Brother HL-L2380DW

BY M. DAVID STONE

Even though the Brother HL-L2380DW monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) ($199.99) can scan and copy, Brother groups it on its website with single-function printers. The company treats it that way because it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF), which limits its copying and scanning to manually placing pages on its letter-size flatbed. Whether you think of it as an MFP or as a single-function printer with convenience features, however, it’s of most interest if your primary need is printing, but you can also make use of its extremely light-duty copy and scan capability.

Much like the Canon imageClass MF212w$109.00 at WalMart that I recently reviewed, the HL-L2380DW$138.00 at Amazon can be a particularly good fit as a personal printer but can also serve as a shared printer in a micro office. The lack of an ADF in both cases helps make the printers small enough to keep on your desk without feeling like they’re towering over you. Both also include a 250-sheet paper tray and one-sheet manual feed, giving them ample paper capacity for either role. The HL-L2380DW adds a duplexer for two-sided printing.

Mobile Devices and the Cloud
In addition to printing, scanning, and copying, the HL-L2380DW offers support for both mobile printing and scanning and the ability to connect to selected cloud sites. If you connect the printer to a network, using either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you can connect to, and both print from and scan to, a tablet or smartphone through an access point on the network. If the network is connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud. Connect the printer to a PC via USB cable instead, and you won’t be able to print through the cloud, but you can still use Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly to the printer for printing and scanning.

Choices on the touch-screen menu include Web-connection options for both scanning to and printing from a selection of websites (including Box, Google Drive, Evernote, and OneDrive). Other choices let you scan to specific file formats—including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—and either save the file to a cloud site or send it as an email attachment. Brother handles the conversion to the file format you want with its own online server.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
The HL-L2380DW is bigger and heavier than the Canon MF212w, but still small enough, at 10.5 by 16.1 by 15.7 inches (HWD), to put on your desk. It’s also light enough, at 21 pounds 10 ounces, for one person to move it into place. For my tests, I connected it to a network by Ethernet and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. Setup was typical for the breed.

Brother rates the HL-L2380DW at 32 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text documents or other files that need little to no processing. On our business applications suite, I timed it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at 9.5ppm.

That qualifies it to be of acceptable speed for the price and engine rating. However, it’s notably slower than the 12.2ppm I measured for the Canon MF212w and the nearly identical 12.3ppm for the Canon imageClass MF216n$119.99 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice MFP for personal use or for light-duty use in a micro office.

The HL-L2380DW’s output quality is similarly acceptable but unimpressive. Text, which is generally the most important kind of output for a monochrome printer, is slightly below par for a laser MFP, even though it’s good enough for most business use. As long as you don’t have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn’t have a problem with it.

Graphics output is on par with the vast majority of monochrome lasers, making it easily good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages, but not suitable for anything more demanding than that.

If you’re considering the Brother HL-L2380DW, be sure to take a look at the Canon MF216n and Canon MF212w as well. Both Canon printers offer faster speed and better text quality than the HL-L2380DW, with the Canon MF216n adding an ADF. However, the HL-L2380DW has some advantages over both Canon printers as well, including Wi-Fi Direct, mobile scanning along with mobile printing, printing through the cloud, and the ability to print to and scan from specific websites. If you can make good use of the HL-L2380DW’s Web-related features or its mobile printing and scanning, it can easily be the right choice.

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OKI B412dn

BY M. DAVID STONE

The OKI B412dn ($199) is the sort of compact but powerful beast that’s small enough to share a desk with, but capable enough to serve as a shared printer. Built around an LED engine—which means it substitutes LEDs for a laser as its light source—it’s technically not a laser printer, but it uses the same technology otherwise, which is why most people don’t draw a distinction between LED and laser printers. More important, compared head-to-head with actual laser printers, it can be an attractive choice.

The B412dn$190.00 at Amazon is a close competitor in many ways to the Brother HL-5450DN$142.47 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice moderate- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office or workgroup. In particular, it offers slightly better paper handling. Both printers come with a 250-sheet paper tray and duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. Both also include a multipurpose tray. However, the B412dn’s tray holds 100 sheets rather than 50.

The paper capacity for either printer should be sufficient for most offices, but the extra capacity for the B412dn is a welcome convenience. For those offices that need more, both printers also offer an additional tray. Here again, the B412dn offers a little extra, with its 530-sheet tray ($229) boosting the capacity from 350 sheets to a maximum 880 sheets. The Brother HL-5450’s maximum is 800 sheets.

Basics, Setup, and Speed
As tested, the only connection choices for B412dn are USB and Ethernet, although a Wi-Fi module ($75) is also available. Mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud—assuming the printer is on a network, and the network is connected to the Internet. It also includes connecting though an access point on the network to print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. However, the Wi-Fi module does not offer Wi-Fi Direct or the equivalent, which means that if you chose to connect to a PC via USB cable instead of connecting to a network, you won’t be able to take advantage of mobile printing.

Setup is standard fare. The printer is small enough to find room for easily, at 9.6 by 15.2 by 14.3 inches (HWD), and it weighs just 26 pounds 8 ounces. For my tests, I connected it using its Ethernet port and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista.

OKI rates the B412dn at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing a text document or other file that needs little to no processing. On our business applications suite, I clocked it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an effective 9.6ppm. That’s acceptably fast for the price and engine speed, but is a touch slower than the Brother HL-5450DN, at 10.8ppm. It’s also slower than the less-expensive Canon imageClass LBP6230dw$99.99 at Amazon in the Canon printer’s default duplex mode, at 10.8ppm, and a lot slower than the Canon printer in simplex (one-sided) mode, at 13.2ppm.

Output Quality and Running Costs
Output quality for the B412dn earns the same general description as its speed: more than acceptable overall, but not impressive.

Text quality in my tests was just a touch below par for a monochrome laser, but not in a way that will matter for most business use. With small font sizes, the strokes were so thin that the text looked gray rather than black, making it hard to read. At 8 points and above, however, almost every font we test with was highly readable and easily good enough for most purposes short of high-quality desktop publishing. As long as you don’t need small fonts, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Graphics and photo quality are both typical for a monochrome laser. For graphics, that translates to being easily good enough for any internal business use. Unless you have a particularly critical eye, you’ll probably consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages.

One final strong point for the B412dn is its running cost, at a claimed 1.9 cents per page. That’s about the same as the claimed cost for the Brother HL-5450DN, but a lot cheaper than the cost for most printers in this price range. The more pages you print, the more this can save you. The Canon LBP6230dw’s claimed cost, for example, is 4.1 cents per page, with the 2.2 cent per page difference working out to $22 for 1,000 pages.

If you print few enough pages so you don’t have to consider running cost, you may prefer the Canon LBP6230dw to the OKI B412dn because of its faster speed. However, if you print enough for the cost per page to matter, either the B412dn or the Brother HL-5450DN will be far less expensive in the long run. Between them, the Brother printer offers faster speed and better text quality, which keeps it firmly in place as our Editors’ Choice. That said, if the B412dn’s speed and text quality are good enough for your purposes, its slightly lower claimed cost per page and its slightly better paper handling may make it the better fit.

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OKI B432dn

BY M. DAVID STONE

Although technically not a laser printer—because it uses LEDs instead of a laser to draw the image of each page on its drum—the OKI B432dn ($349) uses the same technology otherwise, putting it firmly in the monochrome laser category for all practical purposes. Beyond that, its strong points include both its level of paper handling and its low running cost. The combination will make it of particular interest to small offices with both heavy-duty print needs and an appreciation of how spending just a little less on each printed page can add up to big savings in the long run.

The advantage of the B432dn’s 1.6 cents-per-page running cost will vary depending on how much you print and what printer you’re using for the comparison. The OKI B412dn$190.00 at Amazon, for example, also has a low running cost for its price. However, the printer itself is $150 less than the B432dn, and its claimed running cost is 0.3 cents her per page .

The difference works out to $30 for 10,000 pages. Print 50,000 pages with both printers over their lifetimes, and the total cost of ownership will be the same in both cases. Every 10,000 pages beyond that translates to a $30 savings for the B432dn. Run the same calculation with the Brother HL-5450DN$142.47 at Amazon and the advantage for the B432dn is even greater. The difference in initial price is smaller and the savings in running cost is bigger, at $50 for every 10,000 pages.

Basics
Complementing the B432dn’s low running cost is paper handling that’s suitable for heavy-duty printing in a micro office. The printer comes with a 250-sheet drawer, 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. If you need more, you can boost the capacity to 880 sheets with an optional 530-sheet tray ($229).

Going a little beyond the basics, the B432dn adds mobile printing support. If you connect to a network with either Ethernet or with the optional Wi-Fi module ($75), you can print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet by connecting through an access point on your network. You can also print though the cloud. However, the Wi-Fi option does not support Wi-Fi Direct or the equivalent, which means that if you connect to a single PC via USB cable rather than to your network, you can’t connect directly with mobile devices.

One other feature worth noting is support for PostScript, a printer language that most offices can do without, but some applications require.

Setup and Speed
The B432dn weighs 26 pounds 8 ounces and measures 9.6 by 15.2 by 14.3 inches (HWD), making it small and light enough for one person to move into place. Setup is typical for a monochrome laser. For my tests, I connected it to a network using its Ethernet port and installed the driver on a Windows Vista system.

OKI rates the printer engine at 42 pages per minute (ppm), which is close to the speed you should see when printing a file that needs little to no processing. However, the effective speed can be much slower, depending on how many pages are in the print job.

Results on our tests are usually significantly slower than the engine rating, both because most of our test files include graphics and photos that require processing, and because we time what’s known as throughput, which includes the time between giving the print command and the first page starting to print. Engine ratings don’t include that time. Even after taking this into account, however, the B432dn was slow for both its price and its rating on our tests.

The reason for the slow performance is that the B432dn takes more time than most of the competition to warm up at the start of a print job. For long documents, the fast speed once printing actually begins will largely make up for the slow start. However, our tests consist of one to four-page documents, because most offices print far more short documents than long ones.

I timed the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at only 6.8ppm. In comparison, the OKI B412dn came in at 9.6ppm, the Brother HL-5450DN managed 10.8ppm, and the much-less-expensive Canon imageClass LBP6230dw$99.99 at Amazon hit 10.8ppm in its default duplex mode and 13.2ppm in simplex (one-sided) mode. The best that can be said of the B432dn’s speed for short print jobs is that it’s tolerable, but sluggish. The good news is that with substantially longer documents, the slow warm-up time won’t be as significant a drag on the overall print time.

Output Quality
Output quality overall is more than acceptable, particularly for text, which is easily good enough for almost any business need short of high-quality desktop publishing. Unless you make extensive use of small font sizes, you shouldn’t have a problem with it.

Graphics and photo quality are both typical for a monochrome laser. The graphics output is easily good enough for any internal business use, and most people would consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages.

If you won’t be printing enough for the B432dn’s low cost per page to be a key consideration, you might be better off with the OKI B412dn, which offers the same paper handling plus faster throughput for short print jobs. Also consider the Brother HL-5450DN. In addition to offering nearly the same level of paper handling, the Brother model delivers better text quality than the B432dn, which helps make it our Editors’ Choice moderate- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office or workgroup.

If your print needs are heavy-duty enough, the OKI B432dn’s low running cost can save money in the long run compared with less expensive printers with higher running costs. And if most of the documents you print are long enough for the fast engine speed to make up for the slow warm-up time, it can even be a compelling choice.

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Canon imageClass MF216n

BY M. DAVID STONE

Meant primarily as a shared monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) for a micro office or small workgroup, the Canon imageClass MF216n ($199) delivers fast speed and suitably high-quality output. It lacks a duplexer (for two-sided printing), but it includes an automatic document feeder (ADF) for easy scanning and an Ethernet connector for sharing on a network. The combination makes it our Editors’ Choice monochrome laser MFP for light-duty micro-office use or heavy-duty personal use.

Design and Features
The MF216n$144.71 at Amazon offers far more than the Panasonic KX-MB2000$190.50 at Amazon that it replaces as our preferred pick. It has the same 250-sheet input capacity, but it adds a one-sheet manual feed, which is a significant convenience. It’s also faster on our tests, and it ups the ante for scanning and copying by supplementing its letter-size flatbed with a 35-sheet ADF that can handle up to legal-size paper.

Basic MFP features include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC and the ability to work as a standalone copier and fax machine. In addition, the printer offers mobile support to let it print from and scan to Android and iOS phones and tablets.

An important limitation for mobile printing and scanning is that the MF216w has to be connected by Ethernet to a network that includes a Wi-Fi access point. Some printers, including the Samsung Xpress M2070FW$129.99 at Amazon, offer Wi-Fi Direct to let you connect to the printer even if it’s not on a network. The MF216n doesn’t even support Wi-Fi, much less Wi-Fi Direct.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
At 14.2 by 15.4 by 14.6 inches (HWD), the MF216n is small enough to share a desk with, but tall enough that you may prefer not to do so. At 26.7 pounds, however, it’s light enough for one person to move into place. Setup is standard. For my tests, I connected it to a network and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.

Canon rates the printer engine at 24 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing documents that require little to no processing. On our business applications suite, I clocked it at 12.3ppm (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing). That’s a fast speed for the rating and faster than either the Panasonic KX-MB2000, at 8ppm, or the Samsung M2070FW, at 9.8ppm.

Output quality counts as a strong point, with solid quality for a monochrome laser MFP across the board. Text quality, which usually matters most for monochrome printers, is easily good enough for any business use, even if you need to use small fonts.

Graphics quality is at the low end of a tight range that includes most monochrome laser MFPs. It’s certainly suitable for any internal business use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider it acceptable for PowerPoint handouts and the like. As with most monochrome laser MFPs, photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos on a Web page, but not for anything more demanding than that.

If you need mobile printing and scanning with a printer you intend to connect to a single PC by USB cable, consider the Samsung M2070FW, with its Wi-Fi Direct support. If you need Wi-Fi to connect to a network, but don’t need Wi-Fi Direct, take a look at the Canon imageClass MF212w, which offers the same capability for printing as the MF216n, but lacks an ADF and fax support. For most offices, however, the MF216n’s combination of speed, output quality, and paper handling—plus its ADF and fax capability—make it the better fit. It’s our Editors’ Choice for personal or light-duty, micro office monochrome laser MFPs.

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Canon imageClass MF227dw

BY M. DAVID STONE

Although small enough to use as a personal monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP), the Canon imageClass MF227dw ($249) is capable enough for a micro office or small workgroup. Its speed and paper handling are suitable for up to moderate workloads by micro-office standards, and it adds such niceties as a well-designed touch-screen control panel. More important, it offers all the features the vast majority of micro offices need, which is more than enough to make it our Editors’ Choice for moderate use in a micro office.

The MF227dw$189.39 at Amazon is one of four similar models, including the Canon imageClass MF216n$144.71 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice monochrome laser MFP for light-duty micro office use or heavy-duty personal use. It’s also a big step up from its lesser cousin.

Compared with the Canon MF216n, the MF227dw offers a faster engine rating, adds Wi-Fi to Ethernet and USB as a connection choice, and it features duplex (two-sided) printing. If you want to connect to a network, and don’t want to string wires, its Wi-Fi capability makes the MF227dw the better choice. For most offices, however, the more important difference is duplexing, which, if you need it, easily justifies the additional cost.

Basics
Basic MFP features for the MF227dw include printing and faxing from, as well as scanning to, a PC plus the ability to work as a standalone copier and fax machine. In addition, mobile printing and scanning features let you print from and scan to Android and iOS phones and tablets.

Unfortunately, the mobile printing and scanning is limited to working only over a Wi-Fi access point. Unlike the Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW$239.99 at Amazon, another top pick in this category, the MF227dw doesn’t offer Wi-Fi Direct or the equivalent. If you connect the printer to a single PC by USB cable, that leaves you with no way to connect from a mobile device.

The printer’s paper handling counts mostly as a plus. In addition to the duplexer, the MF227dw offers a 250-sheet tray, plus a one-sheet manual feed. This should be enough for most micro offices, but if you need more capacity, you’ll have to look elsewhere, since Canon doesn’t offer any upgrade options. For scanning, it includes a 35-sheet automatic document feeder.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
The MF227dw weighs 28.2 pounds, which is light enough for one person to move the printer into place, and it measures 14.2 by 15.4 by 14.6 inches (HWD), which makes it tall enough that you may not want it sitting on your desk. Setup is standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a network using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a system running Windows Vista.

Canon rates the printer at 16 pages per minute (ppm) in its default setting, using duplex mode, and 28ppm for simplex (one-sided) mode. In each case, these are the speeds you should see when printing text documents or other material that doesn’t need much processing. In my tests (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), it came in on our business applications suite at 9.7ppm in duplex mode and 13ppm in simplex. That makes it just a little faster in simplex mode than the Canon MF216n (12.3ppm), and essentially tied with the Canon imageClass MF4880dw$150.40 at Amazon that it’s in the process of replacing in Canon’s line. More impressive is that it’s almost as fast for duplex printing as the Samsung M2875FW is for simplex (10ppm).

Output quality is solidly average across the board for a monochrome laser MFP. Text, which for most offices is the most important type of output for monochrome printers, is good enough for anything short of high-quality desktop publishing.

Graphics quality falls within a tight range that includes most monochrome laser MFPs, although it’s in the bottom half of that range. It’s certainly suitable for any internal business use. Whether you consider it acceptable for PowerPoint handouts or the like will depend on how much of a perfectionist you are. Photo quality is roughly equivalent to newspaper-quality photos, which makes it good enough to print recognizable images from photos on a Web page.

If you don’t need duplex printing or Wi-Fi, your best choice will likely be the Canon MF216n, which will give you nearly the same speed and capability as the Canon imageClass MF227dw at a lower cost. If you need duplexing, as well as the ability to connect to the printer directly—or want additional mobile features like faxing from mobile devices—the Samsung M2875FW will likely be the right fit. For most offices, however, the MF227dw’s faster speed will give it just enough of an edge to make it the better choice, which also makes it our Editors’ Choice monochrome laser MFP for up to medium-duty use in a micro office.

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Brother HL-L2360DW

BY M. DAVID STONE

Despite being small enough to fit comfortably on your desk, the Brother HL-L2360DW monochrome laser printer ($149.99) offers speed and paper handling suitable for most micro offices. Its output quality was somewhat below par in our tests, but it’s still good enough for most business use. The combination makes it a reasonable choice as either a heavy-duty personal printer or as a light- to moderate-duty shared printer in a micro or small office.

Paper handling is one of the HL-L2360DW’s$99.99 at Best Buy strengths, and a key area where the printer offers a point-for-point match with the Samsung Xpress M2825DW $140.45 at Amazon, our Editors’ Choice for low-cost personal or micro-office mono lasers. Both printers offer a 250-sheet input tray, a one-sheet manual feed, a duplexer (for two-sided printing). If you need a higher paper capacity, you’ll have to look elsewhere, but, with either printer, this should be enough for most micro offices.

Connection options for the HL-L2360DW include Ethernet and Wi-Fi, which makes it easy to share the printer in a micro office, plus Wi-Fi Direct, which lets you connect directly to the printer from a mobile device, even if you connect the printer to a single PC by USB cable. Brother’s free mobile print app lets you print from iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Windows mobile devices either directly, using Wi-Fi Direct, or through your Wi-Fi access point. If the network is connected to the Internet, you can print through the cloud.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
At 7.2 by 14.0 by 14.2 inches (HWD), the HL-L2360DW takes up less desktop space than most inkjets, and at only 15 pounds, it’s light enough for one person to move into place easily. Setting it up on a network is standard fare. For my tests I connected it by Ethernet and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.

On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) I clocked the printer at 9.6 pages per minute (ppm). That qualifies as a reasonable speed for both the price and the 32-ppm rating. It’s also essentially tied with the Samsung M2825DW. However, it’s well short of impressive. By comparison, the Brother HL-2270DW$139.99 at Amazon, which the Samsung printer replaced as our Editors’ Choice, came in at 11.7ppm. The Canon imageClass LBP6200d$169.00 at PCNation.com clocked in at 11.1ppm in its default duplex mode and at 14.5ppm in simplex (one-sided) mode.

Unfortunately, the HL-L2360DW’s output quality doesn’t hold up against the competition. Text quality is good enough for most business use, but it’s below par for a monochrome laser. The saving grace is that even subpar text for a laser is better than you’ll get from most inkjets. I wouldn’t consider this printer for high-quality desktop publishing, but for typical business use, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, it should work for you.

Graphics output is at the low end of a fairly tight range that includes virtually all monochrome lasers. It’s good enough for any internal business need, but not for something you’ll want to hand out to a client or customer when you’re trying to make a good impression. Photo quality is typical for its ilk. That translates to being good enough to print recognizable images from photos in Web pages, or roughly equivalent to newspaper quality.

If you want speed, the Canon LBP6200d can be an attractive choice, but its only connection option is USB, which limits it to personal, rather than shared, use. If you need better output quality than the Brother HL-L2360DW offers, take a close look at the Samsung M2825DW, which delivers higher-quality text and graphics as part of a balance of features that makes it our preferred pick. If you don’t need particularly high-quality output, however, the HL-L2360DW matches the Samsung printer for speed, paper handling, connection options, and mobile printing support, making it a reasonable, though not particularly compelling, choice.

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Brother MFC-2740DW

by 

I’ve had the privilege of receiving a new Brother MFC-2740DW Laser Printer, part of Brother’s new line of monochrome laser printers released last month. The MFC-2740DW is a printer, copier, scanner and fax machine (35-page capacity document feeder) all rolled up in a small package. The color scanner connects to destinations such as FTP and Microsoft Sharepoint, and the 2.7” color touch screen display with Web Connect lets you scan to popular cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, Onedrive, Onenote, and various others.

Design

This particular all-in-one model looks bulky and heavy, but when I lifted it out of the box and slipped it into the corner of my desk under my shelf, I realized how compact and lightweight it is. When printing, the collection tray that would usually lie jutting out into empty space is actually inside the structure of the device, preserving space. The parts of the printer are easily navigable compared to some older models, making potential paper jams easily fixed.

Installation & Wireless

Installation was quick and easy. The software is accessible on the company’s website and, once it is downloaded onto your system, adding the printer to the queue takes only the click of a button. The wireless in the device is pretty seamless. It takes a few seconds for the signal to connect after you click the “print” button, but no more than 20 maximum. Printing, scanning and faxing processes are quick, simple and frustration-free.

Toner

The ink situation in this particular printer is a dream come true. Not only does one toner cartridge print significantly more pages than the average home printer, each cartage costs about $20-$30 less than the average ink cartridge at $40-$50, depending on the retailer.

Verdict

I’ve spent a lot of time getting into fights with printers in my house, my dorm rooms, libraries, and especially in offices. This printer is easy to set up, convenient to use, and pretty much offers everything a large office printer can offer, including double-sided printing, making it the perfect choice for a home office. The Brother Printer MFC-2740DW Wireless Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax retails at $299.99.

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Samsung Xpress M2835DW

BY M. DAVID STONE

Small enough to serve as a personal monochrome laser printer, the Samsung Xpress M2835DW ($159.99) is also capable enough to be a good fit as a shared printer in a micro office. It doesn’t offer quite enough to topple the Editors’ ChoiceXpress M2825DW$122.00 at Amazon it’s replacing in Samsung’s line. It costs a little more and the competition today is a bit tougher, but it’s still a strong contender.

The M2835DW$159.00 at Amazon lets you connect via USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct. If you connect it to a network, you can print though the cloud, and from Android and iOS smartphones and tablets through an access point. Thanks to Wi-Fi Direct, even if you connect it to a PC by USB cable to use it as a personal printer, you can print directly from your mobile device.

In addition, you get NFC support, which means that if you have a compatible mobile device, you can connect simply by touching that phone or tablet to a clearly marked spot on the printer, and then print using Samsung’s app. During testing, I ran into a minor problem with the NFC connection at first with a Samsung Galaxy S III, but after turning everything off and back on again, the connection worked as promised.

Paper Handling and Setup
At only 8 by 14.5 by 13.2 inches (HWD) and 16.4 pounds, the M2835DW is small enough to comfortably share a desk with and light enough for one person to move easily, which helps make it a good choice as a personal printer. Even so, it offers ample paper handling for a shared printer, with a 250-sheet input tray, a duplexer (for two-sided printing), and a one-sheet manual feed. This should be more than enough for most personal or micro-office use.

For my tests, I connected the printer using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a system running Windows Vista. Setting the printer up on a network was absolutely typical for a mono laser.

Speed and Output Quality
The engine rating for the M2835DW is 29 pages per minute (ppm), the same as for the Samsung M2825DW. Not surprisingly, the two printers came in at essentially the same speed on our tests. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing), at 9.7ppm, compared with 9.9ppm for the Samsung M2825DW. (A 0.2ppm difference at this speed isn’t significant.)

The 9.7ppm translates to solid, but not particularly fast, performance for the price. TheBrother HL-2270DW$79.99 at Amazon, for example, came in at 11.7ppm. Even more impressive is the Canon imageClass LBP6200d$126.75 at Canon, which came in at 11.1ppm for its official speed in its default duplex setting, and a much faster 14.5ppm when set to simplex (one-sided) printing. However, the Canon LBP6200d connects by USB only, which is fine for using it as personal printer, but makes it a poor choice for a shared printer.

Output quality for the M2835DW is typical for a monochrome laser across the board. The text score in my tests fell in the middle of a fairly tight range that includes the vast majority of monochrome laser printers. Output is suitable for virtually any business use, but not quite good enough for serious desktop publishing applications.

Graphics, similarly, are easily good enough for any internal business need. Most people would also consider them good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. Photos quality is roughly newspaper-level.

The Samsung M2825DW earned our Editors’ Choice not because of any particularly notable feature, but because of its balance of features. Both the Canon LBP6200d and the Brother HL-2270DW will give you more impressive speed, for example, but they also score slightly lower for quality.

The good news about the Samsung Xpress M2835DW is that it essentially matches the Samsung M2825DW on speed, output quality, and paper handling. Unfortunately, given the slight boost in price compared with the older model (which is still widely available online), and that some of the competition—most notably the Canon LBP6200d—delivers significantly faster speed, the M2835DW doesn’t offer quite enough to earn the Editors’ Choice distinction. That said, it’s still an attractive choice, and it can certainly be a good fit as either a personal printer or as a shared printer in a micro office.

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Samsung Xpress M2020W

BY M. DAVID STONE

Clearly designed for personal, rather than office use, the Samsung Xpress M2020W ($129.99) monochrome laser printer offers reasonably good speed along with output quality that’s good enough for most business needs. It also offers Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and NFC support, which gives it an edge over much of its competition. Unfortunately, its running cost is high enough to be a potential issue if you need it for anything more than extremely light-duty use.

Like the Brother HL-2240$81.93 at Amazon and Samsung’s own Xpress M2625D$71.09 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice for a low-cost personal monochrome laser, the M2020W$68.79 at Amazon is smaller than most inkjets, at 7.0 by 13.0 by 8.5 inches. The combination of the small size and a low paper capacity, at 150 sheets, is what defines the M2020 as a personal printer.

One advantage the M2020W has over both the Brother HL-2240 and Samsung M2625D is its Wi-Fi support, although not in the way you might think. Although Wi-Fi will let you share the printer easily on a network in a micro office, the low paper capacity could leave you refilling the tray a lot.

The more attractive use of Wi-Fi is for mobile printing. Connect the printer to a network, and you can print from a phone or tablet though a Wi-Fi access point. Even better, the Wi-Fi support includes Wi-Fi Direct, which means you can connect directly from a mobile device to print, even if the printer isn’t on a network. And if your phone or tablet supports NFC, you can also connect simply by touching it to a clearly marked spot on the printer. In my tests, I connected this way with a Samsung Galaxy S III and printed without problems.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
Setup is standard for a monochrome laser. For my tests, I connected by USB cable and printed from a Windows Vista system.

Samsung rates the M2020W at 21 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text files or other output with little to no formatting. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) it came in at 9.2ppm, which is appropriately fast for the rating. However, it’s a touch slower than the Samsung M2625D, at 9.9ppm, and significantly slower than the Brother HL-2240, at 11.4ppm.

The output quality is best described as good enough for most purposes, but not impressive. Text quality was at the low end of the range where the vast majority of monochrome lasers fall, which means it’s not quite good enough for high-quality desktop publishing, but more than good enough for almost any business use.

Graphics output was absolutely par for a monochrome laser. That makes it easily good enough for any internal business use. Most people would also consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos were at the low end of a very tight range where virtually all monochrome lasers fall, making them good enough for applications like printing recognizable photos from webpages, but not much more than that.

The one potentially serious drawback for the M2020W is its running cost, at 5.3 cents per page. In comparison, the Samsung M2625D claims 3.9 cents per page, and the Brother HL-2240 claims 3.8 cents. Compared with either of those two models, that works out to a difference of at least $1.40 for every 100 pages, $14 for every 1,000 pages, and $140 for every 10,000 pages. If you don’t expect to print many pages over the printer’s lifetime, the running cost may not be an issue. However, the more you print, the higher the difference in total cost of ownership will be.

If you have no need for the wirerless printing options in the Samsung Xpress M2020W, you will almost certainly be better off with either the Brother HL-2240 or the Editors’ Choice Samsung M2625D. Both deliver higher paper capacities and lower running costs, with the Brother HL-2240 delivering significantly faster speed and the Samsung M2625D adding a duplexer.

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Canon Color imageClass LBP7110Cw

BY M. DAVID STONE

Canon’s color laser printers are usually in the range of good to outstanding, which makes it surprising that the Canon Color imageClass LBP7110Cw ($279) isn’t. The best that can be said for it is that it doesn’t have any serious problems. However, it loses points for any number of small issues—unimpressive speed, subpar output for text, graphics, and photos, meager paper capacity, and a high running cost—without balancing the weak points with any particular strengths. It works well enough to use, but there’s no compelling reason to pick it over the competition.

As a point of comparison, the Samsung CLP-415NW$280.99 at Amazon—our Editors’ Choice for a heavy-duty, personal color printer or a medium-duty micro-office shared color printer—costs only a little more, but it outdoes the Canon printer on almost every score. Compared with the LBP7110Cw$179.99 at Amazon the Samsung printer is faster, it prints better-looking output, and it offers better paper handling, with a 250-sheet input capacity plus a manual-feed instead of the LBP7110Cw’s single 150-sheet tray. Surprisingly, despite the higher paper capacity, the Samsung printer even manages to be a little smaller than the Canon model, making it easier to find room for. The LBP7110Cw measures 10 by 16 by 17.9 inches (HWD) and weighs 41 pounds 14 ounces with toner cartridges installed.

The particular combination of size and paper capacity creates another minor issue. The printer is too big to fit comfortably on your desk to serve as a personal printer, but with just the 150-sheet tray, it’s also too meager to serve well as a shared printer. Quite simply, the LBP7110Cw doesn’t fit well in either role.

One potential plus for the printer is mobile printing support, with the ability to print from iOS and Android devices. However, you can connect to the printer only through your network access point, and only if the printer is connected to the network by Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

Setup
Setup is standard fare, but only if you ignore the instructions that come with the printer. The easy choice is to simply install the driver from the supplied disc. However, the Quick Start guide doesn’t mention the disc. Instead it tells you to download the driver and manual from Canon’s website.

Not only is the lack of any mention of the disc potentially confusing, but the download instructions in the Quick Start guide don’t work. Even if they did, making you download the driver manually is an unnecessary complication. Many printer installation programs include an option for the setup program itself to check online for updated drivers and download them automatically if necessary. There’s no good excuse for Canon making you do the work instead.

Speed, and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer to a wired network and installed the driver on a Windows Vista system. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software) I clocked the printer at 5.5 pages per minute (ppm). That counts as a suitable speed for the 14ppm rating for both color and black and white, but not an impressive speed for the price.

The Samsung CLP-415NW was significantly faster, at 6ppm, and both the Brother HL-3140CW$210.54 at Amazon and the Brother HL-3170CDW$239.05 at Amazon were faster still, essentially tied at about 6.8ppm. In that context, the LBP7110Cw’s speed is acceptable, but no better than that.

The printer’s output quality is equally unimpressive. Text, graphics, and photos in my tests were all slightly subpar for a laser, meaning that for each type of output, the LBP7110Cw scored just below the range that includes the majority of its competition.

Fortunately, the news on output quality isn’t all bad. Text is still suitable for almost any business use, as long as you don’t have an unusual need for small fonts. Graphics output is good enough for any internal need and potentially good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like, as long as you’re not too much of a perfectionist. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from webpages, but it’s not suitable for anything much more demanding than that.

One other issue that counts against the printer is a high running cost, at a claimed 3.6 cents for a black and white page and 20.6 cents for a color page. That’s not very different from the Samsung CLP-415NW’s claimed costs, but it’s not balanced by any of the advantages the Samsung printer offers.

If you need a printer for heavy-duty personal use or for medium-duty use as shared printer in a micro office, the Samsung CLP-415NW remains the obvious pick, with its balance of speed, output quality and paper handling keeping it solidly in place as our Editors’ Choice. If you need faster printing, you’ll also want to take a look at the Brother HL-3140CW and the Brother HL-3170CDW. There’s nothing really wrong with the Canon imageClass 7110Cw, which means it could be worth considering if you find it at a low enough price. But there’s also no compelling reason to choose it over its competition.

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