Marki Williams/NYT WirecutterBest for…This machine checks all the boxes for a busy home office or small business: It prints sharper text and is more durable and secure than our other picks.Small-business owners who print and scan frequently, or even fax often, should opt for a great color laser all-in-one like the Brother MFC-L3780CDW.The MFC-L3780CDW is more expensive than our other picks, but it’s capable of printing clearer text and color graphics, and can scan, copy, and fax double-sided documents. Among the color laser printers we’ve found that offer all the same productivity features as our favorite inkjet models, it’s one of the most affordable options.The paper tray in the Brother MFC-L3780CDW can hold 250 sheets, and the printer’s duty cycle is a generous 4,000 pages per month — more than enough for most small and home offices. Marki Williams/NYT WirecutterIt prints well, and fast. In our tests, the MFC-L3780CDW averaged 28.6 ppm (against Brother’s estimate of 31 ppm), making it nearly twice as fast as the MFC-J4355DW’s 16.5 ppm.Text was sharp, and graphics were similarly crisp and free of banding. As with most laser printers, images look flat; if you frequently print photos, opt for a dedicated photo printer instead.Compared with our favorite inkjet all-in-ones, this laser model struggled to reproduce beautiful-looking prints from scan jobs, and the graphics often came out duller than the source files — something that’s true for laser printers across the board.It’s designed to go the distance. The MFC-L3780CDW spools up faster than most inkjets, and its recommended duty cycle of 4,000 pages per month — double the MFC-J4355DW’s 2,000 pages — should be plenty for even the busiest home office and could satisfy many small businesses with multiple employees.Thanks to that higher duty cycle, Brother predicts you can print thousands of pages come audit season without burning out the machine.It easily handles odd-size print jobs. Unlike our other picks, it’s the only model with a 30-sheet secondary sheet tray that allows you to print odd-size print jobs without needing to feed the paper in one at a time.It’s more secure than other laser printers we’ve tested. The MFC-L3780CDW features firmware integrity and encryption protocols to ensure that the printer is less likely to be hijacked by bad actors. (That sounds absurd, but it has happened.)It also allows for directory authentication, can hold prints and faxes until you enter your credentials, and offers role-based access control for multiple users. If your work involves sensitive material, these are legitimately helpful additions.It has an integrated NFC card reader that you can optionally use for badge authentication to better protect sensitive business information. This feature allows you to print from an NFC-compatible badge by touching it against the printer, similar to a wireless mobile payment or company-assigned printer code. Our top pick, for example, only offers basic password security and no secure-print option.It’s cheap to operate over time. Per-page prices for the MFC-L3780CDW hover around 2.9¢ for printing in black and 14.4¢ for color, provided that you use the super high yield toner cartridges. It’s also broadly similar to the costs for many of the other laser printers we’ve tested.The up-front cost to replace all of the toner cartridges in super-high-yield size is an eye-popping $615 at this writing. Opting for high-yield cartridges brings the total down to $420, and standard cartridges lower it to $300, but each page costs more as a result, and you need to replace the cartridges more often.The optional subscription may save you money and stress. Like our top pick, this printer is eligible for Brother’s Refresh EZ Print subscription program, which extends its warranty and automatically delivers replacement toner at a discount when you’re running low. Plans range from $15 per month for up to 100 pages to $100 per month for up to 1,500 pages.But if you’re calculating running costs on a per-page basis, you’ll only save with this printer if you have high-volume printing needs or print a lot in color. That’s because the flat-rate toner subscription makes monochrome pages more expensive, but can make color pages cheaper.Per page costs with Refresh EZ Print range from 6.6 cents to 14.9 cents, depending on the subscription tier. Extra “sets” of printed pages cost $2 for 10 to 30 pages, depending on subscription. For business tiers, Brother also throws in free drum replacements, which would normally run about $190 a pop. Carefully consider your printing needs before signing up.The interface is easy to use. The color touchscreen is simple to operate and less frustrating than what you get on some competing models.But it has one potentially significant flaw: The MFC-L3780CDW has a touchscreen with a black-background footer. Our testers with limited vision couldn’t see this part of the menu because the black bar behind it made that portion of the touchscreen disappear from their view.Flaws but not dealbreakersThe warranty is short. Surprisingly for a business-class machine, the Brother MFC-L3780CDW has just a one-year warranty. Canon’s imageCLASS series machines, for instance, have a standard three-year warranty. For its part, HP offers just a one-year warranty but enhances it by promising on-site service within one business day.Still, Brother offers several extended-warranty options starting at $93 for the MFC-L3780CDW, including free repairs at authorized locations or next-day business shipping of a refurbished replacement model. Alternatively, joining the Refresh EZ Print subscription program can extend the warranty by two years.Its scans aren’t as good as what we saw from some competitors. In our testing, we observed pixelation, distortion, and muted colors in some scans, especially when scanning color images. We generally preferred the scans from the more expensive HP Color LaserJet Pro 4301fdw, but we think for most people this wouldn’t be a serious sticking point.
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