Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

It took me two tries to get the printer set up for the first time, which took about 1/2 hour total. But after that, the printer has been working great on my wireless network. Being able to put a printer wherever I want, and being able to print to it reliably from all of my family's various PCs, has been great. If you don't have a wireless printer already, I highly recommend getting one.

A minor drawback with this printer is that it takes several seconds (~10 sec) to wake up from sleep mode when you send a job to it for the first time. This always makes me think for a few seconds that the printer isn't working, but eventually the first page comes out. After it is awake from sleep mode, it prints very quickly.

The software supports manual duplexing, so you can print double-sided by printing even pages first, then putting the document back in the paper tray to print the odd pages on the opposite sides. The software even supports printing multiple pages on each side of paper, so you can really slim down the hardcopy when you are printing PowerPoint presentations and the like. I have not tried printing envelopes with it yet.

The print quality is quite good, although very slightly on the "light" side compared to my inkjet printer. I have not tried changing settings, as this may be something you can adjust.

Overall a very nice machine, and a lot faster and economical than printing B&W on an inkjet printer.

One more thing -- Brother printers are notorious for forcing you to replace the toner cartridge when there is still a significant amount of toner left. Do a Google search, and you can find how to strategically place a couple of pieces of masking tape on the cartridge to keep this from happening.

This review is based on owning the printer for about two months.

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

Now have two of these printers, both working great. Extremely easy to set up IF YOU READ THE DIRECTIONS instead of trying to just plug it in. You can't just plug it in and let Windows find it. Adding the printer to additional computers is even easier. The printer is fast, with crisp output. The initial toner cartridge is a "trial" cartridge worth only several hundred pages. The packaging tells you this. After replacing the toner cartridge I find the longevity of the toner cartridges quite good. The wireless function is great, allowing it to be placed in a convenient central spot without having to wire the house. Moreover, it is easily moved from place to place.

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

I looked at this printer during a prior sale and didn't buy it. After buying another $40 black ink jet cartridge for the millionth time, and seeing the printer on sale again, I decided to take the plunge. I shouldn't have waited so long to get a monochrome laser printer for our house.

While I'm sure this isn't the best monochrome laser out there, it should suit most home users and even some small business just fine. It's quick, reasonably quiet, small, and affordable... especially on sale. Typical document images appear quite good on printouts so far. If the specs on toner use end up even remotely accurate then it will blow my old ink jet away in cost/page for black and white prints. I did turn toner save on to try and stretch toner as far as possible. This didn't seem to affect print quality but did make things just a little lighter.

Setup was pretty fast. I had the thing wired to my home network and working with a desktop PC and Mac laptop in about 15 minutes. I chose the wired setup as I already had a wireless network and wanted the additional speed of ethernet for printing from my desktop. There was a paper in the box that indicated the included CD did not have the most current Mac software and to download it from the Brother website. I'm not sure why they didn't just put a new cd in the box instead of the little note. Regardless, I got the Mac software from the web as instructed and had no trouble with that part of installation.

I can see at least one way people might have had trouble networking this printer. Anytime you have something like a printer on your network it should be given a fixed IP address. If you don't have a fixed IP address for your printer, and the router changes the address for some reason (which can happen easily for a number of reasons), things can stop working. Figuring out how to change this printer from a dynamic address (default) to a fixed address took a little reading. The user's manual wasn't really clear on the steps. The Network User's Guide proved more helpful and more importantly provided a necessary password for doing so. Simply put, install one of the utilities on the cd; BRAdmin Light. This little utility, and it's password found in the Network Guide, makes it easy to change, among other things, the IP address of the printer from dynamic to fixed and assign the address you want.

After a week I can say this printer was a good purchase. With the ability to print up to legal size paper, envelopes, and even transparencies this has already become our main printer. We'll be keeping our injet for the occasional color print which, in reality, we don't need very often.

Don't hesitate to buy this printer... just be smart and shop around for toner prices when the time comes!

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

its a nice ,,but its hard to install the wireless

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

After 4 hours of Brother's tech support over two day, they suggested I connect it via USB. Would not work with either wired of wirelss network. Might be a great printer, but I'll never know.

Comments about Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer:

Use this printer on in-home LAN. Requires USB to configure without problems. Can configure wireless but needs a router like a Linksys to talk to for security features. Slow on wireless network. Faster on network. Fastest on USB - go figure

Use for newsletters and printing of large documents. Feeds well. Gray scale needs a bit of work.

Toner will say empty when it is not. Low toner will shutdown printer. There are workarounds but Brother will not help you with this. They will say go buy more toner - when you still have half a cart full. Low cost toner but a pain to use it all.

Avoid this printer. Not worth the wasted toner and non-support from Brother. Staples usually is out of toner for this model. High-Volume toner available, but that too is usually unavailable.

** AVOID AT ALL COSTS **