Overview

The Brother HL-2170 is a compact monochrome laser printer. It is great for a several reasons, it is low-budget to purchase and use, it has wireless networking, and it is not a lousy browsing machine.

The Printer

The Brother HL-2170W is a quite quickly printer on its unique, it prints up to 23 pages for each minute black and with 32MB of memory it easily would mean that you will not lose time waiting around for very first page to occur out. It has a 250 sheets paper tray, while we've looked at bigger but for the dimensions of this unit, it is fairly outstanding. We reckon that had Brother decided to give the HL-2170W a more compact tray it undoubtedly be even smaller. It does arrive with a manual feeder for legal or other odd measurement paper.

The Brother HL-2170W has a greatest resolution of 2400 x 600 dpi and a greatest regular monthly duty cycle of ten,000 pages. A proposed month-to-month volume of 250 - 2000 pages was placed by Brother. This offers an thought of the specially designed environment for HL-2170W, which is family home and compact office use.

The Total price and Upkeep

This printer is really less expensive to spend money on a MSRP of approximately $149.99 is familiar. Have a look at that for a laser printer to have wireless designed in at this rate is quite interesting. The reduced design of HL-2240 from Brother that does not have wireless is about $119.99. So in other words, for an increased $30 you get the wireless 2170W. It is not lousy bearing in mind a wireless card runs from 20-fifty bucks on your own.

Like any other Brother printers, the drum and the toner are separate models. This is wonderful in a way that any time you demand to switch toners, you are spending much less for each toner evaluate to other manufacturers, this kind of as HP. Yet, you do have to aspect in that subsequently you will have to substitute the drum, which are normally about $one hundred a piece.

The HL-2170W employs two forms of toners, the TN330 (Low Yield) and the TN360 (Significant Yield) toners. They print one,500 and two,600 pages respectively. The out of the box toner prints 1,000 pages. TN330 runs for about $45 as the bigger yield version runs for about $sixty.

The DR360 drum of this printer costs about $ninety, however you never have to adjust it as commonly. Rely on your application this is seriously a very interesting characteristic of Brother. Some most people went on hardly ever substitute the drum in a life span for their product or service.

What We Like

In addition to the noticeable factor to acquire a Brother HL-2170W as described in our overview, there are a couple of niche features that we like about this printer. Primary of all, its compatibility, The HL-2170W is fully suitable out of the box with Windows, Mac, and Linux, pretty impressive and thoughtful of Brother in our straightforward thoughts and opinions. Brother also has a essentially effective Linux assistance for their printers, which is no damage to those that does not, care but a massive incentive for those that do.

The HL-2170W has a a single-push wireless configurations button, supposedly this is the magic button, that you press and you are on the net. However despite the fact that in a great number of instances it operates as described, but in some, due to the countless variant of network setups out there, it can be a bit challenging. We've have no condition with our check unit, but like any wireless solutions, there's continually scenarios the place it simply just doesn't get the job done out of the box.

What we don't like

There is not considerably that we do not like about this printer, but on a way more eco helpful note it is a bit on the larger conclusion when it happens to energy consumption. It sleeps at 8 watts, readies at 80 watts, and prints at 460 watts. It is positively bigger than plenty of laser printers out there, primarily comparing to the eco friendly printers by HP, which consumes a fraction of the electricity in comparison.

Our Verdict

If you are searching for a tiny and swiftly laser printer, than we remarkably recommend the Brother HL-2170W. The wireless printing is an attraction, but as a reminder, it is a modest your home and office environment machine, and enabling it to print nonrestrictive by people in a network can swift drain the everyday life and dollars out of this unit.

The wireless networking is also not as straight ahead as advertised. A large number of individuals have had problems setting it up, but once again, that is the nature of wireless at the minute.