Are Brother laser printers any good?

[NTB]

Any oppinions? If anybody has any better suggestions in the same price range, I'd love to hear them. I *do* want a printer that can do auto-duplexing, though. Also, while I'm thinking about it - how much memory should a laser have? How do you determine that?

Nate

 

[corkyg]

I had a Brother laser for about 5 years. It gave decent service. It was limited in resolution and ability to add memory. I replaced it several years ago with a HP Laserjet 4000.

Adding RAM was easy - Idid that by trial and error. enough to print a full page graphic at max resolution - turned out to be about 512 MB. So I added two of them.

 

[ojai00]

I have a Brother HL1440 and I don't like it much because it has both a toner and a drum. Replacements for the toner and drum can run up to $150, which is the price of a new printer! HP printers have the toners with the drum built in so it's a lot more economical.

Also, after not having printed a lot, my printouts come out with grayish marks

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: ojai00
I have a Brother HL1440 and I don't like it much because it has both a toner and a drum. Replacements for the toner and drum can run up to $150, which is the price of a new printer! HP printers have the toners with the drum built in so it's a lot more economical.

Also, after not having printed a lot, my printouts come out with grayish marks

The toner and drum should not always have to be replaced at the same time; as a general rule a single drum can handle quite a few more pages than a single toner cart.

As for the grey marks, how long have you had the printer? Sometimes, after it's been sittine a while, it helps to pop the toner cart out and shake it a little to evenly distribute the toner. You might also have a problem with one of the rollers inside the printer.

EDIT: Just checked the specs on the printer I'm looking at for an example: Depending on which of the two toner carts you get, they're rated for either 3,500 or 7,000 pages. The drum, meanwhile, is rated at 25,000 pages.

 

[NaOH]

I have that samsung printer that ALWAYS goes on sale. Prints really sharp BW pages. I don't really need to print anything in color anyways.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
I have that samsung printer that ALWAYS goes on sale. Prints really sharp BW pages. I don't really need to print anything in color anyways.

Neither do I, and for the rare occasions when I do, I have a Canon i850 photo printer. I am looking for something that can do auto-duplex though.

Nate

 

[ojai00]

Originally posted by: NTB

Originally posted by: ojai00
I have a Brother HL1440 and I don't like it much because it has both a toner and a drum. Replacements for the toner and drum can run up to $150, which is the price of a new printer! HP printers have the toners with the drum built in so it's a lot more economical.

Also, after not having printed a lot, my printouts come out with grayish marks

The toner and drum should not always have to be replaced at the same time; as a general rule a single drum can handle quite a few more pages than a single toner cart.

As for the grey marks, how long have you had the printer? Sometimes, after it's been sittine a while, it helps to pop the toner cart out and shake it a little to evenly distribute the toner. You might also have a problem with one of the rollers inside the printer.

EDIT: Just checked the specs on the printer I'm looking at for an example: Depending on which of the two toner carts you get, they're rated for either 3,500 or 7,000 pages. The drum, meanwhile, is rated at 25,000 pages.

I must have had the printer for 3 or 4 years now. Once I started noticing the marks, I tried to clean the toner and drum but it didn't help.

 

[George Powell]

I have had my brother 5040 for a couple years now and it has proved faultless. Also the toner seems to go on and on in it. It started falshing the toner light about 9 months ago and have another couple reams of paper it is still going strong.

 

[athfbum]

I have 2 HP printers right now

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
I have that samsung printer that ALWAYS goes on sale. Prints really sharp BW pages. I don't really need to print anything in color anyways.

Is it loud? I read that it's fairly noisy...I'm trying to decide between the Samsung and the HP.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: athfbum
I have 2 HP printers right now

So do I. that was helpful :disgust:

Nate

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Imyourzero

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
I have that samsung printer that ALWAYS goes on sale. Prints really sharp BW pages. I don't really need to print anything in color anyways.

Is it loud? I read that it's fairly noisy...I'm trying to decide between the Samsung and the HP.

Which HP? I've had an HP 1012 for two years. No complaints here.

Nate

 

[athfbum]

I have used HP and Epson, and my newest HP printer is the best one I have ever had.

 

[Baked]

We used to have a Brother HL-1650N in the office. I print A LOT of articles using this brother laser printer. It's kinda slow compared to our HP 4K series work horses, especially when you wanna print huge articles w/ big graphinc inserts. It simply doesn't have enough memory to handle large files. But for simple text documents, it works fine. It's not the fastest either. We've used it for 2 years and it started acting up. It's a network laser printer and the computers can't detect it on the network anymore. Still works if we hooked it up w/ the USB cable.

In terms of memory, I think you should be looking at 128MB minimum if you're gonna do any large files. Memory makes a huge different in the print out speed.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: NTB

Originally posted by: Imyourzero

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
I have that samsung printer that ALWAYS goes on sale. Prints really sharp BW pages. I don't really need to print anything in color anyways.

Is it loud? I read that it's fairly noisy...I'm trying to decide between the Samsung and the HP.

Which HP? I've had an HP 1012 for two years. No complaints here.

Nate

Probably the 1022. I missed a BIN auction on eBay for a 1022 (new, not refurb) + 10ft. USB 2.0 cable for ~$150. Looks like the printer alone goes for around $175 on most sites.

Then there's the 1020 which I believe is the updated 1012 and sells for ~$120 but it has less RAM, a lower resolution, and slightly slower print speed than the 1022. I was thinking if I could get the 1022 and the cable for $150 shipped it would be a good deal, but like I said I missed it.

The Samsung is a great deal when it goes on sale for $49.99 or whatever but the reviews are saying that the toner isn't very black...more of a dark gray? It's supposed to be pretty fast and have sharp text quality though, as any laser (or modern inkjet for that matter) should.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Baked
We used to have a Brother HL-1650N in the office. I print A LOT of articles using this brother laser printer. It's kinda slow compared to our HP 4K series work horses, especially when you wanna print huge articles w/ big graphinc inserts. It simply doesn't have enough memory to handle large files. But for simple text documents, it works fine. It's not the fastest either. We've used it for 2 years and it started acting up. It's a network laser printer and the computers can't detect it on the network anymore. Still works if we hooked it up w/ the USB cable.

In terms of memory, I think you should be looking at 128MB minimum if you're gonna do any large files. Memory makes a huge different in the print out speed.

Boy, I have a lot of the HP 4k series printers at the hospital too. The previous network admin bought a slew of them and they've been great for the most part, but some of them are reaching the end of their life cycle and we're having to order maintenance kits just to replace the fuser. You wouldn't happen to know if those can be purchased seperately for less $$ do you?

The speed difference between a 4050tn/4100 series and the 4200 series is a lot more than I expected. The 4000/4050/4100 barely cut it in some of our higher volume departments, but the 4200 is a beast compared to those. We're trying to get some departments to print to the copiers though, since they are made for large jobs, but of course there isn't a huge Nikon copier in every dept so the HP lasers always get most of the workload.

 

[Baked]

We have a 4000N, 4240N, and 3800N (color) in the office. The 1st one's the oldest, obviously, and has gone through 2 maintenance. It was done through warranty, I have no idea how much the kit actually costs. I too find the 4200 series a lot more robust than the 4000 series, primarily due to the faster processor and larger RAM capacity. The 4240N is a bargain at $1K. Ugh, getting off topic here. That's 4x the cost of the Brother.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Baked
We have a 4000N, 4240N, and 3800N (color) in the office. The 1st one's the oldest, obviously, and has gone through 2 maintenance. It was done through warranty, I have no idea how much the kit actually costs. I too find the 4200 series a lot more robust than the 4000 series, primarily due to the faster processor and larger RAM capacity. The 4240N is a bargain at $1K. Ugh, getting off topic here. That's 4x the cost of the Brother.

No problem. I don't really *need* a high-traffic printer anyway; this is for home, not work.

Nate

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Baked
In terms of memory, I think you should be looking at 128MB minimum if you're gonna do any large files. Memory makes a huge different in the print out speed.

If I do get the printer, I'll probably go for a 256MB upgrade. There doesn't seem to be much of a price difference between 128 and 256, but there is a much larger jump to go up to 512MB.

Nate

 

[NTB]

Well, I decided to go ahead and get it. Works beautifully so far. I don't think it prints black *quite* as dark as my HP laser, though.

Nate