The Brother Intellifax 2800 is a great starter fax for the small or home business. It has many features that are generally restricted to machines at a much higher price point to this one.
The Intellifax 2800 is an affordable monochrome laser fax with copying capability built in. Features like fax broadcast, dual access, built-in memory, automatic document feeder and auto dialing make this a versatile machine for a busy office.
The 14.4k modem can send a legal-sized document in a little under 4 seconds, while the built in memory has enough capacity to remember 130 pages of received faxes if the paper runs out. This is unlikely except in extremely busy times, as the Intellifax 2800 comes with a 200 sheet paper drawer built in.
There is also a 20 page automatic document feeder that may look a little flimsy, but is much stronger than it looks. This serves both fax and copying, and didn’t jam once in our tests.
Copy quality is good with 64 shades of gray to choose from, even simple images or graphics are rendered pretty accurately. Text is sharp and details with very little jagging on edges. Toner seemed to be evenly spread on larger texts, which is something dedicated printers can’t always produce.
Dual access is a nice feature to have. It allows users to load faxes even while the machine is doing other things, like transmitting or receiving other faxes. This allows users to get on with their work while not having to wait until it has finished doing what it’s doing. A nice time saving feature.
The fax has all the other features you would expect. Auto dials, fax forwarding, broadcasting, speed dialing, data/voice switching, configurable cover sheets and document resizing.
Consumables for the Intellifax 2800 are quite reasonable too. One comes with the unit when you buy it, and replacements are around $20 for a toner that is good for 2200 pages, while the drum is $68 and will last 12000.
In summary, the Intellifax 2800 is an excellent buy for the small or home office. It is cheap enough and robust enough to be worthy of consideration when you next need to buy one. Fax and copy quality is excellent and the machine is flexible enough to fulfill most needs.
