The Budget Shelf's Own All-in-One

The MFC-L2680W is the entry rung of this family — the version of Brother's compact all-in-one that big-box shoppers brought home by the cartload. Print, copy, scan and fax all live in one small box, with print and copy speeds up to 24 pages per minute, a 35-sheet document feeder on top, and automatic two-sided printing below. Its 250-sheet tray swallows most of a ream at once, which on a machine at this price was never a given.

One honest limitation shapes everything about owning it: there is no Ethernet socket. The MFC-L2680W connects by wireless or USB, full stop. For a home office or a single desk that is no hardship at all — Wi-Fi Direct even lets a phone print without a router in the middle — but it does mean this is a personal or small-team machine, not a wired workgroup anchor. Its supply shelf, though, is the full family shelf, and that is where the value story gets interesting.

Running Costs, Plainly Stated

Supply	Rated yield	Our compatible price	Cost per page
TN630 (standard toner)	~1,200 pages	Sold through the TN660 listing (see note)	Not quoted — see note
TN660 (high-yield toner)	~2,600 pages	$22.95	About 0.9 cents
DR630 (drum unit)	~12,000 pages	$27.67	About 0.2 cents

Figures captured from our product pages on November 2, 2026. A note on the blank cell: the listing that carries the TN630 name ships the 2,600-page TN660 cartridge at $22.95, so there is no genuine standard-yield price to divide by 1,200 pages. Rather than print a misleading number, the TN630 stands on its yield alone.

Read the table the way an owner should: the high-yield cartridge that fits this entry-level machine costs under a cent a page in compatible form. The printer may have been the cheapest seat in the family, but Brother never gave it a cheaper appetite — it eats the same 2,600-page cartridge as the flagship, and at typical home-office volumes one TN660 can carry it for most of a year.

Toner and Drum Are Not the Same Purchase

New owners of this platform often assume the cartridge is the whole story. It is two-thirds of it. The TN630 or TN660 holds the toner powder; underneath it, the DR630 drum provides the imaging surface and keeps working through roughly four high-yield cartridges before its 12,000-page rating runs out. Pale, washed-out pages mean the powder is nearly gone. Marks that repeat at identical intervals down the sheet mean the drum surface is tired. Diagnose by symptom and the cheaper part gets replaced first, every time.

The cartridge installed at the factory is a starter with a reduced yield, so the first "low toner" warning arrives sooner than the ratings suggest. That is the starter retiring, not the machine misbehaving.

Changing the Cartridge

1. With the power on, open the front cover and let the machine sit a moment if it has just been printing. 2. Draw the drum-and-toner assembly out of the machine in one piece. 3. Press the green lock lever and lift the spent cartridge clear of the drum frame. 4. Rock the new cartridge gently from side to side before removing its protective cover, so the powder inside sits level. 5. Lower it into the drum frame until it locks with a click. 6. Slide the green tab on the drum fully across and back to clean the corona wire, return the assembly to the machine, and close the cover.

Should the display keep insisting on a toner message afterward, the counter occasionally needs the manual reset described in this model's manual — a short key sequence, not a repair bill.

The Set That Covers Drum Day

Because the DR630's life spans about four TN660s, the two purchases eventually land in the same week. Our TN660 + DR630 set boxes one of each at $34.54 (November 2, 2026), compared with $50.62 for the identical parts ordered separately — a saving of about $16 in one shipment. Bigger combinations with spare toners sit beside it.

Balance, stated plainly: a young MFC-L2680W with a healthy drum gains nothing from a set today. The drum-half of the box would wait a year or more for its turn. Single TN660s are the right order until the drum counter climbs toward its rating.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I plug this printer into my router with a cable? No — the MFC-L2680W has wireless and USB interfaces only. If a wired connection matters, the MFC-L2700DW in the list below is the family's step to Ethernet, and it uses the same cartridges you already stock.

It faxes in black and white only. Is that a settings problem? No. The scanner reads in color for scan-to-computer work, but the fax function and the printer engine are monochrome. A color original faxed from this machine arrives in grayscale by design.

My first cartridge ran out fast. Did I get a bad one? Almost certainly not. The factory cartridge is a reduced-yield starter. Your first full TN630 or TN660 will last noticeably longer, and the TN660 roughly doubles the starter-to-starter comparison again.

Will a TN660 physically fit, or is it too big for this smaller model? It fits exactly. TN630 and TN660 share one shell and one slot; the difference is the amount of powder inside. Every model in this family, entry to flagship, accepts both.

Other Printers That Use TN630, TN660 and DR630

Your cartridge shelf is not yours alone — the same three supplies run this entire generation of Brother compacts:

• HL-L2300D
• HL-L2305W
• HL-L2315DW
• HL-L2320D
• HL-L2340DW
• HL-L2360DW
• HL-L2380DW
• DCP-L2520DW
• DCP-L2540DW
• MFC-L2685DW
• MFC-L2700DW
• MFC-L2705DW
• MFC-L2707DW
• MFC-L2720DW
• MFC-L2740DW

Ordering starts at our MFC-L2680W toner page, where every fitting cartridge, drum and set for this model is gathered in one place.