can configure the printer and execute walk-up commands from the MFC-L3770CDW's control panel, which consists of a 3.7-inch touch screen, a number pad, and a handful of buttons. The AIO's Web Connect section of the control panel allows you to connect to several cloud and social media sites from the touch screen (more on that in a minute). In addition, like most business-oriented AIOs and printers, you can make configuration changes and monitor the MFC-L3770CDW from its built-in secure (HTTPS) website by typing the AIO's IP address into the URL field in your browser.
Myriad Connections and Productivity Software
Chances are, no matter what devices or platforms you and your office use, the MFC-L3770CDW supports them, except for Bluetooth. Standard connection types are Wi-Fi, Ethernet, connecting to a single PC via USB, Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. Those last two are peer-to-peer protocols for connecting to mobile devices, without either of them being connected to an intermediary network. NFC allows you to print or scan by simply tapping your smartphone or tablet to a hotspot on the printer, which in this case is located on the right-front of a ledge that protrudes out beneath the ADF and in front of the output tray.
Other mobile connection options include Brother's iPrint&Scan, various third-party apps (AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria), the peer-to-peer protocols, Brother Cloud apps for scanning to destinations and applications (such as email, a printer, Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), and Web Connect (a collection of apps for connecting to cloud, social media, and other sites on the internet). Web Connect comes with several predefined destinations, including both consumer and business versions of Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and OneNote. You can edit these or create new Web Connect apps for connecting to your own favorite sites.
And finally, if all these connection options aren't enough, you can always scan to and print from USB thumb drives via the port on the left side of the chassis.
Waiting Not Required
Brother rates the MFC-L3770CDW at 25 pages per minute (ppm), which is relatively fast for an entry-level color AIO. Canon, for example, rates the MF634Cdw at just 19ppm, and the HP M281fdw is rated at 22ppm. To verify these ratings and pit its print speed against some of its competitors, I tested the MFC-L3770CDW over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC.
The MFC-L3770CDW printed my standard text documents faster than the other models discussed here. It printed our 12-page, lightly formatted Microsoft Word monochrome text document at the rate of 26.8ppm, or 1.8ppm over its rating. That's 8ppm faster than the MF634Cdw, 3.8ppm quicker than the MF731Cdw, and 5.7ppm faster than the M281fdw.
It did not fare quite as well on the color and graphics portions of my tests. When I combined the results from printing several colorful and complex PDF, Microsoft Word, and Excel documents containing business graphics and photos, the MFC-L3770CDW churned at 10.3ppm. Canon's MF634Cdw beat that, but by only 0.3ppm, making this competition close enough to call a tie, and its sibling, the MF731Cdw is, at 14.4ppm, a little faster, as is the M281fdw, by 1.5ppm.
Finally, though you probably wouldn't buy this or any other laser-class model for printing keeper photos, I tested how long the MFC-L3770CDW took to print PCMag's two standard test 4-by-6-inch snapshots. It managed an average of 18 seconds, which is in line with what I see with most other color laser machines. Seldom do any of them take longer than 30 seconds to print these images.
Above Average Business-Ready Output
Brother printers, be they laser-class or inkjet, typically churn out impeccable-looking text, with no misshaped characters or weird spacing visible in even the smallest fonts you can see without magnification, making text output more than suitable for most types of business text documents. The MFC-L3770CDW holds up to that tradition.
It also printed my Excel charts and PowerPoint graphics well. Fills were solid, with no banding or streaking, and gradients stepped evenly from one color to the next. Hairlines (smaller than 1 point) printed unbroken from end-to-end, and colors came out as expected, with no sudden shifts or other surprises.
The MFC-L3770CDW also did my several sample photos justice, though its imaging prowess doesn't quite rival a photo-centric inkjet. Even so, its photo quality is more than adequate for most business applications, such as real estate marketing material and images embedded in brochures, flyers, and newsletters. I should mention, though, that in early testing, while printing my first round of test photos and graphics, I did notice a faint yellow streak that ran from top to bottom. I was not, however, during my subsequent test runs, able to reproduce the problem.
Expectedly High Running Costs
Keeping entry-level color lasers supplied with consumables, such as toner and imaging drums, is expensive compared with higher-end, high-volume laser-class AIOs and laser alternative inkjets. The good news for the MFC-L3770CDW is that its black cost per page (CPP) of 2.6 cents is comparably low, but not low enough to allow you to print anywhere near its 1,500-page recommended print volume without spending too much money. At 15.5 cents, its color CPP is in line with competing models. But again, if you stretch your printing numbers up to the recommended print volume, it's going to cost you over time.
As a penny-pinching CFO or small business owner, the ongoing cost of using an entry-level AIO should concern you, if for no other reason than this sobering anecdote: For every 100,000 pages you print, as little as a 1-cent difference in the CPPs between two printers will cost you $1,000.
Excellent for Low-Volume Offices
Without question, the Brother MFC-L3770CDW is a great entry-level AIO. It's fast for its class, and output quality is plenty good enough for printing marketing material, such as brochures and flyers, to represent your organization's products and services. Its feature set is well-rounded, with the inclusion of a single-pass ADF and NFC. It rivals the current Editors' Choice Canon MF634Cdw in productivity and convenience features, and, in a few key areas, such as speed, capacity, and running costs, it surpasses the Canon model—all for the same list price. And that's just enough for the Brother MFC-L3770CDW to become our new top choice among entry-level laser-class AIOs.
If you're working in a higher-volume office, you should spend a little more to get an AIO with consumables that will cost you less in the long run, such as the $399 Brother HL-L8360CDW ($439.00 at Amazon) .
The Brother MFC-L3770CDW is a fast entry-level color laser-class multifunction printer that churns out quality output for low-volume offices.
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