Brother MFC-L3720CDW Review: A Reliable Color Laser All-in-One for Small Business?

Quick Verdict

The Brother MFC-L3720CDW is a wireless color laser all-in-one that covers the essentials well: solid print quality, a functional ADF, auto duplex and a touchscreen interface that actually saves time once you configure the shortcuts. At 19 ppm it is not the fastest printer in its price bracket, and toner running costs deserve attention before you commit. But for a small team or home office that needs reliable color output without enterprise-level complexity, it earns its keep. Score: 4.2/5.

What Is the Brother MFC-L3720CDW?

Unboxing the MFC-L3720CDW on a Monday morning, the first thing I noticed was how compact it feels for a full-featured laser all-in-one. Brother has clearly engineered this for a desk corner rather than a dedicated print room. The unit measures roughly 16 by 18 inches and weighs enough to feel sturdy without being a two-person lift. It ships with starter toner cartridges, a power cord, a quick setup guide and nothing you do not need — no USB cable, which is standard practice at this price.

The printer handles print, scan, copy and fax in a single chassis. Its headline spec is 19 pages per minute in both black and color, backed by a 250-sheet paper tray, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder and automatic two-sided printing. Connectivity is dual-band Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct fallback, plus USB 2.0 for a direct computer hookup. The 3.5-inch color touchscreen is the control hub, offering 48 programmable shortcuts for common workflows. Cloud integration covers Google Drive, Dropbox and OneNote out of the box. A Refresh Subscription trial is included, which auto-replenishes toner when levels run low — handy if you want to avoid last-minute cartridge hunts, though it is entirely optional.

Key Features

• Print speeds up to 19 ppm in color and black-and-white
• 50-sheet auto document feeder for multi-page scan and copy jobs
• 250-sheet adjustable paper tray
• Automatic duplex (two-sided) printing
• 3.5-inch color touchscreen with 48 customizable shortcuts
• Dual-band wireless (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) plus Wi-Fi Direct and USB 2.0
• Direct cloud access: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneNote

Hands-On Review

I set the MFC-L3720CDW up on a shared office network and ran it through a realistic workload — proposals with colored charts, client-facing contracts, weekly report batches and the odd 20-page fax. Setup took about 20 minutes from开箱 to first print, most of which was connecting to the Wi-Fi network and registering the device with Brother's ecosystem. The touchscreen prompts are clear enough that I did not need to consult the manual for any step.

Print quality is where this Brother model holds its ground. Color documents look crisp and professional — the kind of output you would hand to a client without second-guessing. Text is sharp at the default resolution, and I did not notice the slight haziness on fine print that plagues some budget lasers. By the end of the first week, the 19 ppm speed felt perfectly adequate for our team size. It is not going to win a drag race against a 24-ppm competitor, but for routine office work it never created a bottleneck.

What surprised me was the ADF. I expected the 50-sheet feeder to be a basic passthrough, but it handled our stapled multi-page contract scans without jams. Two-sided scanning via the ADF also worked cleanly — it flips pages automatically and reconstructs the document correctly in the scan software. I would have liked a faster duplex scan mode, but that is a minor quibble for this class of device.

The touchscreen shortcuts are genuinely useful once you invest five minutes setting them up. I created a shortcut for "Scan to Dropbox" that routes incoming paperwork directly to a shared folder — what used to be a four-step process became one tap. The cloud service integration worked without drama once I signed in. Mobile printing via the companion app was solid; I sent a corrections document from my phone while commuting, and it was waiting in the output tray by the time I arrived at the office.

Who Should Buy It?

The MFC-L3720CDW is a good fit if you run a small team of two to five people and need reliable color output without enterprise complexity. It covers the fundamentals — print, scan, copy, fax — in a single compact device, and the wireless setup means it can live anywhere in the office without running cables to a router. The shortcut-driven touchscreen is a genuine time-saver for anyone who repeats the same document workflows daily.

Skip this printer if you are printing more than 2,000 pages per month — toner costs scale quickly at that volume, and a higher-duty device would be more cost-effective. Also skip it if you need wired Ethernet without compromises — there is no built-in Ethernet port on this model, so a USB connection to a router or a dedicated print server is your only hardwired option. If 19 ppm feels too slow for your pace, look at alternatives with 22+ ppm rated speeds.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If the Brother MFC-L3720CDW feels slightly underpowered for your needs, these options are worth a look:

• HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw — Offers faster print speeds around 28 ppm and a larger paper capacity, though it commands a noticeably higher price. A better choice for busier teams that need higher throughput.
• Canon imageCLASS MF654Cdw — Comparable all-in-one color laser with solid print quality and similar feature parity. Some users prefer Canon's driver ecosystem for macOS environments.
• Xerox VersaLink C400DN — A step up in speed and duty cycle, with a larger touchscreen and more advanced workflow features. Best suited for small workgroups that have outgrown entry-level lasers.

FAQ

Final Verdict

The Brother MFC-L3720CDW is not flashy, but it is dependable. Print quality holds up for client-facing documents, the ADF and duplex features work reliably, and the touchscreen shortcuts add up to real time savings once you configure them. The 19 ppm speed is the most obvious limitation — fine for typical small-office workloads but a ceiling for busier teams. Toner pricing is the ongoing cost to watch, particularly if color pages make up a significant share of your output. For the right use case — a small team needing a compact, wireless color laser all-in-one — this Brother model does the job without overpromising.