Although the Brother MFC-L2900DW XL mono laser all-in-one (AIO) printer looks much like the Brother MFC-L2820DW XL and is only a modest step up in price at $349.99, it’s a big step up in capability. Its automatic document feeder (ADF) offers single-pass duplexing (two-sided scanning), a necessity for anyone who needs to scan, copy, or fax duplex pages. Its street pricing is higher than that of some older models with similar scan capability plus faster speed and higher paper capacity—including the Canon imageClass MF455dw, one of our top picks in this category. However, the MFC-L2900DW offers these scanning capabilities in a smaller printer, making it a better fit if flat space is at a premium. This Editors’ Choice winner is ideal for micro-to-small-office or personal use.
Design: No Need to Buy Toner for a Long Time
As with the MFC-L2820DW, Brother sells the MFC-L2900DW both by itself and in a version that adds an “XL” after the model number, costs an extra $50, and packs an extra toner cartridge in the box. Given that the cartridge lists for $84.99, it’s hard to see why anyone would choose the $50 savings for the non-XL version. That said, I’ll refer to both versions as the MFC-L2900DW from here on.
Setup is straightforward. The printer weighs 28.1 pounds and measures 12.5 by 16.1 by 16.6 inches (HWD). Most people should find it small and light enough to unpack and move into place without help. It’s also small enough to at least consider sharing a desk with. As with other Brother models we’ve tested recently, the toner cartridge (meaning the cartridge that you start with) comes separately in the box but is already mounted on the drum unit. The physical setup consists of little more than loading paper and inserting the combination of cartridge and drum unit in the printer.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Downloading and installing the driver and utilities is also straightforward, with the mostly automated installation routine asking whether to use Wi-Fi or a wired connection. (I used Ethernet for our tests, but the setup option works for USB as well.) You can also download an app to your iOS or Android device for mobile printing and scanning.
Paper handling is suitable for up to moderate-duty printing in a small or home office or for personal use, thanks to the 250-sheet drawer and single-sheet bypass tray. Both can handle up to legal-size paper, including for auto duplexing. Brother’s recommended monthly maximum is up to 2,500 pages. However, the company doesn’t offer optional add-on trays for this model, so if you don’t want to refill the printer more than once a week on average, the more realistic monthly maximum would be 1,000 sheets, or a little less than 2,000 pages (with one page on each side of each sheet) if you print mostly in duplex.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
For scanning, the 50-page ADF can handle up to legal-size paper, and the printer has a letter-size flatbed for scanning book pages or delicate originals you don’t want to send through the ADF. In addition, it’s worth noting that the single-pass duplexing works for scanning, copying, and faxing, which isn’t true for all duplexing AIOs.
It’s impossible to come up with a definitive cost per page for a printer because its running cost will vary depending on how much you print. The two cartridges that come with the XL model are rated at a total of 4,200 pages. Once you’ve run through both, the cost for a two-pack of high-capacity cartridges works out to 2.5 cents per page. However, if you print enough to need a new drum, which is a separate unit rated at 15,000 pages, the cost works out to an additional 0.9 cent per page. In short, the actual cost per page over the printer’s lifetime will depend on how many drums, if any, you wind up needing and how many pages you actually print with the final drum.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Keep in mind the key cost to consider is the total cost of ownership, which means the initial price plus the running cost, which we discuss in detail in How to Save Money on Your Next Printer. Complicating matters further is that instead of buying individual toner cartridges, you can choose the optional EZ Refresh subscription plan. Brother says it can potentially save 50% on toner costs, but that assumes your printing needs exactly match the number of pages included in the plan. (For more on EZ Refresh, see How to Save the Most Money on Printer Ink.)
Testing the MFC-L2900DW: Solid Performance and Output Quality
To judge the MFC-L2900DW’s performance in context, I compared it with the MFC-L2820DW, the Canon MF455dw, and the HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3101sdw, which is closely matched in rated speed and list price to the version of the MFC-L2900DW that lacks the extra cartridge. As expected from each printer’s speed rating, the MF455dw was the fastest in the group in our tests, and the key differences in speed among the other three were due to their first-page-out (FPO) times, rather than the speed starting with page 2.
For simplex (one-sided) printing of our 12-page Word file, the MF455dw took first place for both the FPO time and time for the rest of the file. The other three showed only a 2-second difference for FPO time from fastest to slowest (putting them a few seconds behind the Canon printer after the first page) and were tied for the rest of the file, which made them nearly tied for the full file.
For real-world use, this translates to the Canon printer being the fastest in this group for any length text file, but not by more than a few seconds for anything much shorter than about 30 pages.
The FPO time had a much greater impact on results for the full business applications suite, which adds five short Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files.
The Canon printer still took first place for each additional file and the full suite, but the other printers had notable differences. The HP printer delivered a faster FPO time for the additional files than it did for the Word file, essentially matching the Canon printer on each and earning a close second place overall. The Brother printers both maintained the same FPO time we saw for the Word file, with the MFC-L2900DW eking out a small advantage on each test. So it was definitively slower than the second-place HP but only slightly faster than the other Brother printer.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
We also saw a little more difference among the printers for duplex printing of the Word file. For the full 12 pages, the MF455dw was again in first place for the full file by a solid 17 seconds, while the three others were effectively tied.
As the chart above shows, however, there were significant differences among the three both for FPO times (which in this case means pages 1 and 2 on the first sheet) and the speed starting with page 3. The Brother models were essentially tied on both scores. The HP printer was slower for its FPO time than either but notably faster for the rest of the pages. These differences came close to canceling each other out for the 12-page file. For a printer sitting on or near your desk, however, the MFP 3101sdw would be noticeably slower than either Brother printer for a one- or two-page file and significantly faster for files much longer than 12 pages. Whether you’ll consider it faster or slower for real-world use will depend on the length of the documents you print most often.
For photo printing, the MFC-L2900DW averaged 9 seconds for a 4-by-6-inch photo.
Text quality for MFC-L2900DW in our tests was more than acceptable for most offices but a clear step below top tier for a mono laser. One italic font was a little hard to read at anything smaller than 8 points, but all of the non-italic fonts we tested that would likely be used in business documents were well-formed and easily readable at 6 points. Some were easily readable 4 points also, despite thin and occasionally broken lines when viewed through a loupe. Two highly stylized fonts with heavy strokes were easily readable at 8 points.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Graphics were at roughly the same quality level for a mono laser as the text overall, making them good enough for most purposes. I saw some banding and minor dithering in solid fills and gradients, as well as minor posterization (shading changing in steps rather than gradually) in the most demanding gradients in our tests. However, simple line graphics delivered crisp lines, and thin lines generally held. Most important, none of the graphics lost any information, though a single-pixel-wide line on a black background in one line graph turned into a dashed line in some portions, and a thicker line rendered in a dark enough gray that you might miss it if you weren’t looking carefully.
Photos were at the high end of what you might expect from black-and-white newspaper quality. I saw some banding and minor dithering, similar to what I saw with graphics, but shadow detail held nicely.
Verdict: The Best Printer for Duplex Scanning in a Small Office
The MFC-L2900DW’s standout feature is its ability to scan in duplex. If you never deal with two-sided documents, consider the MFC-L2820DW, which limits its ADF to simplex scanning but is otherwise similar to the MFC-L2900DW. Similarly, if you need to scan in duplex only occasionally, be sure to consider the HP MFP 3101sdw. The HP model’s manual duplexing lets you place a stack of paper in its ADF to scan one side, then reinsert it to scan the other, after which the printer automatically interfiles the pages in the right order. It’s not as quick or easy as a single-pass duplexing ADF, but it works.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
If you scan enough to consider the single-pass approach essential, the only other printer mentioned here that offers it is the MF455dw, which is also faster compared with the MFC-L2900DW, has a higher paper capacity (plus the option to add more trays), and, at this writing at least, is widely available for a lower price.
However, the Canon model is also bigger in all three dimensions, and it weighs just short of 36 pounds. The MFC-L2900DW delivers single-pass duplex scanning in a smaller, lighter printer that will be a literal better fit for offices with limited flat space. That’s enough to make it our Editors’ Choice winner for a mono laser AIO for a micro-to-small office or for personal use.
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The Bottom Line
The Brother MFC-L2900DW XL mono laser all-in-one printer delivers every feature a small office needs, including the convenience of single-pass duplexing for copying, scanning, and faxing.
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About M. David Stone
Contributing Editor
