Brother MFC-8500 Toner Cartridges

The Brother MFC-8500 is a multifunction monochrome laser fax machine and printer designed for the small office environment. It has nearly every function an office would need, but lack of a flatbed scanner severely limits users as to what types of materials can be scanned. For color printing and flatbed scanning, the Brother MFC-9420 toner printer should be evaluated.

The Brother MFC-8500 truly has no shortage of features. It can print, scan, copy, and fax, and handles each function quite well. It has a 30-page automatic document feeder for scanning pages. The major disappointment of the MFC-8500 is the lack of a flatbed scanning surface. This means that users are limited to only scanning, copying, or faxing documents that can be fed through the document feeder, ruling out books, stapled sheets, etc. The lack of a flatbed scanner does seem to be reflected in the price, however, as the MFC-8500 is less expensive than many all-in-one machines with a flatbed scanner. Users who don't need this feature may appreciate not having to pay for it.

Scanning is otherwise very well-designed. A series of dedicated buttons allow users to send scans to a variety of locations, such as email. OCR (optical character recognition) software is included for turning paper documents into digital text.

Brother MFC-8500 toner cartridges have a capacity of 3,000 pages, and high-yield cartridges have a capacity of 6,000 pages, for only a small price difference. Using third-party compatible cartridges instead of the more expensive branded Brother MFC-8500 toner will save users even more money, especially over the long run.

Print speed is quite good, at around 15 pages per minute. Print quality is also impressive. Text is detailed and sharp, and graphics quality is average for a laser printer.

Overall, the Brother MFC-8500 is a very well-designed multifunction device. The lack of a flatbed scanning surface is its only major downside, but some users might prefer this configuration.