Tag: laser printer

Introduction

I am reviewing Brother’s latest approach at a light-duty monochrome laser multifunction printer in the form of the MFC-L2713DW. It is one of these machines that you could use for a small office or shop, especially if you are intending to replace a light-duty fax machine. Some of you also may see this machine or its peers as a routine document printer for your home office.

It may also appeal to professionals and the like who want to have a light-duty document-focused printer or fax-capable multifunction in their office as a “private” machine while their workplace has a heavy-duty multifunction in the common areas.

Prices

Printer

The machine’s standard price: AUD$249

Inks and Toners

Servicing and Other Parts (Laser Printers)

The printer itself

Connectivity and Setup

I had connected the printer to the home network via Ethernet and this meant that I could effectively be “on board” very quickly. As far as I am concerned, I really wouldn’t use the Wi-Fi ability on these printers to connect to an existing network because you may have Wi-Fi issues in your home or small-business location, rather I would connect via Ethernet or HomePlug AV powerline.

This printer, like the other small monochrome laser printers that Brother offers, uses a separate user-replaceable drum unit along with the toner cartridge rather than following HP’s path of an integrated print cartridge that has the drum unit. But if you have to add toner to the printer, you have to remove the drum unit from the machine before you detach the spent toner cartridge from the drum unit.

Here the installation process was simple enough to do. But I also like the way Brother offers a higher-yield toner cartridge for these printers, a feature I definitely applaud for people who want to choose the right yield to suit their needs and budget.

Paper Handling

Like with most of Brother’s budget-priced and value-priced printer models, this printer uses a single-page bypass feed which would be limiting if you are running multiple-page print jobs that use special media. This would also be used if you are dealing with pre-printed forms such as when a doctor is turning out prescriptions or test / treatment referrals.

Personally, I would like to move away from the single-page approach towards having a five-page approach to cater for jobs where a handful of pre-printed forms or label sheets are being turned out.

The A4 paper tray worked properly and didn’t feel flimsy to the touch, making it a machine that can satisfy most users.

Walk-up functions

The Brother MFC-L2713DW has an on-machine with a bright text-based LCD display and rubber-feel keys. Here, the text-based LCD display is a high-contrast “black-on-white” type which makes it very readable under many different lighting scenarios. But I would like to improve on the D-pad’s design by using illuminated arrow legends that come alive when you are using the menu options.

The copying process for a single page fed through the automatic document feeder came through as being very quick even when the machine wasn’t used for a while. Here, by the time the document left the ADF, the printer was turning out the copy.

The quality of the copies came out good for documents printed on plain paper but I wouldn’t expect a high-quality copy for photos or similar material. It also holds true for material printed on glossy paper such as ID or business cards whereupon you may find that the copy comes out paler than the original.

There is a one-touch “duplex copy” function that allows you to copy both sides of an original on to both sides of the copy’s paper, but you have to turn over the original to copy the other side. The ID copy functionality works as expected although there is the issue of not scanning “to the edge”. Brother answers this issue by a scrolling text message to tell users to put the original 1/4″ from the edge

The Brother MFC-L2713DW can serve as a basic monochrome phone-based fax machine with a limited-capacity “fax vault” function suitable for overnight / weekend use.

Here it omits the T.37 email-based store-and-forward fax functionality which may be an approach for some of us who want to move towards IP fax. Most likely, when you move towards an IP-based telephony service and use an analogue-telephony-adaptor with machines like this one, you may be also setting up for T.38 real-time Internet fax.

Like with all of the Brother MFC-series fax-capable multifunction printers that have duplex printing, you can set this machine up to print the faxes it receives on both sides of the paper as a way to save on paper.

Computer functions

I had installed the drivers on my Windows 10 computer from Brother’s Website and they were in place very quickly. Here, you would have to install the full software set to enable printing, scanning and fax management including “print-to-fax” functionality.

The ControlCenter4 scan monitor does take time to come in to action when you start a scan-to-computer job from the printer’s control surface. This is a continual problem with most of the scanner software offered by most scanner and MFC manufacturers and, personally, I would like to see the host computer’s operating system look after this functionality for both direct and network setups.

As far as mobile devices were concerned, the Brother MFC-L2713DW worked properly with the Android print-service plugin that I installed on my Samsung Android phone. Here, the app was quick to recognise the printer’s capabilities and have the document turned out quickly. Of course it does support Apple AirPrint for those of you who run your business from an iPad.

Print / scan speed and quality

The Brother MFC-L2713DW came alive and started printing documents very quickly, whether from the computer or a mobile phone. It also led to a quick turnout of the document, something very similar to most of the small monochrome laser printers.

The printer was able to handle a double-sided print job but it doesn’t turn them out as quickly as a simplex print job. This is something you would notice more with light-duty monochrome lasers that have this functionality. It turned out these documents without jamming or dropping pages.

The Brother MFC-L2713DW does satisfy the output-quality requirements for a small entry-level monochrome laser printer. Here, it would yield clear easy-to-read text that would be part of an office document.

But I wouldn’t expect it to yield high-quality output when it comes to photos and similar presentation-grade work. Here I noticed banding along the narrow edge of the sheet when I printed out a picture of a landscape, but it was able to maintain proper fidelity when it came to the image’s contrast.

Limitations And Points Of Improvement

A feature I would like to see continual improvement on for the Brother small laser printers is to have auto-duplex printing with a speed similar to simplex printing jobs. Similarly, I would like to see Brother move away from the “single-sheet” approach for the manual bypass function on these printers so as to cater for multiple-sheet print runs using special stationery.

A feature that could benefit this class of light-duty monochrome laser multifunction would to permit “two-machine” copying across the network. This is where you could scan a document on a multifunction like this one and it is then printed out on a colour printer or multifunction connected to the same network. This would also allow for other applications like enlarging documents to A3 / Ledger with the A4 / Letter or smaller original on a machine like this and the large A3 copy emerging from an A3-capable printer or multifunction. This feature could make use of setups where you have multiple document machines with complementary capabilites whether in page size, printing type or colour / monochrome printing.

As well, the Brother MFC-L2713DW and its peers could benefit from at least SDXC card storage to provide enhanced fax-storage functionality such as to cater to busy workloads, large documents and the like. Brother could also work towards creating a T.38 IP-fax endpoint functionality in their fax-capable multifunction printers and push the telecoms industry to lead towards simplified provisioning for this technology.

Similarly, Brother could exploit the separately-replaceable drum unit approach that applies to their laser printers by providing heavy-duty variants of these parts as an upgrade option. This would please users who buy laser printers suited for their current duty levels but install heavier-duty parts in them if they are faced with a heavier workload.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I would position the Brother MFC-L2713DW monochrome laser multifunction printer as an economy-priced office printer for workplaces that don’t have a heavy document throughput. This would also include it serving as a “private” document printer / copier for a professional’s or manager’s office or simply as a document-focused multifunction for a home office.

Here, it would earn its keep as a replacement for a small inkjet multifunction that is used just for turning out documents or a small plain-paper fax that uses thermal-transfer printing. I would also see it as a direct upgrade for an economy laser printer or multifunction that isn’t able to do duplex printing.

I have also compared the price for the Brother MFC-L2713DW against the price of replacing its drum unit with the genuine replacement part and found that it is worth buying that part rather than replacing the machine with one of the same standard and functionality level when it comes up for replacement.

Update: I have updated the prices to the manufacturer’s recommended retail prices for the consumables.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother MFC-L8850CDW colour laser multifunction printer which is positioned as the step-up model in Brother’s full-speed colour laser multifunction printer lineup. This model is based on their HL-L8350CDW colour laser printer and is equipped with single-pass duplex scanning and a wide range of copy, fax and scan features.

Prices

Printer

RRP: AUD$849

Optional Extras:

High-capacity paper tray: AUD$249

Inks and Toners

Servicing and Other Parts (Laser Printers)

The printer itself

How the printer looks when it is used for any of these tasks

The Brother MFC-L8850CDW colour laser multifunction printer is based on the single-function Brother HL-L8350CDW colour laser printer and others in the series, thus sharing the same improved colour laser-printing technology as its single-function stablemate. This has all the same abilities like the quick page-turnout and the duplex printing that this series is known for where it appears to work on both sides of two pages at one time.

Like other Brother laser printers and multifunctions, this unit has serparately-replaceable components for the print engine such as the drum unit and belt unit. This means that you can gain a longer service life out of these machines and their parts and can factor in these costs over the lifetime of the unit while not paying too much every time you need to replace the toner. One perceived disadvantage may be that you may run in to print-quality and reliability issues when you are using a drum unit or belt unit that is near the end of its useful life.

Large LCD touchscreen

One feature I admire about the Brother MFC-L8850CDW multifunction printer is that it is equipped with a large LCD touchscreen that is its “walk-up” user interface. There is also a touch-operated keypad that lights up when you have to enter numbers in to the machine like dialling a fax number or determining the number of copies you can do.

LCD touchscreen and numeric keypad that shows when it is needed

People who have eyesight difficulties may benefit from this because of the large display area and avoiding unnecessary user-interface clutter which is a problem with a lot of business-focused multifunction devices that are in circulation.The only niggle that some people will find with this display is that the clock display takes a few seconds to update when you “wake up” the machine to start using it.

The automatic document feeder is a single-pass duplex type which scans both sides of a document at once for such jobs as double-sided copying. If you have to deal with bound original documents, this lid can be lifted up at the sides so that it lies flat on the original documents.

It, like most of the recent Brother business multifunction printer range, can work as a colour Super-G3 fax machine with a regular telephone connection or can work as a T.37-compliant Internet fax machine. This includes the ability to work as an “Internet-fax off-ramp” where it can receive a fax from the Internet and send it along regular telephone lines to an ordinary fax machine. This feature is pitched at users who have multiple locations separated by long distances and want to avoid huge long-distance telephony bills for sending documents by fax.

Walk-up functions – can be started from printer’s control surface

Task-specific copying options

This machine’s display leads to a simplified user interface that makes it easier for people to use it even if they haven’t used this model before. This is taken from the design cues used in today’s smartphones and tablets and you have such situations as function lists that scroll sideways and one-touch access to the common tasks.

When you copy documents with the Brother MFC-L8850CDW after not using it for a while, the unit will start scanning the originals to memory while the print engine warms up to start printing. This benefits such tasks as copying many pages from bound documents or simply to have the originals returned to whoever gave them to you.

The ID-copy function is, like on most recent Brother multifunction printers, still very simple to use because you don’t have to reposition the card when you flip it to copy the other side. On the other hand, if you line up any document to the edge of the glass surface, the printer clips a few millimetres from the edge of the document which can be of concern for those documents that are “worked to the edge”.

Task-specific apps now available

There are a variety of apps which provide extra functionality such as copying a section of text like a newspaper article. These apps also work alongside the popular online services like Dropbox, Facebook and Evernote so you can “scan to” these services. The Brother printer also supports the ability to print from these online services and the Brother Web Connect system allows multiple users to register their own accounts for each service on the same device. Furthermore, each user can protect their presence on these accounts using a PIN number.

The Brother MFC-L8850CDW does work with Brother’s iPrint&Scan mobile-printing software and the Apple AirPrint ecosystem to allow you to print from smartphones and tablets.

Computer functions

I downloaded the driver software for the Brother MFC-L8850CDW colour laser multifunction printer and had found it quick to install but you have to make sure you install the correct driver that pertains to the correct model of printer.

There is the “print-options at a glance” layout for specifying how the print job should be printed and you bring this option up when you click on the “Preferences” or “Properties” option when you specify your print job. This includes rough-previewing of how a duplex, booklet or “tiled” print-job should look like.

The Brother-supplied “ControlCenter4” scan software could benefit from direct access from the desktop rather than via the “Brother Tools” app and could allow you to organise the order of the scanned pages rather than having to delete then re-scan pages to achieve a particular page order for that PDF.

Print Quality and Useability

Like the Brother HL-L8350CDW colour laser printer I previously reviewed, the Brother MFC-L8850CDW multifunction implements the “drawer-style” of consumable loading. This is where you pull out the drum unit as if it is a drawer to change the toner cartridges. This also extends to access to the printer’s internals when you have to deal with paper jamming or similar situations.

The Brother colour laser multifunction has a 6-second delay till the first page comes out when it hasn’t been used for a while. This is something that has to be expected of laser printers because of the way the toner is “fixed” on to the paper using hot rollers.

It was able to competently turn out a large double-sided document properly and reliably, although there it does pause for a few seconds after 30 pages. It may be to receive more data bot also to keep the machine’s running temperature in check. Like the single-function HL-L8350CDW and its stablemates, this Brother printer can effectively “work” both sides of two sheets of paper during a duplex-printing job. This only works with jobs that you submit from the computer rather than any of the “walk-up” printing jobs.

I also had to run a batch of mailing labels on this printer and had a problem with the printer jamming. The large LCD screen showed clearly where to remove any jammed paper and this process didn’t involve groping around in dark places to remove that paper. Then I re-ran the job on some newer labels and had to make sure I was specifying labels rather than plain paper when doing this kind of run.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

The copy and scan functions could benefit from additional optimised-copy / optimised-scan modes to suit working with thin paper or with bound materials like books. As well, the “app” functionality could also benefit from functions to turn out “pre-ruled paper” like ruled notepaper, graph paper, check lists and music staves similar to what has been offered by HP and Canon for their inkjet and laser printers.’

A problem that can occur when printing a single double-sided document is where the printed document “curls up” in the output bay. This may happen when you use the printer earlier on in its service life. As well, I would also like to see the “quick duplex-printing” functionality where these Brother colour laser printers effectively work both sides of two pages improved to work with jobs you specify from the control panel or for continual printing of many pages.

As for scanning, the Brother multifunction printers could have the scan head able to scan “to the edge” of the glass when scanning documents from the glass platen rather than the automatic document feeder. This is because most of us would line up documents against the edge of the glass when scanning them to achieve a good-quality scan.

Another features that would be nice to have would be the display clock being synced to an NTP time server and supporting local time zone rules like what happens with computers or mobile devices. This can avoid the need to set the clock every time daylight-saving time changes for example as well as a desire to have an accurate clock for fax logs, etc. There could be a menu option to allow the USB port to work as a “plug-and-charge” USB port when the printer is in sleep or hibernate mode as well as supporting 1 amp or 2.1 amps power at that port, so as to allow us to charge smartphones, tablets and their accessories from the printer’s USB port at all times.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

If you are considering a heavy-duty desktop multifunction colour laser printer for that office where you expect to yield a lot of colour documents, I would give the Brother MFC-L885CDW some serious consideration. This is more so if you also expect to include the idea of scanning one or more large runs of documents to PDF and want to get both sides at once.

You could even consider teaming this printer along with one of the Brother A3 single-tray inkjet multifunction printers to set up an “all-inclusive” desktop printing / scanning setup for your small business, home office or non-profit organisation. Here, this unit could handle most regular A4-based printing jobs while you could run the inkjet unit on A3 jobs or those jobs that require special inkjet-compliant media.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother HL-6180DW monochrome laser printer which is Brother’s latest entry in to the “office workhorse” laser-printer market.

The printer that I am reviewing here is the top-of-the-line model which has a page throughput of 48 pages per minute, a high-capacity paper tray and wireless networking. There are cheaper variants that have a lesser-capacity paper tray and work more slowly, with the models in this group having different connectivity options having wireless networking, Ethernet networking only or USB direct-connect only. All of them are driven by the same heavy-duty monochrome laser print engine and can print on both sides of the page.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$549

Optional Extras:

Optional high-capacity paper tray: AUD$180

Inks and Toners

Servicing and Other Parts (Laser Printers)

The printer itself

The Brother HL-6180DW is able to connect to a wired Ethernet or 802.11g/n Wi-Fi wireless network. For that matter, it can support Wi-Fi Direct where it effectively becomes its own access point as well as AirPrint driver-free printing for the iOS platform. It still works with Brother’s iPrint&Scan Android app, being able to print Web pages, PDFs and photos from Android or iOS devices. It is also future-proof by being equipped for IPv6 in a dual-stack manner.

As a monochrome laser printer, this printer and the rest of the series are pitched as a “heavy-duty” take of the HL-2240D and similar units that I previously reviewed. These used a separately-replaceable toner and drum setup with the toner cartridge being “nested” in the drum unit that is loaded in to the front of the printer. This still has the advantage of the drum unit being separately replaceable which is more relevant to equipment that is expected to do a lot of work.

But the difference between these units and the other compact units is that the print engines on these models are optimised for heavy-duty printing. Here, you notice the difference with behaviour like the printer sounding like it is doing a normal print run even when working on both sides of the paper.

Printer setup experience

Hardware setup

Control panel

Something that can confuse some users is the front-door latch being confusingly part of the output retainer tab. This may be of concern when you are setting up the printer and removing all the packaging material or if you have to ask someone who isn’t familiar with the machine to change the toner or rectify a paper jam.

But once I opened the machine’s front service door, it didn’t take long to get the printer up and ready for use. The drum unit, with the toner cartridge. dropped in to the slot without any risk of user confusion, The paper was also easy to load up with a drawer that didn’t feel tacky.

Software setup

As is my practice when reviewing printers, I install the latest driver set from the manufacturer’s Web site rather than working from the CD that came with the equipment. This is to be sure I am not running a driver set that has bugs or isn’t tuned for best performance with current needs because of the desire amongst manufacturers to get the product to market very quickly.

During the installation phase, the driver software discovered the printer very quickly and was able to have the printer ready to go within a few minutes. Like other driver programs used with Brother printers, it still has the same easy-to-use user interface where there is a list of selected options for the print job.

Printer useability and page quality

The Brother HL-6180DW laser printer doesn’t take long to start turning out the print jobs. Here, it took only a second from when I clicked the “Print” button on the computer for it to come to life and have the first page of the document coming out of the output bay. There wasn’t any unnecessary curling or buckling with the paper after a print run because the printer’s fuser unit was effectively at temperature when the job came in. Even the auto-duplex cycle was very quick with it taking around three seconds to print both sides of the page.

There is a confidential-print mode where you can set up a passcode that you enter in to the printer to claim the print job. But, like the other single-function printers with this feature, it requires the user to enter the passcode using the “pick’n’choose” method with the arrow keys and this can cause users to be impatient with this printer.

Separately-replaceable toner cartridge and drum unit that nest in to each other

Like all of the Brother laser printers, the HL-6180DW uses a separately-replaceable toner cartridge and drum unit which slot in to the front of the unit. Here, like the compact HL-2240D and others in that series, this unit requires the drum unit to be removed from the printer before you can replace the toner cartridge. But it is still easy to detach and attach the toner cartridge and drum unit by you pressing a distinct green tab to separate these pieces.

The auto-duplex function was exact with the registration when printing A4. This would be important for desktop publishing, especially if you want to turn out tent cards, door hangers and the like.

When you print colour photos using this printer, the 1200dpi image was brighter than the 600dpi image, thus was also close to what a colour image would look like on those old black-and-white TVs. The printer also turned out some very sharp text from material printed out from the computer.

The Brother HL-6180 laser printer was very reliable with turning out a large auto-duplex print job, thus not being prone to jam up. In fact if it runs out of paper, you don’t need to do anything further to get the job going beyond just putting the paper in the drawer.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

The Brother HL-6180DW and others in this series could benefit from a few useability improvements here. For example, a distinctly-coloured latch release for the front service door could be beneficial here because this is hard to find amongst the document retainer flap on the top of the printer. Here, the confusion can occur if a user had to open up the printer to replace the toner or rectify a paper jam.

As well, there is the absence of a “fuel-gauge” on the display to show how much toner is available. Here, this can be useful if you were to determine whether to always run high-capacity cartridges or know if you were to order extra toner after a large print job.

Similarly the printer could benefit from a USB port to permit walk-up printing of PDF files or use of a USB keypad to improve the useability of the printer’s “secure print” function. This could be delivered as a product differentiator for the high-end models. As well, the HL-5470DW could be able to work with the extra-high-capacity toner cartridge, which could be handy if you were to avoid having to spend heaps of money on toner.

As well, the end-of-job cool-down noise could be reduced by, perhaps, gradually slowing down the fan’s speed through the cooling cycle or running the fan very fast for a few minutes just at the end of a print job.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

The Brother HL-6180DW laser printer is one I would recommend for use as an office’s main laser printer. This would be very important in paper-intense environments like schools or medical and legal practices or for those of us who are doing plenty of monochrome desktop publishing. If you could afford to, you may be at a point where you can use the high-capacity or extra-high-capacity toner cartridges for most of the machine’s working life and use the standard-capacity toner cartridge as a short-term measure if the organisation was short on cash.

If you want to save money but want a heavy-duty laser printer, I would recommend that you could go for the Brother HL-5470DW if you value Wi-Fi connectivity or the HL-5450DN if you are just connecting to an Ethernet or HomePlug network segment. Here, you don’t have the ability to load up a large quantity of paper or use the extra-capacity toner cartridge. But, as I have said before, I would recommend using the high-capacity toner cartridges due to the low cost-per-page and the long time between replacing them.

When you are looking at laser printers to buy for yourself or specify for an organisation, you will come across printers that are known as “LED printers”.

What are these LED printers?

A LED printer and a laser printer are very similar types of printers in so much as how the paper is marked. They use the same dry-process xerographic / photostatic printing method that has been used for years with photocopiers, where there is an electrostatically-charged imaging drum which attracts powdered toner depending on whether it has been subject to light or not. Then this toner is transferred from the drum to electrostatically-charged paper and “ironed on” using hot fuser rollers.

But the main difference is how this imaging drum is illuminated with the digital representation of your document. A laser printer uses a laser beam and swivelling mirrors or pentagonal prisms to scan the document’s image on to the drum. On the other hand, an LED printer uses a fixed row of light-emitting diodes that turn on and off to scan the image to the drum. This LED array would be similar to what is used to illuminate a document when it is being scanned in the typical scanner and each LED light represents a horizontal pixel that is part of the line being printed.

This has benefits for printer design due to the elimination of the complex light path that laser printers use. Here, you don’t need to use mirrors and servo motors to control the laser’s light path, thus you reduce the number of parts that can go wrong. It also leads to the ability to design xerographic page printers that are more compact and lightweight compared to the laser-based units.

Further comments with OKI Data about LED printers

I had engaged in an email interview with Chris Thorley from OKI Data’s Australian head office to learn more about this. Here, I had learnt that they had pioneered this xerographic printing technology in 1981 and are now on their ninth-generation LED print engine.

Most other printer manufacturers use this LED technology on some of their low-end models. The main reason is a reduced part count allowing for reduced material costs; as well as the impact of unforseen technological issues not being considered significant for this market position, compared with using the trusted laser technology on their mid-tier and high-end models.

But OKI Data have implemented this technology across the board with their colour LED printers known to be yielding high colour production quality. It may also be known that some other manufacturers implement the OKI technology in to their production printing devices on an OEM (Other Equipment Manufacturer) basis. This practice is where a manufacturer uses an already-designed subsystem from anther manufacturer (the OEM)  in their own project.

Conclusion

It is worth considering the LED printers for your page-printer needs as long as they have the kind of specifications that you have in mind. This includes machine reliability, image quality, print speed including colour and auto-duplex print speed, functionality and running costs including availability of toner cartridges at differing capacity levels.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Dell 1130n compact monochrome laser printer which is Dell’s own effort at a compact monochrome laser business printer similar to the Brother HL-2230 series of compact monochrome laser printers. This unit is network-enabled for Ethernet but doesn’t use auto-duplex printing.

It can be ordered directly from Dell at their site by clicking this link.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: $229

Inks and Toners

The printer itself

Computer functions

The software was very quick and trouble-free to install. As well, it didn’t slow the computer down during print jobs. There is a print-monitor function for direct-connect and network-connect setups but this only comes in to play when there is an error condition. It can be started independently of a print job or error condition if you want to check on things like toner level for example and is effectively the printer’s dashboard.

Use

The integrated toner-drum print cartridge that this printer takes

The toner cartridge is different from that used in the Brother compact printers in that it is an integrated toner / drum-unit cartridge similar to what happens with HP LaserJet printers. For this kind of integrated print cartridge, there is the availabliity of a high-capacity cartridge as well as a standard-capacity cartridge which allows for scalability to suit one’s needs and budget.

Like most of these laser printers, the Dell 1130n doesn’t have a “fuel-gauge” on the machine so you can know how much toner is left. This “fuel gauge” is part of the print monitor application which is the printer’s dashboard.

It only takes a few seconds for the printer to turn out a document, whether it is a photograph or a text document. It will work in an ideal manner with large document runs after 100-150 pages, where there will be less of the paper-curling. As for page turnout, it lives up to the specification for the pages-per-minute with pages coming out very quickly.

Print quality

The printer does yield very sharp crisp text for document printout, which would be acceptable for business work; and is very typical of most lasers. Even a mixed-mode document with graphics and text does come out very crisply.

I have printed one of my photos using the two print-quality settings and when you use the “Best” print quality, you see a sharper image. The images come out darker than the HP LaserJet M1536dnf multifunction monochrome laser but very similar to what has emerged from the Brother HL2240d compact monochrome laser. At least the best-quality image available from this compact monochrome laser was true to what would be seen in a newspaper or on a black-and-white TV.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

There is no distinct “fall-to-sleep” mode where only one small light glows if there are long periods of inactivity. As well, this printer lacks an automatic duplexer which permits and encourages double-sided printing.

As well, a very common problem with all Dell printers is the ability to know where to get consumables beyond ordering them directly through Dell. This may be of importance if you run the printer “to the edge” and need to stock up on supplies during an urgent project. It should be feasible that you could buy toner cartridges at “bricks-and-mortar” shops like stationers or newsagents as well as online through Dell.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I would recommend this printer as being suitable for a reception-desk invoice printer at a business like a clinic who has growth aspirations. The scalability offered by the availability of a high-capacity print cartridge as well as a standard print cartridge, as well as network connectivity, can allow the business to “start small” with cheaper cartridges then grow to the higher-capacity cartridges. In the case of a clinic, this can cater for a situation where there are one or two doctors practising but allow for the situation where more of the professionals start to practise at that same location.

If you are wanting to save money by buying the Dell 1130 which is the cheaper direct-connect-only version of this printer, I would suggest that you go for this model because it would be worth it to keeep going.. This is because when you run out of toner on the cheaper model, you could effectively buy another of that model whereas you could complete two of hte high-capacity toner cartridges to spend the equivalent on keeping it going.

Introduction

I am reviewing the HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf monochrome laser multifunction printer which is another printer in this class that provides most of today’s expected features to the professional user. It is based on the print engine that HP has implemented in the LaserJet Pro P1560 direct-connect printer that I previously reviewed and the network-connectable duplex-capable LaserJet Pro P1600 printer.

Prices

Printer

The machine’s standard price: AUD$548.00

Toner

Other Costs

The HP ePrint “print-to-email” service is free of charge. This includes maintaining your printer’s email address and the documents that you receive through that address.

The printer itself

The HP LaserJet Pro M1536 supports the functionality that is desirable for a multifunction laser printer targeted at the small business or professional, like duplex printing, proper fax functionality for regular fax services as well as connectivity to an Ethernet network.

Typically the fact that a printer doesn’t support Wi-Fi wireless networking may count against it as far as network functionality, especially “no-new-wires” networking, goes for this market space. But the Ethernet connectivity allows this printer to work with a HomePlug network or Wi-Fi network as long as you use one of those “homeplugs” or a Wi-Fi client bridge. As well, the LaserJet, like most current-model small-business printers that connect to a network, is able to work with an IPv6 network, thus making it future-proof for next-generation networks.

Setup

This printer was easy to set up without any need for convoluted procedures, which is an advantage of HP’s integrated cartridge design used in all of the small-business LaserJets. This included connecting it to a typical small network via Ethernet. There is the option to manually configure the network settings for difficult networks.

Walk-up functions

The HP LaserJet M1536dnf can work as a convenience photocopier or a fax machine and, like most of the machines of this type, it supports “ID copy” functionality for copying documents like driving licences. As well it can digitally enlarge or reduce documents with this function being accessed from one button. Similarly, the user can do “double-sided” copying as long as they flip the original document over.

Like the HP LaserJet Pro CM1415 that I previously reviewed, this LaserJet printer uses flash memory rather than RAM to store received and pending faxes. This provides for a “power-safe” operating environment where if the power fails or fluctuates, you don’t lose received faxes that are to be printed or faxes yet to be transmitted. It also works well with the private-receive function which uses this memory as a “fax vault” where the machine receives faxes but doesn’t print these faxes until you enter a PIN code to release them. This is a feature that I would consider important if you work with confidential material in a premises that has uncontrolled access to the office technology.

Like most of the current-model HP multifunction printers and an increasing number of Canon high-end multifunction printers, this printer offers a “quick forms” feature where the printer can turn out notepaper, graph paper, music staves or similar ruled paper at the touch of a button. This is only available through the Setup menus  You still have the problem of a limited choice of ruled paper. Examples of these limitations include 10 staves for portrait-format music paper (which affects writing for certain music ensembles like vocal and piano or quartets) as well as the inability to print certain “quick forms” like notepaper or checklists on both sides.

This printer supports ePrint “email-to-print” functionality but only for receiving print jobs sent to its email address. This function could also benefit from the same “private receive” function that is available for faxes.

Computer functions

The HP LaserJet M1536dnf’s driver software had loaded very quickly in to my machine and there weren’t any particular problems associated with running it. Even practices like choosing the duplex-printing style are made easier through a “bound-document” graphic which shows how the document will come out after it is printed.

This HP LaserJet doesn’t support control-panel-initiated scan-to-computer functionality unlike most of its peers, so it didn’t need to run a scan monitor program. Other than that, the scanner is a colour unit that is able to do what is expected for this class of equipment. Of course, HP has provided scanning software that allows for “scan-to-PDF”, a function that Microsoft could provide within the Windows operating system.

Useability

The display on this unit is a large backlit LCD display with easy-to-read text. Most of the walk-up functions are a button-press away and the text and icons on the control panel are easy to see.

This laser printer, like the other HP LaserJet printers that I have reviewed, uses an integrated print-cartridge system which has the toner supply and drum unit in one user-replaceable cartridge. This makes it easier to replace the cartridges through the machine’s working life and there isn’t any need to think of having to replace a drum kit. The only limitation with this setup is that the printer isn’t as economical to run as a printer that has a separately-replaceable drum unit like the Brother laser printers.

Here, the user just has to open two lids and pull out the used cartridge and drop in the new cartridge. There isn’t any need to push extra hard to make sure the cartridge is in place.

Like a lot of these monochrome laser printers, there isn’t a way of knowing at a glance where you stand as far as your toner supply goes. Here, you have to go to the printer’s embedded Web server to check how much toner is left or print out a “Supplies Status” report to obtain this same data. There is a light on the printer’s control panel that comes on when you are really low on toner.

Print quality

The documents had come out of the LaserJet M1536dnf with the typical crispness of a laser printer’s output. This is even so with output that has pictures and text.

I had printed a photo through this printer and the picture doesn’t have a strong a contrast as the same picture printed on the previously-reviewed Brother mono laser printers.

As far as print speed is concerned, the HP LaserJet was able to achieve the required speed for a monochrome laser printer. There is still the time penalty associated with duplex printing that is common with most printers that have this feature but this penalty is around twice as long as printing a single side. It is also worth noting that whether the printer has just been used recently or not, the first page of a job is out in 6 seconds with the print mechanism working at proper operating temperature.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

This printer, like the other HP LaserJets could benefit from the availability of optional extra-cost high-capacity print cartridges. This can allow for a business to use cheaper standard cartridges through normal times yet cater for peak printing times like larger projects.

I would also like to see a “fuel-gauge” indicator on the LCD display that indicates how much toner is available in the print cartridge, so you can know whether you need to buy more toner after those large printing project.

The fax subsystem could benefit from T.37 / T.38 standards-based Internet-driven faxing and a “scan-to-email” function in order to cater for IP-based telephony infrastructure. The ePrint email-to-print, which is an HP-driven concept, does provide some of this functionality but it could offer more.

As well, the flash-memory that is used for the unit’s fax functionality could be used as the printer’s memory this allowing for improved fail-safe printing. It can be augmented through the use of SD cards as a way of allowing the user to expand the printer’s memory as they see fit.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

The HP LaserJet M1536dnf is one of these laser printers that would fit in a very tight competitive market, a unit that would please the professional who needs to turn out many of the documents and reports as part of their business life.

The only major problem for someone who wants these desireable features from an HP LaserJet multifunction laser printer is the price of the unit compared to that of competing models that print the same way offered by other manufacturers like Brother. If a person places value on the HP ePrint service such as to print from smartphones; power-safe flash memory for faxes; a well-built machine or a simple-to-replace toner cartridge, they could go for this printer where as most other people could just opt for the Brother MFC-7460DN for their network-connected duplex-printing monochrome laser multifunction.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Brother HL-2240D monochrome laser printer which is the second in line in Brother’s latest series of compact monochrome laser printers. There is a cheaper version of this printer, the HL-2230, which doesn’t have the auto-duplex functionality. On the other hand, the HL-2250DN and HL-2270DW printers have the same functionality as this model but can be connected to an Ethernet network or HomePlug powerline network with the appropriate adaptors; with the latter model being able to be connected to a Wi-Fi network as well.

It is also worth noting that the HL-2270DW model, which is the Wi-Fi-enabled top-shelf model of the series had won the Buyer’s Laboratory “Pick” Award for A4 SOHO printers.

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$149

Inks and Toners

Servicing and Other Parts (Laser Printers)

The printer itself

Like its low-end laser-printer peers, the Brother HL-2240D and its stablemates are very compact printers that is very shallow, slightly higher than two large-city telephone directories stacked on top of each other. This means that the printed documents are easy to reach from one’s chair and it doesn’t take up much bench space.

Usage experience

The software that came with the printer had installed on my computer very properly and had operated true to the Windows 7 specifications. As well, the user-interface screens for the driver are very easy to use, being able to show on the left side the settings you have implemented for your print job. This is a very similar experience that I had with the driver software that I had for the Brother HL-4150CDN colour laser printer when I reviewed that unit; and has demonstrated to me that Brother has made strong efforts with their software’s useability.

The Brother HL-2240D printer and printers based on this similar print engine take between 6 to 8 seconds to warm up and be ready to print. It doesn’t matter if this printer has been just used or not.

There is a significant time penalty with this printer for duplex printing, where the machine will take twice as long to turn out documents. This is because it can handle only one page at a time through a duplex print cycle; and will likely be a problem with compact laser printers that use this feature.

The printer uses a manual feed slot for labels, transparencies, envelopes and similar material and these materials have to be loaded one at a time. There may be some materials that have to pass through the printer in a straight-through manner similar to the old photocopier or original Apple LaserWriter printer. Here, there is a drop-down hatch on the back of the printer to cater for these requirements.

There isn’t a “fuel-gauge” for the toner, a feature I would find useful when working out the effect of a large print run on the machine’s toner supplies. The only way the user knows if the printer is out of toner is through the “TONER” light on the top of the machine flashing when it is very low and this same light glowing steadily when they need to replace the toner.

What is required to be removed to replace the toner on these printers

When you have to replace the toner cartridge on the Brother HL-2240D and its peers, you have to remove the drum unit from the machine then release the toner cartridge from the drum unit by operating a small green latch on the left side of the drum unit. This process can appear to be very fiddly compared to other laser printers that I have reviewed, where you could just simply pull out the spent toner cartridge from the printer after opening the access door / lid and, in the case of the colour lasers, pulling out a drawer. It is also prone to mistakes and reduced printout quality if the user doesn’t know where to “park” the drum unit while replacing the toner cartridge.

Toner Cartridge detached from drum unit

Print Quality

The output quality is what you would expect from a laser printer when it comes to text, with the sharp lettering that is typical of this class of printer. But give it a photograph to be printed in greyscale and you will have some banding across the page. As well, the pictures come out slightly darker even though they are printed on plain paper. This is usually due to these printers having their prowess anchored around document printing.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

An improvement that I would like to see would be an easier-to-replace toner cartridge. This is where the drum unit can be pulled out just enough to remove and replace the toner cartridge without the need to operate any catches.

Similarly, these printers could benefit from an on-machine or driver-based toner “fuel gauge” indicator. This is so that one can know where they are at with the toner supply for their units.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

I would recommend that the Brother HL-2240D or HL-2250DN printers be considered for applications like most small medical or legal practices; small hotels or independent travel agents where there is a strong likelihood of turning out standard documents where colour doesn’t matter like invoices, health-insurance forms or itineraries.

Similarly these two printers could be used in a lawyer’s, psychologist’s or other similar professional’s office for turning out confidential information for their patients or clients. It is also augmented by the fact that these printers could easily just occupy the space of a small table like the archetypal side table; which may befit one of these professional’s offices.

The HL-2250DN would suit applications where there are two to five computers sharing the one printer or the location uses laptop computers connected to the network via Wi-Fi wireless. If this was used in a Wi-Fi-based location, this printer would be connected to the network via Ethernet or HomePlug.