Brother Wireless Laser Printer - HLL3280CDW

Fantastic printer. Have a Brother black and white only printer that has been super and i decided to upgrade to a color laser printer and it really is what i needed and got.

I’m an IT professional with printer experience going back to the Prodigy dial-up days with my 9-pin Epson MX-80. I graduated to a toner based, xerographic printer as soon as I could afford one. I was formally trained at Xerox copier factory school and have worked with printers, drivers, and user training since about 1980. I have worked with all of the commercial mainstream brands, some of which no longer exist. I have owned Epson, Canon, Lexmark, HP, and of course, Brother. Among all of the contending brands I love working with and owning Brother color laser printers because they are easy to install and user training is a piece of cake. They offer conveniences like remote internet leveraged printing, second paper tray functionality as well as manual feed tray support. Brother laser printers deliver unrivalled reliability in my personal experience, and fast document production at home and at work. Brother color laser printers provide professional-grade photos and project documents, and they keep on printing (imagining the Energizer Bunny here) holding up very well. The early early Brother laser printers outlasted operating system support for them. I ended up replacing them because there were no drivers written for the new operating system. So technically I've never had a Brother printer fail. My mom gave me a Brother color laser printer for Christmas in 2016. I replaced it in April, 2026 with the model I have reviewed here. I gave the outgoing printer to my girlfriend with a full set of replacement toner. Finally, the Brother Android app is an intuitive tool that is simple to install, configure, and use. I can print documents at home or at work from my phone while sitting in a conference three states away. Ya gotta love technology!

this worked great at first now we have a huge black line that is continuously going down the right side of every paper

Absolutely terrible printer which is now bricked. Does not work with Mac in the slightest.

This so far this printer has met my expectations. It was not too difficult to set up and produces nice color prints.

We finally ditched our HP and love our new Brother printer! The installation and setup was a breeze, and most importantly, the print quality is on point. So far, it’s been great not dealing with maintenance of ink cartridges like the old printer. Couldn’t be happier with this purchase 👍🏽

The software to make this printer work is TERRIBLE for Windows 11. 4 hrs to get the darn thing to function with a HP laptop. However, both our Apple phones and i-Mac computer linked up effortlessly. As a repeat Brother printer customer, we are happy that it has higher paper capacity than our prior. Very annoyed with the software updates/sales solicitations too. We did not suffer from this with our 1st Brother product. If we had been subjected to the barrage with our 1st product we would NOT have purchased this one.

I replaced an older model Brother that was on my Wi-Fi network. After hours of trial and error and consulting two AI helpers, I was told it would not work with my Eero system. I had to run a ethernet cord to the printer to get it to work. I was disappointed but thought I could live with it. I proceeded to print a large B&W job with the printer setup on monochrome. After I was almost finished it said I ran out of black toner. When I changed the black toner, I saw that the three-color toners were also empty. I am not sure exactly why but apparently in switched to a composite mode when the toner was low - but it is unacceptable to use up all my color toner without printing a single-color page.

I am going to make this simple, and leave the best review a printer could ever get. This thing just works. I'm only like a month into owning it...but it's excellent. It just works.

Horrible printer. Goes offline and the only way to get it back online is to restart it.

This printer is extremely unreliable. If I had realized, I would never have purchased it.

I have owned similar printers with similar functionality, but of different brands in the past, and I love how this one really is no hassle and doesn't complain. It is friendly and easy to work with. The print quality is great, and it seems to take care of itself alright. I have had a few paper jams when using weird paper stocks, and trying to duplex, but it was nothing I couldn't easily fix. My biggest reason for not giving it 5 stars is the amount that the paper curls. I do check and adjust the settings for what kind of stock I'm using (plain paper, heavy paper, or whatnot), and it seems to really curl the paper, which is why I've had so much trouble doing 2-sided printing, as the paper is so curled that when it tries to run it the other way, it jams. For me, I hardly ever care about 2-sided printing, so it's not a big deal. But for some people, it would be.

Great printer!! I cannot say enough how much this printer solved a problem. I had an HP printer that just couldn't be seen by my PC's, Macs or anything. I could get it to work very occasionally, sometimes, and I fought with it for years, until a fit of rage sailed it into the floor, and destroyed it. That same day, I followed by gut and went with the most reliable, solid, awesome company I've ever heard of. When I got my printer home, it instantly worked with all our computers, PC and Mac, and our phones. You never understand how much you miss having a printer until you get one that just sings, and operates. I've never looked back, and will only buy Brother color laser printers from now on.

So far, I love this printer, I got really tired of trying to keep my inkjet nozzles clean. The color photo printing is better that I expected.

Pretty easy to set up. Toner easy to change. Not great for photo printing but fine for other work. I fine it annoying that it defaults to color rather than saving my last setting. I also find it annoying that it does not automatically power off after some reasonable period of non-use.

I've always liked Brother products for their reliability and affordability. This printer is my first ownership of a color laser, and I'm very pleased with its performance. A few nitpicks: It does weigh a ton, and the touch screen isn't always responsive, and sometimes I've had to reboot it to get it to print. I have no explanations for these negatives, but the color output is still fine--just what I expected, and what I need.

It is very quiet and smooth even for a large print job

It's a nice printer but it has a big drawback, It only has 512mg of memory, Which is not upgradable. I don't print photos very often but when I do I'd like to be able to to them the way I used to. My last printer had two gig of memory and a dual processor and nothing but nothing stopped it. As I said this one is a nice printer but it has that one horrible drawback.

The Brother HL-L3280CDW prints well when it works, but the ink cartridge policy makes it practically unusable. If even one cartridge runs empty, the entire printer locks up—meaning you can’t print anything, not even simple black and white documents. This becomes a huge problem if you have an urgent job. Imagine needing to quickly print something important, but because one color cartridge is empty (even if you don’t need that color), the printer is dead weight. I currently have plenty of black ink and other colors, but since the magenta ran out, I can’t print at all. For a device that’s supposed to be reliable, this is an incredibly poor design choice. It turns a decent printer into a source of frustration and wasted time. I can’t recommend it.

Firstly, I liked the purchase cost; great price. Secondly, the picture reproduction and quality are excellent. I particularly like how the printed colors match the picture colors perfectly.