Brother MFC-7840W

Unless you need color prints, the Brother MFC-7840W is a good full-featured monochrome laser printer, fax, scanner and copier, reviewers say. With a duty cycle of 10,000 pages per month, relatively low toner costs and wireless networking, the Brother MFC-7840W will serve a small office well, reviewers also say. One of the few drawbacks noted in reviews (aside from not printing in color) is that there's no duplex printing (automatic printing on both sides of a page). The scanner does get some criticism in reviews, with some owners wishing that it could create searchable PDFs. If you need a color printer for a small office, reviews favor the HP Photosmart Premium Fax C309 (*Est. $250), which has duplex printing but is an inkjet, so it will be slower and more expensive to operate.

We found the best reviews at PCMag.com and Macworld, which do significant testing and assign scores that make for easy comparisons. Printer coverage is very good at ConsumerReports.org, but the Brother MFC-7840W is not rated there. TrustedReviews.com is a good source of print speeds and costs per print, both important factors for those who would want a monochrome printer. We found more than 80 owner reviews at Amazon.com, not a bad sampling considering the Brother MFC-7840W is aimed at the small-office market.