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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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces
Customer Review: Horrific setup detracts from good printer
Summary: 3 Stars
Look, before I rip into Brother's support and setup for this device, let me say this... The HL-2170W is a superb printer that delivers exceptional print quality and cost per page once it is actually working. The unit has decent build quality, is not too noisy (about the same as most laser printers) and does not cause the lights in my place to dim all that much when it first warms up (all laser printers do this). The printer is set up at the other end of the room and prints with very little delay. Pages per minute are almost as advertised and I have zero complaints about the unit.
Granted, I have not been using it for long so I do not know about how well this Brother will do over the long haul. The last Brother I had was purchased in the 90's and lasted about five years. It was terrible about power, practically dimming the lights by 90% when it turned on or warmed up.
Now let us get to the set up. It took nearly four hours before I was up and running because the box had two different sets of instructions. one seemed to cancel out the other, but made little sense. Looking online I found a third set of instructions. In the end, I tried to install the printer driver and then the printer via Cat5 over the Network, but it was a fiasco. It wouldn't work with the Belkin router and I had to call Brother.
On hold for ten minutes. Disconnected. Repeat. Rinse and spin.
Finally a human being and she cannot help me and says call Belkin for help.
Call Belkin and we go through the process of learning about all the security stuff the Brother needs to function on my Network (never mind my friend's Samsung was plug and play on his system).
Call Brother back and the process they took me through was completely different than all the sets of instructions I had found up to that time. There was ZERO similarity.
So the entire process took about four hours, pretty much ruining my day. There is no excuse for such nonsense and once again, I wonder why I continue to use Windows. I'm running XP Pro, by the way. Vista sucks and I have no desire to go to Windows 7 until i buy a much newer machine.
There you have it. I hope this review is helpful. If you are a novice, do not to set this thing up on a Network. You will not enjoy the process.
Customer Review: Great Printer Bad instruction for wireless connection
Summary: 4 Stars
The print quality is wonderful and fast. If you already have tried to set it up and did not work follow these instructions from the beginning. Otherwise just follow from step 3
1. Turn off Windows Firewall
2. To reset the printer:
Turn off the printer.
Press and hold the Go Button in front, at the same time turn on the printer from the right side. You will see three lights(Error, Drum, Toner) turn on. Release the Go button. The light is not blue and is off.
Now, Press the Go button 7 times. Wait for some seconds.
The three lights will turn on and off by themselves. The printer warms up and then stops.
3. Connect the ethernet cable to the wireless router and the printer
in the browser:
[...]
It shows the device connected and its ip address.
Close the browser and open new browser
on your internet browser type in http://(ip address that you see on paper)
click on "Network configuration" user: admin Password: access
click on "configure interface". Change it "Auto Switching" Click OK
You are back in "Network configuration"
click on Configure wireless
Make sure it is "Infrastructure" and the "channel" is correct. Also "Authentization Method" should be "open system"
Choose your encryption method
type in your password in "hexadecimal format" and click "submit". If your password is ascii change it to hexadecimal with an online converter
Follow the instructions.
Wait until it prints the papers. When it tells you to remove the ethernet cable, Do not remove. Wait until printing is done. Turn off the printer and remove the cable. Turn on printer.
Now Print the printer status:
click on the Go button once to wake up the printer. Now click on the Go button 3 times. Wait! it will print 4 pages.
Look at the last page
you will see the IP address of the printer.
go to your browser and type in http://( new ip address that you see on last page)
The last step is again in the "configure wireless" to "configure TCP/IP"
choose something like 192.168.1.198 the last 3 digits should be a high number. Close browser.
Now put in the CD and install the wireless Driver only. All Done!
Turn ON Windows Firewall
Customer Review: Low price, easy setup, good performance!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been buying Brother laser printers for several years now - first the HL-1240, and then the HL-1440. Both were used in my home network via the Windows printer sharing function, which means that the computer to which the printer is attached must be up and running in order to print. The 1440 recently started malfunctioning, and rather than deal with its problems I decided to get something new that I could connect directly to the network.
I went looking for the HL-2070n, but these are no longer stocked in local stores, and I wanted a printer quick. Instead I found this model and the larger, more expensive HL-5250dn. After playing with both of them for a few minutes, I felt that the 5250 was too noisy and clunky sounding, and kind of big. It's probably a good printer, but I went instead for the quieter and less obtrusive HL-2170w.
The wireless capability is a nice feature, but not really important to me right now, since the printer sits only three feet from my Linksys WRT54G router and I don't need to move it around the house. So even though I'm able to use the easy wireless setup, I went with a wired network connection instead. Setup on my three computers was a breeze. I followed the easy instructions and everything worked as expected. If I try the wireless installation later, I fully expect it to go just as well.
Now that it's in place, the printer seems to be doing what it should. Output is fast, paper is not badly curled, and quality looks fine. The printer driver also has the advanced features I've been accustomed to with my earlier printers. My only minor gripe is that I don't like the minimalist control panel that consists of just three LEDs and one big button. Since my earlier printers had the same kind of thing, I know I'll have to keep referring to the user manual in order to perform routine control panel functions and interpret any unusual alerts.
It'll take a while to know whether or not the printer has any serious shortcomings, but I'm more than satisifed so far. Considering the low price, the hassle-free installation, and the results I'm seeing, I'll give it five stars.
Customer Review: Wireless connection is too complicated
Summary: 1 Stars
Bought the Brother HL-2170w printer to help me with my consulting business, to print b/w documents inexpensively for things like short letters, etc. The Brother MFC-685CW ink jet printer I already had hooked to my wireless network with no effort at all, and I expected the same with the 2170. Well, spent half a Saturday trying to get this to work on my network, and finally got it to work, kind of. I was shocked how hard it was to do and it lost the connection every time this thing went to "sleep."
I saw one review that suggested letting Windows (I am using Vista) install the printer, which I tried. No luck, Vista could not find the printer on the network to install. I finally used a cable to connect this problem child to my router (which is no small task with the layout in my home), got it to work, only to have it again not work when it was moved to its proper place and used on the wireless network. I followed the instructions to the letter, and finally got it to print over the wireless network by simply reinstalling until it worked (following the same instructions every time!) But when it went to sleep, it would not wake when a document was printed. I need to go over to the printer, turn it off and then back on again, to get the document to print.
I would be inclined to blame Vista, but my color inkjet, also made by Brother, works so well it cannot be a Vista problem. I am very disappointed in the performance of this printer as used on a wireless network. If you are interested in this printer because of the wireless feature, look elsewhere, you will be happy you did.
13 Oct 2008 addendum - the printer simply refuses to stay on the wireless network, and it has become so bad, I took an old D-Link wireless print server I had in the basement and hooked the 2170 to the wireless print server with a USB cable. This printer wants to be wired to a computer, the wireless part of it is useless. As stated in my original review, do not buy this printer if you plan to use it with the wireless set-up in the printer, it does not work.
Customer Review: Great as a second printer
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had this printer for about 7 months now, and it works very well. Still using the starter toner cartridge, though I did have to resort to the trick of covering the window about 200 pages ago. It still prints great.
Unlike some others it seems, I did not have any trouble with setting up the wireless networking. Ignore the instructions and drivers that come in the box, download the latest ones from the Brother web site instead. You'll want to have the latest drivers anyway, so why screw around with the old ones?
It worked fine on my home WIFI network, but it does sometimes drop connection since I brought it to my office. It might be due to the location of the router, though. It's on a separate floor. Resetting the printer always does the trick. I've recently updated the firmware version and ran the network diagnostic tool, so hopefully the problem should disappear.
It's a very economical printer compared to an inkjet, no wasted money on dried out cartridges or clogged print heads if you don't print that often. Though it takes about a minute for the printer to warm up, once it starts printing it is very quick. I've printed 100+ pages in under 5 minutes.
The fan can be a little noisy when printing, but it only runs for a few minutes after the print job ends. You can even set the timer on how long you want it to run. When it is in power saver mode, it is silent. It has a small footprint for a laser printer, though if you're used to the tiny inkjets, it looks rather hefty.
If you don't care about color printing, or you already have an inkjet, this is a good second printer to have on hand. The only feature I'd really like that it doesn't have is auto duplex printing, but for the price I paid, I can't complain. It's been much less troublesome and costly than some of the inkjets I've owned in the past, and I haven't regretted buying it for a second.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that since I updated the firmware, not once has it dropped off the network. Great printer, and definitely worth the money.