HP Releases Its First 3-D Printer

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The 3-D printing phenomenon is inching closer to the mass market.

It was a year ago when Boise Weekly sat down with teams of staff members from rural Idaho libraries who had convened in Boise to learn how to master 3-D printing and share that knowledge with residents in every corner of the Gem State. The librarians were even granted their own 3-D printers that had been built or repurposed with, get this, parts printed by previous incarnations of 3-D printers.

And it turns out that the Treasure Valley has had a robust 3-D printing community

“Absolutely; there are a lot of us building 3-D printers in Boise,” said Davis Ultis, general manager of Boise Reuseum, who hosts something called Open Lab Idaho at the Boise facility billed as a “community hackerspace and makerspace … for hackers, computer geeks, engineers, circuit benders, crafters, tinkerers, programmers and artists.”

Enter Hewlett-Packard, which obviously smells a major business opportunity. HP has unveiled it first commercial 3-D printer, dubbed “Multi Jet Fusion,” for about $10,000. HP revealed its device at a New York trade show. But don’t expect one under the Christmas tree. HP says its Multi Jet Fusion printer will hit store shelves in 2016. By the way, it’s as big as an office copy machine.

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

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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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Soon the Printer Will Come to You

 

Tomonori Shindou, Nikkei Computer

Fuji Xerox Co Ltd tested a printer that not only prints documents on paper but autonomously moves around a room like the Roomba robot cleaner for delivering it.

Fuji Xerox used a prototype of the robot in a building located in Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo, in July and August 2014 in cooperation with Tokyu Land Corp for operation tests. Visitors to the lounge of the building used it for free.

The printing of documents is carried out via an Internet browser. Each desk in the lounge has a smart card on which a URL for printing is written. When the URL is accessed with a browser and a file is dragged and dropped in the browser window, an instruction to print out the file (print job) is sent to the robot.

When the robot receives a print job, it automatically begins to move toward the desk being used by the person who sent the order. Because it knows where in the lounge it is running, it stops near the desk.

The print job starts only after the user holds the card up to the robot. Therefore, the printed paper does not come out when the robot is moving in the lounge. As a result, business papers, etc will not be seen by others even in a public space like a lounge.

The robot houses a color laser printer of Fuji Xerox. It can handle sheets of up to A4 size. And it is the company’s smallest printer. On the top of the robot, a tablet computer is mounted. When the user presses the “start moving” button displayed on it after the printing job is done, it automatically goes back to the “home position” in a corner of the lounge.

Because the battery of the robot lasts for a day, it does not need to be charged in the home position.

For the autonomous movement function, the robot uses the “Lidar” sensors, which use laser to measure the three dimensional shapes of surrounding objects. While conventional radar devices use radio waves, the Lidar uses light (laser) instead so that more detailed information can be obtained in the range of several tens of meters.

The robot can automatically make a three-dimensional map of the lounge. If it is manually moved around a room at the time of introduction, a map for autonomous operation is made in the robot. It is not necessary to set up “markers” to be detected by sensors. When the robot detects an object that does not exist in the map, it sees the object as a human and selects a route so that it can avoid the person.

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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HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

BY M. DAVID STONE

Much like the Editors’ Choice Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW$235.49 at Amazon, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw ($259.99) is small enough to use as a personal monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) for light-duty print needs, but also capable enough to serve as a shared printer in a micro or small office. It’s not as fast as the Samsung printer or the Canon imageClass MF4770n$99.99 at Amazon, but it offers most of the MFP features most micro offices need, and it adds HP’s Web apps as a potentially useful extra.

Connection choices for the M127fw$179.93 at Amazon are essentially the same as for the Samsung M2875FW, with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wireless Direct, which is HP’s equivalent to Wi-Fi Direct. Just like Wi-Fi Direct, it will let you connect to the printer from a Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone, tablet, or laptop. This is particularly useful if you don’t have a Wi-Fi access point on your network or you want to connect the printer by USB cable to a single PC, rather than connect it to a network.

Mobile printing features include the ability to print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, as well as from a laptop over Wi-Fi, and print through the cloud, assuming the printer is connected to a network that’s connected to the Internet. In addition, you can use front-panel menus to print from a variety of HP Web apps, including printing postage from Stamps.com and printing forms from Biztree.com. However, you can’t scan to or fax from your mobile device using the iOS or Android apps, the way you can with the Samsung M2875FW.

Basics and Setup
The M127fw’s basic MFP features include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, plus standalone faxing and copying. For scanning, you can use either the letter-size flatbed or the 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle up to legal-size pages.

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

Paper handling for printing is limited to a single 150-sheet tray. There’s no manual feed, no duplexer (for two-sided printing), and no upgrade options. The tray is enough for personal or light-duty use in a micro office, but not much more than that. If your print, copy, and incoming fax needs add up to more than about 30 pages per day, adding paper can easily turn into an annoying chore. The Samsung M2875FW does far better on this score, with a 250-sheet capacity, a manual feed, and a duplexer.

Setup is typical for a small monochrome laser. At 12.2 by 16.5 by 14.4 inches (HWD), the M127fw is a little bigger than you may want sitting on your desk, but it’s small enough so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding room for it nearby. For my tests, I connected it by its Ethernet port, and installed the drivers and other software on a Windows Vista system.

Speed and Output Quality
HP rates the printer at 21 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see for printing a text document or other file with little to no formatting. On our business applications suite, I timed it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 8.9ppm. That’s enough of a difference between it and the Samsung M2875FW, at 10ppm, that you’ll notice it, but it’s not dramatic. On the other hand, it’s significantly slower than the Canon MF4770n, at 12.3ppm, and also slower than the more directly competitive Canon imageClass MF4880dw$124.99 at Amazon, which is Editors’ Choice in this class if you need fast speed. The MF4880dw’s official speed on our tests is 9.6ppm in its default duplex mode. In unofficial tests in simplex mode, it came in at 12.5ppm, essentially tying the Canon MF4770n.

Output quality for the M127fw is a touch above average overall, thanks to better-than-typical graphics quality. Text is at the low end of a very tight range that includes the vast majority of monochrome laser MFPs, making it easily good enough for almost any business need short of high-quality desktop publishing. Graphics output is top-tier for its category, putting it a step above most of the competition. It’s easily good enough for almost any business need, including PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo quality, like text, is typical for a monochrome laser MFP. That makes it easily good enough for printing recognizable images from photos on Web pages, but not for anything more demanding than that.

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

Despite its strong points, the M127fw is outclassed by its competition on traditional MFP features. The Canon MF4880dw and Samsung M2875FW, both Editors’ Choice models, will give you better paper handling and faster speed, with the Canon printer stronger on speed and the Samsung model offering a wider range of features.

That said, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw still offers enough to make it worth considering. Because of its low paper capacity and lack of a duplexer and manual feed, it’s a little smaller than either the Canon or Samsung models. That makes it easier to find room for if space is somewhat tight in your office. In addition, its Web apps let you print from a variety of websites using front-panel commands, a feature you won’t get with the Canon or Samsung models. If you can benefit from the small size and have only light-duty print needs, it can easily be a good fit.

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Brother HL-L8250CDN

BY M. DAVID STONE

While the Brother HL-L8250CDN ($349.99) matched the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN $252.98 at Amazon in our speed tests, and it offers better paper handling, its output quality can’t match the 6500/DN. But if you’re looking for a colorlaser printer for a micro or small office or workgroup, its speed and paper handling are enough to make it worth considering as your office workhorse.

Setup and Speed
The HL-L8250CDN is a little too big to share a desk with comfortably. It measures 12.3 by 16.1 by 19.1-inches (HWD), and it weighs enough, at 34.8 pounds, that you might need some help moving it into place.

Setup is typical for color lasers. I connected the printer to a wired network for my tests and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. One key difference between it and the Xerox 6500/DN is that the HL-L8250CDN installs to print in simplex (one-sided) mode rather than duplex by default. That gives it a faster speed than the Xerox printer on our official tests, but only because printing in duplex takes longer.

Brother rates the printer at 30 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, (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing) I clocked it at 6.6ppm, making it significantly faster than the Xerox 6500/DN’s official speed of 5.4ppm. However there’s a metaphorical asterisk that goes next to the Xerox printer’s speed.

In my unofficial tests with the Xerox printer in simplex mode, it came in at 6.5ppm, which means the two printers are actually tied for speed. (A 0.1ppm difference in our tests isn’t significant.) As another point of reference, both printers are a bit faster than the Samsung CLP-415NW$263.00 at Amazon, at 6ppm.

Output Quality
The HL-L8250CDN’s output quality overall is best described as good enough for most business use, but far short of impressive. Text quality is typical for a color laser, although it’s at the bottom of a very tight range where most color lasers fall. It’s not quite suitable for high-quality desktop publishing, but you shouldn’t have a problem with it for anything else, including printing with smaller fonts than most business documents use.

Graphics quality is a touch below what’s typical for a color laser, which still makes it easily good enough for any internal business use. Most people would consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well.

Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable photos from Web pages and such, but most photos in my tests had obvious quality issues, including banding, posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually), and visible dithering in the form of both graininess and dithering patterns.

Also worth nothing: If you connect the printer to a network, you can print through the cloud and from mobile devices over a Wi-Fi access point on your network.

If you need good quality for photos and graphics as well as for text, you’re better off with either the Editors’ Choice Samsung CLP-415 for light to moderate use, or the Editors’ Choice Xerox 6500/DN for more heavy-duty printing complete with duplexing. That said, if what you need is a medium- to heavy-duty workhorse color laser, but graphics and photo quality aren’t crucial, the Brother HL-L8250CDN’s speed and capable paper handling make it worth considering.

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25% of Men Scream Abusively at Their Printers

 (PC World)

In one of the more entertaining printer surveys we’ve seen recently, HP polled 1051 office workers in 2013 to find out ‘how Australians use their printers’. The research, conducted online by Lonergan Research, came out with all sorts of interesting numbers about waiting times and extra wages, but it also found that up to 25 per cent of males are most likely to shout verbal abuse at office printers, while 23 per cent of females are mostly likely to ‘stroke the printer with words of encouragement to make it print faster’.

HP supplied the information on the same day that it released its new range of enterprise inkjet printers, which it claims are a real alternative to laser printers, capable of offering up to twice the print speed of comparable-class lasers.

HP’s findings claim that an employee spends five minutes waiting for a document to print every day, and waits at the printer for up to 23 hours per year. Queenslanders spent the most time at the printer than workers in any other state.

Respondents said that printers are often the most overlooked equipment when it comes to office upgrades, with 73 per cent of workers claiming their computer was upgraded more frequently, and 47 per cent claiming their printer was over three years old. Of all the states, printers are upgraded the least in NSW and ACT.

Workers in NSW were mostly likely to be affected by office rage caused by printers, with up to 60 per cent of employees admitting to using violence against a printer (probably in a bid to get it upgraded). Queenslanders were the most patient.