OKI MC362w

Our Verdict: This laser-class multifunction provides high-volume printing and loads of productivity features for workgroup use. Our main quibble: The value proposition gets watered down by its high cost per page. Read More…

Introduction

We assume that when a small office or workgroup spends $500 or $600 on a color laser-class multifunction workhorse (for printing, scanning, copying, and faxing) with a high recommended output rating, the point is, well, to use it. If you buy a machine that has a high duty cycle (that is, the number of pages the manufacturer says you can print each month without unduly stressing the machine), you intend to churn out thousands of prints and photocopies each month. Otherwise, why spend so much money on such a high-volume machine, right?

As we’ve pointed out many times in past reviews of high-volume laser printers, when considering high-volume models, such as the subject of this review, OKI’s $549-list MC362w, a laser-class multifunction model, the up-front purchase price should seldom be your first concern—especially if you plan on using it at or anywhere near its monthly duty cycle. As you’ll see in our Setup & Paper Handling section a little later in this review, a far more important consideration when buying a mid- or high-volume workhorse is the operating cost per page (CPP). Failure to mind this ongoing expense could cost you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars more than necessary over the life of the printer. No exaggeration.

Before we go on, though, perhaps you’ve noticed that we’ve referred to the MC362w as a “laser-class” printer, as opposed to simply a laser printer. That’s because this machine relies on LED technology, rather than the more conventional laser apparatus. The difference between these devices centers on the basic print technology. Instead of using a laser to charge the page image onto the print drum, LED-based machines use an array of light-emitting diodes to do that work. Printer makers substitute LEDs for lasers because they have fewer moving parts, are smaller and lighter, and cost less to manufacture. Otherwise, LED models operate much the same as laser printers do, including how they use toner.

Although an LED printer is technically not a laser printer, it looks and acts very much like one. Historically, small and home offices have chosen laser and laser-class printers over inkjet models because they print faster and cost less to use over time, despite their somewhat heftier up-front purchase price. Nowadays, though—due to the introduction of high-volume, low-cost-per-page inkjets—you typically have to buy a relatively pricey, high-volume color laser printer to see a speed or per-page-cost benefit. Many lower-volume, lower-cost color lasers no longer have the performance and CPP advantages over their inkjet counterparts. In fact, they sometimes cost more to use.

Furthermore, recent advances in inkjet technology, such as the fixed PageWide printhead in HP’s OfficeJet X line of high-volume printers, have placed even more pressure on entry-level and midrange laser-class machines like this OKI. (See, for example, our review of the HP OfficeJet Pro X576dw.)  And that’s especially true of the MC362w, which is a lower-end, lower-volume model of a pair of multifunction machines OKI debuted recently. The other, the $749-list MC562w, not only has a higher recommended monthly duty cycle (60,000 pages), but it also supports higher-yield toner cartridges than the MC362w does—which translates into a lower CPP.

And that’s our primary quibble with this laser-class machine: By today’s standards, it costs too much to use on an ongoing basis. Apart from that, though, it performed well on our benchmark tests, and, while, out of the box, it didn’t print photos as well as several laser-class devices we’ve tested, its overall print and copy quality was respectable. It comes with nearly every productivity and convenience option we can think of, and it feels very much like it’s built to last.

We like the OKI MC362dw for small offices and workgroups that require fast and dependable laser output, but at relatively low volumes. If you plan to print a lot, there are better values out there, including OKI’s own MC562w. (See a review of the OKI MC562w on our sister site, PCMag.com.)

Design & Features

Measuring 16.8 inches across, 20 inches from front to back, and 17.5 inches high—and weighing a whopping 63 pounds—the OKI MC362w is certainly no desktop printer. You’ll need to find a sturdy, dedicated perch to rest it on. The good news, though, is that in addition to standard Wi-Fi (which is often an extra-cost option on machines in this class), the MC362w also supports Ethernet, or you can hook it up to an individual PC via USB. The Wi-Fi is a big plus, because it gives you lots more flexibility in terms of where to put this printer, which is big enough to be office furniture.

You can also print from (and scan to) a USB flash-memory device via a USB port located on the right side of the chassis, just beneath the control panel, and the MC362w supports printing from mobile devices via Apple’s AirPrint or the Cortado cloud service. Unlike most recent wireless printers, though, we didn’t find direct support for Google’s Cloud Print or Wi-Fi Direct. In case you’re not familiar with the latter, Wi-Fi Direct is a protocol that allows mobile devices to connect to a printer without either device belonging to an intermediary network.

As for the control panel, this one, with all of its physical buttons and navigation keys, is a bit busy and archaic-looking, lacking in the style and high-tech appeal we see in the all-digital, touch-screen-centric control centers in certain competing models from HP and Brother. Overall, though, we found it logically laid out and easy to use. The graphical LCD is not in color, nor is it touch-enabled, and it provides little-to-no help in terms of displaying scans or images from USB keys. But it gets the job done  

Other features include a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that supports paper up to legal-size (8.5×14 inches). The ADF also supports auto-duplexing, which allows you to scan, copy, and fax two-sided multipage documents without having to manually turn the originals over. When you use the auto-duplexing ADF with the duplexing print engine, making two-sided copies of two-sided originals is a cinch. 

So far, most of the features we’ve talked about are available on most high-volume MFPs. What’s notas common, though, is this machine’s support for multiple printer languages, including HP’s PCL 5 and Adobe’s PostScript 3 emulation. In addition to being the two most common page-description languages (PDLs) used on most laser printers, they’re also used by most high-end typesetting machines and printing presses. What this means to you is that the MC362w’s output should be reliable for proofing documents destined for high-end print runs.

Setup & Paper Handling

The hardest part of setting up the OKI MC362w, by far, was wrestling it out of the box. After we plugged it in, illustrated directions on the LCD walked us through connecting to our network and preparing the toner cartridges. The installation CD found the printer immediately and installed the drivers and utilities, which included a fully licensed version of Nuance’s PaperPort document-management software, as well as OmniPage optical character recognition (OCR) software for converting scanned text to editable text. During our hands-on trials, OmniPage converted our scans nearly error-free, which we have come to expect from that exceptional OCR program.

Unlike its higher-volume sibling, the MC562w, the MC362w supports only one size of toner cartridge—OKI’s Type C17 cartridges. The black Type C17 cartridge yields (according to OKI) about 3,500 pages and sells for $97.60 on the company’s Web site. The three color Type C17 cartridges yield about 3,000 pages and sell for $146.30 each.

Using these numbers, we calculated the MC362w’s cost per page: Black-and-white pages run about 2.8 cents each, and color pages about 17.5 cents each. These numbers are quite high for a laser-class printer in this price range, especially the color-page figure. Unfortunately, as mentioned, OKI doesn’t offer a higher-yield cartridge set for this printer. Were you to purchase the higher-volume OKI MC562w, on the other hand, it supports higher-yield cartridges that deliver about 2.4 cents for monochrome pages and 12.3 cents for color.

Granted, these numbers are a little better, but they’re nowhere near the best in the business. Take, for example, HP’s OfficeJet Pro X576dw multifunction printer. Granted, this is one of HP’s PageWide business-oriented inkjets, not a laser or LED model, but it plays in the same sandbox as this OKI model and its big brother. When you use HP’s high-yield cartridges with this printer, black-and-white pages will run you about 1.3 cents each, and color about 6.1 cents each.

This is a huge difference, especially for color pages—a difference of more than 6 cents per page. Were you to use this OKI model at anywhere near its recommended monthly duty cycle, the per-page cost difference would be immense. Say, for example, you printed 30,000 pages a month. Those same 30,000 pages would cost you $1,860 less on HP’s OfficeJet X printer than on the MC362w. That’s a difference of over $22,000 a year!

Now, granted, most businesses print primarily black-and-white pages on their laser-class devices. If that’s the case, the price differences would not be nearly as dramatic, but, comparatively speaking, it would still cost you far too much to print on this laser-class printer. Furthermore, keep in mind that the above numbers reflect a comparison between OKI’s higher-volume MC562w and HP’s OfficeJet X576dw printer. The difference for printing 30,000 color pages on the MC362w would be even greater (about $3,420 per 30,000 pages). 

As for the paper handling, the OKI MC362w has two import sources: a 250-sheet drawer at the front of the chassis, and a 100-page override tray on the back. If that’s not enough paper capacity, you can add an optional 530-sheet drawer for an additional $199 list. Printed pages land on a 200-page output bed beneath the scanner.

In the course of our hands-on tests, the printer path, the ADF, and all of the auto-duplexing functions worked flawlessly. We experienced no paper jams or any other mishaps.

Performance

On our battery of performance benchmarks, the MC362w turned in average, or slightly below average, scores for an MFP printer in this price range. The exception was our photo-printing test, in which it came in slightly above average. However, we should also point out that, as discussed on the next page, to get the best results on several tests—mainly, with documents containing embedded photographs or intricately shaded graphics—we had to boost the quality settings, which sometimes slowed down print times quite a bit. In short, unlike some competing models, this OKI didn’t always deliver acceptable results at its default quality settings, to our eyes.

In any case, to assess how well this MFP held up to comparably priced high-volume printers, we pitted it against three other machines. The first, HP’s $799-list OfficeJet Pro X576dw Multifunction Printer, isn’t a laser-class device at all, as we noted earlier. Instead, it’s an inkjet MFP based on HP’s relatively new PageWide stationary-printhead technology. We also included Samsung’s $699-list laser MFP, the CLX-6260FW Color Multifunction Printer$699.00 at TheNerds.net. And to round out the comparison, we also included a single-function laser printer, Dell’s $649-list C3760dn Color Laser Printer$569.99 at Dell.

As our charts below depict, considering that our OKI test unit sells for about $100 to $200 less than these competing models, it held its own, overall, in our tests.

Business Printing: Adobe Acrobat Test

This test times how long a printer takes to print a four-page landscape-orientation Adobe Acrobat document containing text and photos. Here, our OKI test unit came in behind the other three models in this group. It was more than twice as slow as HP’s high-volume PageWide inkjet.

Business Printing: Microsoft Office Suite Test

In this trial, we time how quickly the printer churns out a series of Microsoft Office suite documents. The timed score is a sum of the results from five different test documents: a one-page Excel table with a grid in it; a one-page Excel graph; a three-page Excel document containing charts and graphs; a four-page PowerPoint document (containing full-page slides); and a two-page Word text document. 

Business Printing: Effective Pages Per Minute Test

This test measures pages per minute (ppm) with typical business documents. It is a cumulative rate of printing we derive from our Microsoft Office and Acrobat tests. We determine it by combining the times from each test and doing some additional math.

Here, our OKI test unit fell significantly behind both the HP and Dell machines on this important test, with the OfficeJet Pro X576dw almost doubling the ppm.

Photo Printing (4×6) Test

In our Photo Printing Test, we time how long the printer takes to churn out a sample 4×6-inch snapshot. These results are an average based on several runs of the print job. 

Here, our OKI test unit turned in the best score, but the quality of the photo paled significantly next to that of the HP inkjet model in this group. In fact, as you’ll see on the next page (the Printed Output & Conclusion section), except when printing text, the laser-class MC362w’s output quality was, compared to the OfficeJet Pro X576dw, somewhat inferior across the board.

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Samsung ProXpress M4020ND

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically a heavier-duty version of the Samsung Printer ProXpress M3320ND$139.99 at Amazon that I recently reviewed, the Samsung Printer ProXpress M4020ND$263.97 at Amazon offers similar output quality and features, but with somewhat better paper handling and a higher monthly duty cycle. The combination makes it a particularly good fit for a micro or small office with heavy-duty print needs.

When I reviewed the M3320ND, I pointed out that although its one-sheet manual feed is useful, it’s a wimpy alternative to a multipurpose tray. The M4020ND solves that problem by including a 50-sheet multipurpose tray standard, along with its 250-sheet paper drawer and built-in duplexer (for printing on both sides of the page). That should be enough for most small offices, but if you need more, you can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street) for a total 820-sheet capacity.

The second key difference between the two is that the M4020ND’s maximum monthly duty cycle, at 100,000 pages per month, is twice the 50,000 pages the M3320ND is rated for. Keep in mind that maximum duty cycles are far higher than recommend maximums. Also, as with any printer, if you hit the maximum every month it probably won’t last all that many months. The point here is that the M4020ND is designed to print a lot more pages per month than the M3320ND without breaking.

Beyond these differences, the two printers offer almost identical features, including printing though the cloud, with built-in support for Google Cloud Print, and printing from mobile devices connecting to a Wi-Fi access point on your network, using either AirPrint or Samsung’s own mobile print app.

Setup and Speed
Setting up the M4020ND is identical to setting up the M3320ND, which makes setup absolutely standard for a mono laser. Here too, Ethernet and USB are the only connection choices. For my tests, I used Ethernet to connect to a network and printed from a system running Windows Vista.

Samsung rates the M4020ND at 42 pages per minute (ppm), which should be close to the speed you’ll see when printing text or other output that needs little to no processing. With pages that include graphics, photos, or other information that needs processing, however, the speed is much slower and not much different than you’ll see with the M3320ND’s 35-ppm engine.

On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), I clocked the M4020ND at a respectable, but not impressive, 11.5 ppm, which counts as a tie with the M3320ND, at 11.3 ppm. It’s also just a touch faster than the Editors’ ChoiceBrother HL-6180DW$288.99 at TheNerds.net, at 10.7 ppm, but significantly slower than the Editors’ Choice Dell B2360dn$259.99 at Dell, at 15.0 ppm.

Output Quality
Output quality for M4020ND is in much the same category as the speed: acceptable for most business needs, but not impressive. Text quality is within the range that includes the vast majority of mono lasers, but at the low end of the range. It’s not quite good enough for demanding desktop publishing applications, but it’s easily good enough for anything short of that.

Graphics quality falls at a slightly lower level than most mono lasers. It’s good enough for internal business use, but whether you consider it acceptable for PowerPoint handouts or the like will depend on how critical an eye you have. Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable images from photos in Web pages, but I wouldn’t use it for anything more demanding than that.

Given its competition, the Samsung Printer ProXpress M4020ND doesn’t offer quite enough to be Editors’ Choice. The Dell B2360dn delivers faster speed, while the Brother HL-6180DW delivers better paper handling and slightly better output quality. That said, the Samsung printer is also a little faster than the Brother printer, and it offers a little better output quality overall than the Dell printer. The combination makes it a more than reasonable choice. If you need a workhorse mono printer for heavy-duty use by micro or small office standards, the Samsung Printer ProXpress M4020ND should be in the running.

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Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD

BY M. DAVID STONE

Depending on your point of view, the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD$168.17 at Amazon is either the next step up in Samsung’s current monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) line from the Editors’ Choice Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW$327.19 at pcRUSH.com, or the first step on the ladder for the ProXpress MFP line. As a ProXpress model it’s built around a bigger, heavier-duty engine than the Xpress M2875FW. That makes its natural home a small office or workgroup with light to medium-duty needs by small office standards, although it can also be a good fit as a heavy-duty workhorse in a micro office.

Part of what makes the M3370FD more definitively a shared printer than the Samsung M2875FW is its larger size. At 17.7 by 16.3 by 16.6 (HWD), it’s too large to share a desk with comfortably. However, a better indication of how much more heavy duty it is than the M2875FW is its 50,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle, which dwarfs the 12,000 pages for the M2875FW.

Keep in mind that maximum duty cycles for printers are far higher than recommended maximums. Even so, the higher rating means that the M3370FD is designed to churn through a lot more pages per month than the M2875FW.

Basics
As you would expect, the M3370FD offers a full set of basic MFP features. It can print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender.

Paper handling features for printing include a 250-sheet drawer, an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing), and a single-sheet manual tray standard, so you can feed a different paper stock without having to swap out the paper in the main tray. A multipurpose tray would be more useful, but a manual feed tray is typical for mono laser MFPs in this price range. If you need more capacity, you can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street) for a total of 770 sheets, which is something you can’t do with the Samsung M2875FW.

For scanning, the M3370FD offers a letter-size flatbed plus a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size pages. The ADF does simplex (one-sided) scans only, but, as a nice touch, there are options in the menus to let you copy single-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.

Setup and Speed
Setting up the M3370FD is standard fare, with Ethernet and USB as the only connection choices. For my tests, I connected it to a network and installed the drivers and other software on a system running Windows Vista.

Samsung rates the M3370FD at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you’ll see when printing unformatted text or other pages that need little to no processing. I clocked it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 10.8 ppm. That makes it just a touch faster than the Samsung M2875FW, at 10.0 ppm, and well within the typical range for the engine rating. However, it’s well short of impressive. The Editors’ Choice Canon imageClass MF4880dw$224.93 at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio, for example, with a rating of only 26 ppm in simplex mode, managed 12.5 ppm on our tests.

Output Quality
The M3370FD’s output quality earns much the same description as its speed. It’s good enough to be useful for most business purposes, but not particularly impressive. Text falls in the middle of the range that counts as par quality for a mono laser MFP, making it good enough for virtually any business need, but a little short of what you might want for high-quality desktop publishing.

Graphics and photos both fall at the low end of par for monochrome laser MFPs. For graphics that makes the output good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider it suitable for, say, PowerPoint handouts. For photos it means you can print recognizable images from photos on Web pages or the like, but the quality will be roughly equivalent to what you’d expect to see in a newspaper.

The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD doesn’t offer any particular feature that might make it a compelling choice, like fast speed or impressive output quality. However, it offers all the basics, including printing, scanning, faxing, copying, and direct email, plus some welcome conveniences, like copying from simplex originals to duplex copies. It also delivers an appropriate level of speed, output quality, and paper handling for a small office. If a workhorse MFP is what you need, that makes the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD a potentially good fit.

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Samsung ProXpress M3320ND

BY M. DAVID STONE

The Samsung ProXpress M3320ND$216.91 at pcRUSH.commono laser is the sort of printer that doesn’t stand out in any way, but delivers a level of speed, output quality, and paper handling that lets it easily do the job it is meant for. That job is primarily to fill the shared-printer slot in a micro or small office with light- to medium-duty print needs, although the printer’s small size also makes it suitable for heavy-duty personal use.

The one potential issue for the M3320ND is that its direct competition includes the Editors’ Choice Brother HL-5450DN$189.99 at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio. Usually with close competitors like these there are obvious tradeoffs, with one printer offering faster speed, say, and the other offering better output quality or better paper handling. With these two models, however, the M3320ND comes in tied or a close second in every important area. So although it’s a perfectly reasonable pick, there’s no stand-out feature that would make a compelling argument to choose it over the Brother HL-5450DN.

The biggest difference between the two printers is in their paper handling. Both offer a 250-sheet drawer and a built-in duplexer (for printing on both sides of the page) standard. The M3320ND also include a one-sheet manual feed. You can count that as a useful convenience, since it lets you print on a different paper stock without having to swap out the paper in the main tray, but it’s wimpy compared with the Brother printer’s 50-sheet multipurpose tray.

If you need more input capacity for the M3320ND, you can add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street), for a total of 770 sheets. Here again, however, Brother goes a little further, with a 500-sheet optional tray that boosts the capacity to 800 sheets. And that total still includes the multipurpose tray. Brother also sells a related model, the Brother HL-5470DW$260.01 at pcRUSH.com, which includes both the multipurpose tray and second drawer as standard, adds some other features as well, and costs less than the Brother HL-5450DN plus its optional second drawer.

Setup and Speed
Setting up the M3320ND is absolutely standard, with Ethernet and USB as the only connection choices. If you connect it to a network, you can also print to it through the cloud, thanks to its built-in support for Google Cloud Print. You can also print from a mobile device though a Wi-Fi access point on your network, using AirPrint or Samsung’s own mobile printing app. For my tests, I used a network connection and installed the drivers on a system running Windows Vista.

The engine rating for the M3320ND is 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text pages with little to no formatting. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’shardware and software), it came in at 11.3 ppm, which counts as a respectable speed for its price and engine rating. It’s also essentially tied with both the Brother HL-5450DN, at 10.8 ppm, and the HL-5470DW, at 10.7 ppm. (A 0.5 ppm difference isn’t statistically significant in this speed range.)

Output Quality
The M3320ND’s output quality is best described as acceptable for most business use, but well short of impressive. Text quality is at the low end of the range that includes the vast majority of mono lasers. You shouldn’t have any complaints about it for day-to-day business use, but it’s not suitable for more demanding applications, like high-quality desktop publishing.

Graphics output is a step below the level where most mono lasers fall, which translates to being good enough for any internal business need. If you don’t have too critical an eye, you may also consider it acceptable for PowerPoint handouts or the like. Photo quality is dead on par for a mono laser. That makes it suitable if you need to print recognizable images from photos in Web pages but not for anything more demanding than that.

The Samsung Printer ProXpress M3320ND is a perfectly capable mono laser printer that can easily be a good fit for a micro or small office. It’s not quite a match for the Brother HL-5450DN, it’s tied with it for speed, and it comes in a close second for output quality and paper handling. That certainly makes it a credible choice. If you can find it at a sufficiently lower price than the Brother printer, it might even be your preferred choice.

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Remote Printing to Your Mac

If you have a printer on your home network or attached to your Mac at work, you can likely set it up so you can print from anywhere.

Normally if you want to print over the Internet, you need to set up a protocol like IPP and have a static IP address for your network, where you can forward communications ports for the printing services; however, if you have a Mac you can use Apple’s Back To My Mac service to set up and print to a printer from any location.

To do this, you need to follow these four steps:

  1. Configure your printer for use
    Use the Print & Scan system preferences to set up the printer on your Mac. It can be a locally attached printer, or a networked printer, but you need to have it configured as a device your Mac can use.
  2. Share the printer
    Now use the Sharing system preferences to enable printer sharing on the network, and then enable the newly configured printer. By default everyone can print to a shared printer, but you can add access restrictions in this preference pane that only allow your account to print.
  3. Enable iCloud
    If you do not have an Apple iCloud account, then create one and configure your system to use it. You do not need to use all of Apple’s services, but you will need this to be able to locate your computer from anywhere you have Internet access.
  4. Enable Back To My Mac
    Now enable the Back To My Mac service in iCloud, which will allow your system to be located from any other Mac you have configured with iCloud.

With this setup, the printer should be accessible remotely. You will now need to sign into iCloud on your remote Mac, and from there can similarly add a new printer. When you do this, in the printer selector you should see your Mac’s shared printer listed as a “Bonjour Shared” printer and have a name that includes the printer name and the computer name (e.g., “Printer_Name @ Computer_Name”), which you can add to your system.

Once the printer is added, you should be able to print away to your heart’s content. However, do keep in mind the printer will only be available when you are logged into iCloud, and only available if the computer hosting the printer is on. If you decide to turn off iCloud on either system, or turn off Back To My Mac on the system with the shared printer, printing will no longer work.

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Brother HL-3140CW

tr-recommendedWhat is the Brother HL-3140CW?

Colour laser printers have traditionally been overpriced and under specced, compared with their mono-only counterparts. Brother’s HL-3140CW isn’t a colour laser printer, though, but a colour LED printer. This is part of the reason it’s neither overpriced, nor under specced.

Brother HL-3140CW – Design and Features

Aimed at the small, or possibly home office, it’s surprisingly compact, and its mid-grey and white colour scheme helps it to look discreet. Paper outputs to its top surface and there’s a flip-up paper stop to prevent it over-running.

Also set into the top surface is a simple control panel with eight buttons including a power button which is surprisingly small and easy to overlook. The printer has a two-line LCD panel set quite deep into the control panel and without a backlight, though we didn’t have any trouble reading messages on it.

At the bottom of the panel a large recessed handle makes it easy to open the 250-sheet main paper tray, a much more sensible capacity than many colour lasers offer. Above this there’s a flip-down panel offering a single feed for envelopes or special media.

Brother HL-3140CW – Connections and Installation

The Brother HL-3140CW has a single USB socket at the rear, but is also wireless compatible and using WPS setup can be linked to a wireless network without a temporary USB link.

Lifting the top panel reveals the consumables. Each drum cartridge has a clip-in toner cartridge and you can use between 7 and 10 toners before needing to change the drum. There’s a transfer belt and waste toner unit, too, though fortunately, these only have to be replaced after 50,000 pages.

Software installation is straightforward as the main application is the driver, though you do get Web access to the Brother CreativeCenter and to a trial version of its OmniJoin videoconferencing; Brother is heavily into videoconferencing.

Summary

Our Score

9/10

Brother HL-3140CW – Performance and Verdict

Brother HL-3140CW – Print Speeds

Brother claims a top speed of 18ppm for the HL-3140CW in both black and colour print. We didn’t get to that speed under test, though our 20ppm black text document produced a speed of 14.5ppm, which is not far off. The five-page test produced 9.1ppm.

These speeds are good, with similar printers, such as the more expensive Canon i-SENSYS LBP7110Cw giving 11.5ppm and 7.5ppm, respectively.

Unusually, the colour graphics speed matched the mono text speed at 9.1ppm and this is quite quick for this class of printer. A 15 x 10cm photo on A4 took 22s to complete, which is also quick. The printer is claimed to work with iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, though we couldn’t get the Brother Android App, iPrint & Scan, to find it. This turned out to be a firmware issue and was resolved with an upgrade.

Brother HL-3140CW – Print Quality and Costs

The print quality is well up to the standards you would expect from a mid-range laser printer; we’d challenge you to tell the output from a beam sculpted original. Colour graphics are strong and smooth, though we did notice some haloing from black and colour misregistration. The photo print looked surprisingly natural, though there was some mild banding visible.

The costs are divided between the toner and drum, and the belt and waste unit, if you print over 50,000 pages. They work out at 3.0p for black pages and 12.4p for colour. These are about average for a low-cost colour laser or LED machine.

There’s a popular misconception that laser print is cheaper than inkjet, but in the £100 – £200 price range, this isn’t true, particularly for colour. It probably comes from the fact that inkjet consumables are lower capacity and need replacing more frequently than toner.

Should I buy a Brother HL-3140CW?
If you want a colour laser-quality printer, then Yes. This machine represents tremendous value for money at the £119 price we found online. That’s from a reputable source which is likely to maintain stocks, too.

Compare it with the Canon i-SENSYS LBP7110Cw, at around £160 or the HP LaserJet Pro 200 Color M251nw at around £170 and it’s faster than both and costs about the same to run. But it’s £40-£50 cheaper.

Unless you have a particular aversion to LED printers – and the difference is only a matrix of bright LEDs rather than a laser beam setting the image on the drum – there’s no reason we can see for not choosing the less expensive Brother option.

SEE ALSO: Best printers round-up

Verdict

The Brother HL-3140CW is a really good value colour LED printer. It’s neat, quick and doesn’t cost that much to run, particularly when compared with early colour LEDs from Dell and Xerox, where colour pages came close to 20p each. With an asking price of under £120, there’s little reason to buy a mono-only laser, when you could have this machine and print colour, too.

Summary

Our Score

9/10

Brother HL-3140CW – Print Speeds and Costs Table

Brother HL-3140CW - Print Speeds and Costs

Scores In Detail

Features

8/10

Print Quality

8/10

Print Speed

9/10

Value 10/10

Our Score

9/10
original article

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521dn

The HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521dn is a quietly impressive beast. Designed as a mono laser workhorse, with a 75,000 page per month maximum duty cycle and a 6,000 page per month recommended maximum, it can print and fax from, as well as scan to, a computer – including over a network – and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and direct email sender. More importantly, it does well enough at everything it does to make it a great choice for medium to heavy-duty use in a small to mid-size office or workgroup.

There’s nothing flashy here, like super-fast speed. In fact, it’s easy to find printers that are faster, such as the Brother MFC-8950DW. On the other hand, the M521dn offers a combination of features that make it more usable than most MFPs.

Features

In addition to the basic MFP features I’ve already mentioned – printing, scanning, copying, faxing, and email – the M521dn can both scan to and print from a USB memory stick. In an unusual touch for a monochrome printer, it will even let you preview the photos stored on the USB stick before printing them. It also supports printing though the cloud.

Much higher on its list of key features is its scan capability. Like most MFPs aimed at office use, the M521dn supplements a flatbed scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF). Unlike most of the competition, however, including some significantly more expensive MFPs like the Dell B3465dnf Multifunction Laser Printer, the M521dn offers a duplex scanner for copying and scanning. (It won’t scan in duplex for faxing, however, which takes a little shine off the feature).

Having a duplex scanner (meaning that it can scan both sides of a page at the same time) is different from having a duplexing ADF, which scans one side, turns the page over, and then scans the other. Either approach will let you scan duplex documents. And if the MFP also offers duplex printing plus appropriate copying commands, as with the M521dn, either approach will also let you copy single or double-sided originals to your choice of single or double-sided copies. However, scanning in duplex is a lot faster than scanning with a duplexing ADF.

We don’t usually time duplex scanning with MFPs, because most desktop MFPs that duplex use duplexing ADFs, which is more of a convenience feature than something that’s truly competitive with duplexing scanners. With the M521dn, however, I ran a test using a 25-sheet document just to get a sense of its speed. For scanning to disk, and including the time for saving the file to disk after scanning, the M521dn came in at 10.7 pages per minute (ppm) or 21.4 images per minute (ipm), with one image on each side of the page. If you scan duplex documents very often, this one feature can save a lot of time in comparison to using an MFP with a duplexing ADF.

Very much on the plus side for the M521dn is its 3.5in touch screen, with a particularly well-designed menu system. The combination makes it easy to both change settings in the printer and give commands for copying, faxing, and emailing.

One other strong point is the paper handing for printing, with both a 500-sheet paper drawer and 100-sheet multipurpose tray coming as standard, along with the automatic duplexer. The 600-sheet capacity should be enough for most small to mid-size offices. If you need more, however, you can add a second 500-sheet drawer for a total of 1,100 sheets.

Setup and speed

At 465 x 465 x 508mm (WxDxH), the M521dn is too imposing to share a desk with. It’s also heavy enough, at 22kg, that you’ll probably want some help moving it. Once in place, however, setup is standard fare. For my tests I connected it to a wired network and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista.

As I’ve already suggested, speed is not a strong point. HP rates the engine at 42 ppm, and I timed it as being a touch faster, at 43 ppm, for printing a text document with little to no formatting from Microsoft Word. On our business applications suite, however (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), it came in at a surprisingly slow 5.3 ppm. Although that’s a tolerable speed, it’s significantly slower than most other mono laser printers we’ve tested. The Brother MFC-8950DW, for example, managed 10.6 ppm, and the Dell B3465dnf hit 15.0 ppm.

Output quality

Output quality is a mixed bag. The good news is that the M521dn handled text particularly well, which is generally the most important kind of output for a mono printer. Text quality was well above par, making it easily good enough for any business use and even good enough for most desktop publishing applications.

Graphics output was a touch below par, but still within the tight range where the vast majority of mono laser MFPs fall. That makes it good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider it acceptable for, say, PowerPoint hand-outs.

Photo quality was also at the low end of par for a mono laser MFP. It was certainly good enough to print recognisable photos from web pages. Whether you consider it suitable for anything more than that will depend, once again, on how critical an eye you have.

Verdict

The one feature I feel is missing from this MFP is the ability to fax in duplex. However, if you don’t need to fax duplex documents, that won’t be an issue. It also doesn’t leave you any worse off for faxing than when using an MFP that can’t handle duplexing at all, making this oversight more of a missed opportunity than an actual problem.

It’s true that a faster print speed would be welcome, too. However, the time saved with duplex scanning and copying (presuming you need to do so) can more than make up for whatever points the printer loses on print speed. The text quality is a big plus, too, as part of a highly attractive balance of speed, output quality, paper handling, and MFP features.

For a small to mid-size office that needs to copy or scan (but not fax) duplex documents on a regular basis, all this can make the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521dn a near-perfect fit, which is also enough to grab it one of our Best Buy awards.

original article

Samsung Xpress M2825DW

BY M. DAVID STONE

One step up in Samsung’s line from the Editors’ Choice Samsung Xpress M2625D$69.99 at Amazon that I recently reviewed, the Samsung Xpress M2825DW ($150 street) delivers essentially the same output quality, paper handling, and speed on our tests. What it primarily adds for the step up in price is Ethernet and Wi-Fi, including Wi-Fi Direct, along with support for mobile printing. As with its lesser sibling, it delivers enough to make it Editors’ Choice, but in this case as a shared printer in a micro office or as a personal printer if you need the network connection or mobile printing.

The mobile printing support lets you print through the cloud and print from Android, iOS, and Windows smartphones and tablets. For printing through the cloud, the printer has to be connected to your network, using either an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. For printing from a mobile device, however, you have two choices.

If the printer’s on a network, you can connect through a Wi-Fi access point. Thanks to the printer’s Wi-Fi Direct, however, you can also connect directly from your mobile device to the printer, a trick you can take advantage of even for a personal printer connected to your computer by USB cable.

Basics and Setup
Other than the network and mobile printing support, there’s little difference between the Samsung M2625D and M2825DW. Both printers are the same size at 8.0 by 14.5 by 13.2 inches (HWD), making them small enough to share a desk with easily, and both weigh just 16.4 pounds. They also both offer the same paper handling, with a 250-sheet input tray, a one-sheet manual feed slot, and a duplexer (for automatic two-sided printing). This should be suitable for most personal or micro office use, but if you need more, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Samsung doesn’t offer any paper handling upgrades.

Setting up the M2825DW on a network is absolutely typical for a monochrome laser. For my tests, I connected it using the Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a system running Windows Vista.

Speed and Output Quality
Samsung rates the M2825DW at 29 pages per minute (ppm) compared with 27 ppm for the Samsung M2625D. The differences showed in my tests when printing a text file with little formatting, with the M2825DW coming in at 30.3 ppm, or not quite 2 ppm faster than the M2825DW. However, the two scored essentially identical speeds on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 9.9 ppm.

As with the Ssamsung M2625D, this counts as a good speed for the price, but not a particularly impressive one. The Editors’ Choice Brother HL-2270DW$149.99 at Sears, for example, came in at 11.7 ppm.

The M2825DW was virtually identical to the Samsung M2625D for output quality in my tests as well. Text was easily good enough for any business needs, with scores falling in the middle of a fairly tight range that includes the vast majority of mono laser printers.

Graphics and photos were both absolutely typical for a mono laser. For graphics output, that translates to being suitable for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, however, you may or may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. For photos, par quality means being able to print recognizable images from photos in Web pages and print photos in general at roughly newspaper-level photo quality.

The Samsung Xpress M2825DW is a strong contender not because of any particularly impressive feature, but because of a constellation of features that fit together well. It’s not quite fast as the Brother HL-2270DW, for example, but it delivers a highly attractive balance of speed, output quality, paper handling, and more. As a shared printer in a micro office, or a personal printer that also makes mobile printing easy, that overall balance makes the Samsung Xpress M2825DW an easy pick for Editors’ Choice.

original article

HP Plugs Leaky Password Hole Existing in Some of It’s Printers

Security flaws in a range of HP printers create a way for hackers to lift administrator’s passwords and other potentially sensitive information from vulnerable devices, infosec experts have warned.

HP has released patches for the affected LaserJet Pro printers to defend against the vulnerability (CVE-2013-4807), which was discovered by Michał Sajdak of Securitum.pl. Sajdak discovered it was possible to extract plaintext versions of users’ passwords via hidden URLs hardcoded into the printers’ firmware. A hex representation of the admin password is stored in a plaintext URL, though it looks encrypted to a casual observer.

Sajdak also discovered Wi-Fi-enabled printers leaked Wi-Fi settings and Wi-Fi Protected Setup PIN codes, as an advisory from the Polish security researcher explains.

HP has released firmware updates for the following affected printers:

  • HP LaserJet Pro P1102w,
  • HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf MFP,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1213nf MFP,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1214nfh MFP,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1216nfh MFP,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1217nfw MFP,
  • HP LaserJet Pro M1218nfs MFP and
  • HP LaserJet Pro CP1025nw.

HP’s advisory is here.

Consumers aren’t very good at patching their computers, much less their printers, which rarely need security updates.

“The bad news is that many printer owners probably aren’t aware that the security issue exists, or simply won’t bother to apply the firmware update,” security watcher Graham Cluley notes. ®

original article

Image Compression Can Alter the Numbers in Your Copies

PAUL BIGNELL

Photocopying has always ranked among the more tedious of office chores – and now it seems that some of the machines may have been working against us all along.

A German computer scientist and blogger has identified a glitch in a range of Xerox photocopying and scanning machines which causes them to randomly alter numbers in documents. In a statement issued today, the US firm, which holds a Royal warrant and is over 100 years old, said it took the issue “very seriously”, adding that the problem lay with the factory default settings.

In one example, David Kriesel who is based in Bonn, found copies he had made of construction plans had altered dimensions of some of the rooms. One Xerox printer had enlarged the square meter of a room from 14.13 m² to 17.42m², while another shrunk it from 21.11 m² to 14.13 m². Mr Kriesel found the copier would often change the number 6 into the number 8, and vice versa. He said the issue arose through an “image compression” fault, linked to how the scanners shrink the file size of scans.

Mr Kriesel identified two models affected – the Xerox WorkCentre 7535 and the 7556. However, since then he said other users had reported problems in other machines. On his website, Mr Kriesel complained that Xerox had been slow to issue an explanation for the error: “I learned in the last days that a lot of people worldwide seem to have run into the same trap. I got around 200,000 hits and several mails from people experiencing the same errors without a clue where they come from. A notice to the public would have been nice.”

Xerox said: “The problem stems from a combination of compression level and resolution setting. We do not normally see a character substitution issue… However, the defect may be seen at lower quality and resolution settings.”

original article