Brother MFC-L3750/MFC-L3760CDW review

The Brother MFC-L3750CDW (known in Europe as the MFC-L3760CDW) is a compact and cost effective all-in-one, aimed at small to medium business and the home office. This isn’t quite like many of the best laser printers we’ve tested. Brother calls it an LED laser printer because it’s using an array of LEDs to guide the toner particles onto the drums instead of a laser beam and this makes it appreciably smaller than Brother’s pure laser line-up. 

Thankfully, the reduced footprint doesn’t mean a reduction in functionality and you’ll find all of the key features essential for a multifunction business printer here. That includes auto duplex printing, high-res scanning and copying, a fax facility and a 50-page ADF (automatic document feed). With its laser-fast print speed and high capacity for paper and toner, this promising printer deserves an in-depth test.  

Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW: Design & build

Brother’s L37 series of LED laser printers share the same compact desktop form factor that bagged them an IF design award and the Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW looks pretty well made to me too. It’s reassuringly heavy at over 20 kilos and the off-white plastic casing feels solid and nicely rounded off. There’s a paper tray at the bottom deep enough for 250 sheets of paper and a glass scanner bed and 50-sheet ADF at the top. The control panel with its 3.7-inch touchscreen juts out of the front. When you lift this panel, the printer hinges wide open to reveal the four fairly large toner cartridges and drum units. 

All the cable sockets are at the rear, apart from the front-facing USB Host port. I’m always glad to see one of those on a business printer for walk-up printing from a thumb drive. And behind the front flap above the paper out tray, is the multipurpose input tray for inserting single sheets, which is ideal for printing on envelopes or headed letter paper. Like many of the best printers we’ve tested, the Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW is a typical, but tidy example of multifunction laser printer design.  

Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW: Features & specifications

As the upper middle model in Brother’s 37 series, the Brother MFC-L3750/MFC-L3760CDW has a pretty high specification and only lacks a few premium features. There’s no NFC module and it cannot auto duplex scan for example. Despite the large ADF, you will still need to turn the document over yourself in order to copy the other side. It’s a pity because rival machines like the Canon i-Sensys MF735Cx do offer single pass 2-side scanning.

What it can do is auto duplex print and copy A4 documents at 600 x 1,200 dpi. The ADF will copy a stack of 50 sheets and the paper in-tray holds 250. It comes with toner cartridges capable of printing up to 1,000 color and 1,000 monochrome pages, which is okay, but not great. However, it can accept high yield cartridges that should deliver up to 2,300 color pages and 3,000 mono and their CPP (cost per page) is very competitive.

You are also getting 5GHz Wi-Fi with AirPrint compatibility, all the essential security features including Secure Print and a fax modem. And like most printer manufacturers, Brother offers a subscription service with this purchase, entitling you to discounted toner which will be sent to your address before you run out. An EcoPro sub could save up to 72% on your consumables cost.

The print speed is given as 26ppm (pages per minute), which is impressive, but that’s in simplex mode. When auto duplex printing, things slow right down to 10ppm, which is no faster than many of the best inkjet printers. The FPOT (first page out time) is an unremarkable 14 seconds.

Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW: Setup & operation

I had no trouble setting up the Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW, which comes with a clear quick start guide. First you have to remove all of the transport tape and take out the four toner cartridges so you can reinstall them without their packaging. Next, load some paper, turn it on and follow the on-screen prompts to get your printer onto your wi-fi network. 

Brother has a good companion app called Mobile Connect for Android/iOS that will help you with this step. The app also makes remote printing and scanning easy. Operating the printer in person is simplified by the 8.8cm color touchscreen. In short, this is a very user-friendly machine. 

Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW: Performance

The Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW printed quite quickly and well in our quality tests, with no problems or paper jams. Simplex printing is very fast, but as mentioned, the first page out time and duplex printing speeds are significantly slower, making this slightly below the average print rate for a laser printer in this class. 

Turning out plain pages of monochrome text is what this printer is best at. Each character is clearly and lightly rendered so that it’s easy to read even at very small point sizes. Printing in color takes exactly the same time, but the palette looks a little pale. The CMY toner is still vivid enough to create satisfying pages, it’s just not as punchy as other lasers at this price achieve. That’s more evident when printing photographs. Black and white shots look nicely detailed, especially on quality laser paper, but color snaps look rather flat. But then, this isn't designed to be the best photo printer. The Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW is a business laser printer, not an inkjet, so I won’t mark it too harshly for that. 

The large 50-sheet ADF worked smoothly, drawing in a stack of pages without a hitch and copying them. It’s a pity only manual two-sided copy is available, but at least our duplicate test pages were accurate, if a little more faded than the original.   

Brother MFC-L3750/MFC-L3760CDW: Final verdict

As office all-in-ones go, the Brother MFC-L3750CDW/MFC-L3760CDW ranks highly, thanks to its reasonable all-round performance. It’s not the fastest, or the most cost efficient, nor is it the best print quality, but it does each of those things well and packages it all up in a compact, easy-to-use machine that won’t break the bank. It can churn out wonderfully crisp and consistent pages of text in simplex mode, while duplex pages emerge quite slowly and colors look a little muted. There’s not a huge amount of toner in the box, but very high yield cartridges are available, which will give you a competitive cost per page. It can also make faithful duplicates with its 50-sheet ADF, though it lacks the ability to copy both sides automatically. There’s no NFC either, but it does have a decent touchscreen interface and a fair amount of room for paper and toner. All in all, the pros outweigh the cons and we have no reservations in recommending this multifunction printer as one of the best small business printers for home workers and small to medium sized organizations. 

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