I recently purchased the Brother MFC-L3780CDW Digital Color All-in-One Printer, and overall, I have to say—this printer is really fantastic. Unfortunately, it also comes with a really fantastic price tag.
My journey to this model started when I originally bought its “little brother” during a 2025 Black Friday sale for $179.00. I didn’t realize at the time that it was a monochrome (black-and-white) printer, but I instantly fell in love with its fast printing speeds and duplex capabilities. It was efficient, reliable, and just worked every time I needed it from any device - phone, laptop, iPad, etc.
That’s why I had quite the sticker shock when I went looking for essentially the same printer—with the same speed, duplex, fax, and scan features—but with only the addition of color printing. The price for this printer was more than double that of my Black Friday printer ($569.99 vs $179.99). After seeing the price, I even spent some time looking at other brands and considering a slower or less capable model just to save money. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. Brother printers have proven to be exceptional in my experience, and I knew I’d regret settling for something that didn’t match that performance. So I went ahead and bought the MFC-L3780CDW, along with a protection plan. And honestly, I’m glad I did. The print quality is excellent, color output is sharp and vibrant, and it maintains the same fast, reliable performance I loved in the monochrome version. It’s a workhorse that handles everything I throw at it—printing, scanning, copying, and faxing—with ease.
One thing worth noting is where you buy it and how you handle protection plans. Best Buy sells this exact printer, and if you’re a Best Buy Plus member (or whatever the program is currently called - which I am a member of) they offer UP TO a 2-year protection plan included with your usual membership—as long as you continue paying the annual fee (around $100–$120/year).
However, Walmart offered a 4-year protection plan for $77 which, on the one hand, is almost one-fifth the cost of the printer itself, but the alternative is to buy from Best Buy and pay $200 for only 2 years coverage. When you compare Walmart’s 4 year plan to paying Best Buy’s annual membership fee that only effectively covers you for two years, Walmart’s plan made a lot more sense to me. I’ve also had really excellent experiences with Walmart protection plans overall (with the one exception being a pair of Beats headphones where they weren’t as helpful as I’d hoped 🤷♀️).
In the end, while the upfront cost of this printer is definitely very high, the performance, reliability, and features make it worth the investment if you print frequently and want something that will always work and will print from any kind of device. If you can get past the price, this printer absolutely delivers.
