Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces
by BROTHER
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Our Price: $305.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $75.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces
Customer Review: Best Printer I've Ever Had
Summary: 5 Stars
Great monochrome printer. I've only had it for a couple of days and here's what I've found.
SMALL SIZE
Fits anywhere, especially with wireless feature. Move it to a shelf, closet, or in a cabinet.
EASY WIRELESS SET-UP
Wireless set-up was fast and easy on my two computers. I was worried because of the other reviews about some difficulty in setting up wireless. I installed the software and during installation selected the instructions to set-up wireless WITHOUT the cable. Even though it suggested I connect first w/ a cable. I followed the instructions, and it found the printer signal (after two attempts) and it connected right up. The second computer took 3 minutes running the same install software (from the CD)
FAST, SMOOTH, PRINTING
The printer is fast. Immediately after I print from my computer, I can hear the printer start-up from sleep mode. Then about 5 seconds later the first page comes out. It prints the page in about 1.5 seconds, then there's a 1/2 second lag and the next page comes out. So about 2 seconds per page. Fast and smooth.
PRINT QUALITY
The print quality is excellent. My ink jet printers don't really compare to the quality of a laser printer. I have the printer set to 600 dpi (other choices are 300 and 1200) and I have toner saver mode turned on.
PAPER CURL
Some people mentioned paper curl. I have had zero paper curl. I'm using standard Office Depot brand paper.
CONFIGURATION
I like the way I can enter the IP address of the printer and access all of the configuration and network options on the printer from any of my computers. It keeps tracks of how many pages are printed, toner levels, drum life, etc. Note: The IP address is assigned after set-up and is printed on the configuration page (press blue button three times in two seconds to have it printed)
FEATURES
One feature I like is "N-up" printing. It allows you to print two to 10 multiple pages per print page. I've used four, which is great when reviewing docs or reading printed articles. The print is small but very readable (for me). Choose printer options or properties after hitting your print button to select "multiple page" option. There are other print features not described here.
OPERATION COSTS
This printer will save you a lot of money. It only costs about 1 cent per page to print, since you can purchase 2500 page printer toner refills for about $25. My ink jet was costing me at least 10 cents per page. I was spending about $100/year in ink jet cartridges for well under a 1000 pages printed a year. Now it will cost me $10. That's at least $90 in savings. You'll break even on the purchase of the printer in one year! (assuming you get printer on sale). I have an all-in-one ink jet, but will now use the HL-2170W for the bulk of my printing needs.
CONCLUSION
There's a reason the printer has 4.5/5.0 star rating after hundred's of reviews. The printer is fast. Print quality is superb and it will actually save you money.
Customer Review: Good price...easy wireless setup
Summary: 5 Stars
Very good price for a very good printer...I was looking into their previous version (2070N) when I came across the wireless version, and opted for this one instead for a little more.
As for the wireless setup, it is VERY simple, and if you ARE a computer guy, you shouldn't even have to use the included CD for the install. I didn't use the included cd, these are the steps I took to install the drivers and setup the wireless function of the printer...
1. Make sure your printer is ready to be powered up, which means install the drum/toner, paper, etc.
2. Make sure DHCP is turned on and your using it on your router to assign IP addresses.
3. Plug in a Ethernet cable from your router to the printer.
4. Turn on the printer.
5. Your router should have assigned the printer an IP Address...to check which IP address it has been assigned you can open up your router's web interface and check the DHCP leased IP addresses and find the one for the printer.
6. Download printer drivers from here:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public/us/us/en/dlf/download_top.html?reg=us&c=us&lang=en&prod=hl2170w_all
Extract it to a folder on your desktop.
7. Install the printer/drivers on your machine. I was using Vista, but steps should be similar...go to control panel, printers, add printer. Select Wireless/Networked printer. It will try to search for one by itself, just click on the button below it that says Printer is not on list or something. There will be a field for you to enter the IP address of the printer, select that and enter the IP address of the printer which you found in step 5. It'll find the printer and bring up a box for you to select the drivers. Click on the Have Disk button and point it to the drivers you extracted on your desktop.
8. Your printer is setup! The wired part anyway, you should be able to print a test page and see that it is functional.
9. Open up your browser and point it to the IP address of your printer (ex. http://192.168.0.100). This will take you to the printers web interface, from which you can handle all your administration. Default user/pass are user/access and admin/access.
10. The first thing I did was change my passwords for user and admin. Then I assigned the printer a static IP address which was out of my DHCP lease range. You don't have to do this.
11. Under one of the tabs there should be a link that says "Setup Wireless .. " or something similar, click on it...on that page you can specify your SSID, type of encryption used, your password, etc, and click on submit.
12. It will ask you to unhook the ethernet cable and will do its thing. If you entered all your information correctly, you should be up and running with your wireless setup. You can try to print a test page and see.
I think thats it...i'm typing this from memory, but it looks right :D
All in all this took me less than 5 minutes to install and setup for wireless use. You don't have to use this method, it's just easy and fast if you know what your doing. The CD is a great asset, but I just like doing things myself :)
Customer Review: Great printer - Better Price - Easy Setup - Me Happy
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say that I am pretty darn impressed with this printer, especially at the current price of $89 or so.
(1) All necessary parts are in the front of the printer. You load the paper, from the front. You install the toner, from the front. No having to turn the printer around or open the top or stand on your right foot only, to put toner in.
(2) Print quality is real nice. It is black and white only obviously. But, the print is crisp and clean. NOTE: When I printed my first few test prints, there were these stray "tick" marks printed along the right edge of the paper. It looked like some toner got on the rollers, but I wasn't positive if it was that or a real problem. It made me a little nervous at first because I wasn't sure that it would go away. But, after printing the word "Test" to the same 20 sheets of paper about 4 or 5 times, the tick marks faded away. Now print outs are nice and sharp. Just wanted to mention this in case someone else experiences this and thinks there is a problem. Watch to see if the tick marks fade away after about 100 sheets before freaking out and sending it back or anything.
(3) The wireless connectivity was VERY easy to set up. CAVEAT: I set up my wireless network at home myself, as I think most people do. If you also set up your own wireless network, then connecting this to your wireless network should be easy for you. If you did not set up your own wireless network, but had someone else do it for you, you probably will be challenged in trying to set this up wirelessly and should probably have that same person set this up for you. My network is WPS AES encrypted, so the printer supports good wireless encryption. If you have a router with "One touch" connectivity technology, this thing supports that also. NOTE: When hooking the printer up wirelessly, after I got to the point that the printer searches for wireless networks in the area, the first and second attempts both returned nothing. On the third or forth attempt it finally got it's Wi-Fi in gear and saw my (and my neighbors) wireless network and connected easily. So, if you don't see any wireless networks on first try, give it a minute and try it again, and repeat a few times if necessary. It seemed just like something needed some time to kick on wirelessly. I dunno. NOTE: You can still hook the printer up "wired" with a USB cable if you want and it will work. But, it doesn't come with a USB cable so you will have to provide (or buy) your own.
(4) It is a nice fairly compact sized and designed printer.
(5) It is still early to tell, but it doesn't seem like it will get paper jams very much. I even stress tested this (by semi-incorrectly loading paper) and it handled it.
(6) The price! You can't beat the price! $89!
(7) Prints fast and starts prints fast even over wireless. No long "warm-ups."
The only "wish list" feature that I would have liked is auto-duplex printing. But that would probably jack the price up $400 or so. So, I am happy with manual duplex at $89.
Customer Review: Good Printer! Observe the Toner Saving Trick Though...
Summary: 4 Stars
I like this printer. It's been working really well wirelessly from both my desktop and my laptop, seamlessly, giving me no problems. Like everyone else, the cost of ink and toner is a real bear, so since I print a LOT in monochrome for business, and since laser printers are both more economical to feed (tonerwise) than Inkjet and also better quality, I bought this for all monochrome needs and will be picking up another, second printer just for color and photos only, hopefully the end result being an overall more economical way to go. As you probably know, the cost of a printer is zilch compared to the proprietary toner/ink you'll spend.
And that leads me to one more testimonial regarding tricking this HL-2170W into thinking it still has toner when it prematurely says it doesn't. Having learned that on these reviews, when my starter cartridge that came with the printer quit, I took some duct tape and covered over the two little glass windows on each side of the toner cartridge itself. Though not explained fully and this trick could be easily not quite fully understood, what happens is that when the toner cartridge is full, the ink inside of it prevents those windows from seeing light. As soon as there is enough toner used, then the toner is below the windows, and light shows through, telling the printer that it's out of toner. And it won't print, it just gives you a lighted alert that something isn't right. Well, those windows are not at the bottom of the container of course, so when they see light, there's still toner in the container, just not at a high enough level to block the windows from seeing light. By covering them up with tape (electrical or duct tape worked for me), whammo... the printer no longer thinks it's out of toner and begins printing again.
Well, I cannot tell you how many copies I've gotten so far after covering those windows, but it's a LOT. I suspect I've printed 1/4th the number that I did prior to it thinking it's out of ink. And it's still going strong. I'm waiting for it to finally print something that comes out less legible or blank, but so far, so good. The moral of the story being... if you use that trick, you will get a whole lot more mileage out of your toner cartridge. Plus, the added bonus that that's your warning that you need to buy another cartridge, so instead of running to your local high priced office store at the worst possible time, typically, to be back in operation, you get notice, and you can get an order in online or wherever you find the best price. I always keep a backup, but I do like having some notice, and this gives it to you.
Other than that, any time I've had an issue (something I didn't know how to do but no fault of the printer), I've called Brother Customer Service, and in every case they've been really helpful. And speaka da English, to boot.
I'd recommend this printer. I think it's a nice one. Not too noisy but enough so I know it's working. I'd buy it again.
Customer Review: Nice printer but setup was an ordeal!
Summary: 4 Stars
So far I like the printer and the quality of the prints very much. It holds a good amount of paper and duplexing is manual, but easy. My problem was the setup, but hopefully that will become a distant memory.
I tried to set up completely wireless because I didn't have a spare network cable and didn't want to buy one just to set up a wireless printer. I should have known better from reading the reviews here. Also, when I began the installation, I didn't understand wi-fi very well and that caused another whole set of problems. Basically, I did everything wrong and it took me days, yes days! to get the printer printing.
The CD installation went well and the computer immediately recognized the printer. The problem was that the router settings didn't quite match the settings on the computer. I had changed the security settings of the router once I realized it was unsecured and I had a devil of a time getting everything to match. I made numerous calls to both Brother customer service and the router's customer service, going through the re-set process many, many times and running into one roadblock after another. After a couple days of pure madness, I broke down and bought a network cable.
I was still unable to get it printing by myself, so had to call Brother again. They talked me through adding a port and finally, the wired PC could print to the printer. In the meantime, the netbook had lost connection to the router so I had to hang up with Brother, use a flash drive to copy the router settings from the PC and transfer them to the netbook. With the connection restored, I tried to duplicate the process of adding a port on the netbook. I struck out again.
Back on the phone with Brother and talked through it again. It turned out to be a slightly different process on the wireless netbook, but we got the port added and I was able to print from the netbook. Finally! I had started the process on a Monday evening and wasn't up and running until Friday evening! If I hadn't wanted that printer so badly - and gotten it at a great sale at Best Buy - I would have taken pleasure in putting the printer in the driveway and maniacally running over it about ten times.
A lot of this trouble was due to my own ignorance, but really, it shouldn't be so hard! I'm not a techie, but I'm not stupid, either. And even Brother couldn't get me hooked up without the network cable. So unless you really know what you are doing, get the cable and use it for the initial setup. You can then remove it and be wireless. In fact, I think Brother should just add a couple bucks to the price and include the cable with the purchase.
I lost track of how many times I called Brother over those few days, but it was a lot. The customer service was excellent and they helped me each time until we figured out the current roadblock I had to resolve. I'm glad I have this printer, but I'll be keeping the network cable and the Brother phone number on standby just in case...