Brother HL-5250DN Network Ready Laser Printer with Duplex
by BROTHER
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Our Price: $649.88 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $148.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Brother HL-5250DN Network Ready Laser Printer with Duplex
Customer Review: Lot of printer for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
My old laser printer was fried by a lightning strike nearby, so I had do some research to find a replacement. That research paid off, I got super deal on a factory refurbished Brother HL-5250DN ($150, new was $250). Strangely Brother does not seem to give the printer setup password in any of the documentation; I finally found it in the FAQ on their website. Only then was I able to turn on the duplexer.
As a test I printed out the user's guide which as usual these days came as a PDF on the CD. 130 pages, 65 sheets of paper, in 13 minutes, is not bad at all. Then I realized that I had a 128mb ram chip that would fit it and upgraded the memory to a whopping 160mb. I printed out the song book for my Yamaha Keyboard, 152 pages, and with all that memory the printing box on windows closed in about a minute. It seems like the printer will take data just as fast as you can send it over the network.
The thing is rated at 30 pages a minute. You will have noted that it only printed 10 pages a minute above. There are 3 reasons for that: 1. duplex is a lot slower than one sided as the paper path for printing the second side is a lot longer than it is straight from the tray. 2. The printer slows down after a couple of minutes, apparently to keep the heat levels down. 3. They lie; not really, you just have to know how they come up with that rating. It is the maximum speed that the printer can print identical copies of a page. I tested by running 11 single-sided copies of a page, timing from when the first hit the output tray. It took just under 20 seconds for the10 pages which is, of course, 30+ pages a minute.
There are a couple of comments about curling paper, and a ticking sound. Mine does both; and I think that they are both caused by the same factor. The high speed printing requires that the fusor be very hot. The heat makes the paper curl as it drives out the moisture, and the ticking which stops after about 5 minutes of non-use is probably the fusor cooling down.
Some interesting facts: The printer has a separate printing drum that is good for 25k pages and costs $150. The full toner is good for 7k pages and costs $100, there is a 1/2 full toner cart for 25% less money. At 100k pages the printer needs some maintenance that may (or may not) cost more than the list price of the printer ($400). The duplex unit if bought separately costs $150. And an extra paper tray costs $150. Something tells me that no one is going to have the 100k maintenance done, so that can be considered the life of the printer. I probably will replace the printer rather than get a new drum for it as that will be at least 5 years down the line for me and $150 is what I paid for the printer in the first place. On the other hand, I have blown away most of a ream of paper the first day.
This is supposed to be a workgroup printer, and I guess you could expect to use it that way if you planned on replacing it fairly often. I have seen a lot of HP Laserjets run 250k pages a year and if someone needed that kind of volume this Brother printer would be stupidly expensive to own. However for my personal use it seems to be a super printer and the price was only 50% higher than a set of Epson inks (locally) for the R200 which I only use for photos and labeling CD's because of the ink cost. Since this laser printer replaces one that was about 15 year old technology, it is a real serious upgrade in capability for me.
Of course, only having had it for a few days it is impossible to know how durable it will turn out to be. But at this point I can recommend it for personal and small office use.
Customer Review: Best printer I've ever owned
Summary: 5 Stars
I spent a few months looking at laser printers and I was convinced that HP was the way to go... However, after comparing the features and the price I was totally sold on the Brother 5250DN. For 250$ you get networking, duplexing, almost instant-on printing, and 30 pages a minute. With HP printers you would pay a whole lot more to get the same features.
My first impression of the printer was that it was utilitarian at best. There is no LCD display, only two simple buttons and a few LED lights on the control panel. Since I'm a gadgety-kinda-guy I wanted a printer with an LCD screen and some other cool things on it. I quickly ignored the lack of the LCD screen when I saw how nicely the printer worked. After printing just a few documents I was totally sold on the quality of this machine. Everything that I print looks flawless and razor-sharp. I started to enjoy the way the printer was designed even more... don't let the outward simplicity deceive you! Also, since the printer is almost cube-like, there aren't any protruding paper-trays or other pieces to make placement awkward.
One of my favorite features is a button combination that you can press (I think you have to hold down the 'Go' button for 3 seconds-- check the manual) to re-print whatever you had just printed. This has come in handy a few times since the printer is downstairs and, if I suddenly realize that I need another copy, I can print it without having to walk upstairs to my computer and resend the print job. Also, if you want to print more than one copy you can, you hold 'Go,' release it, then press it the number of times that you want reprints made. It's a handy little feature that I found while reading the manual.
Also, while I haven't done this yet, the printer uses common SDRAM for its memory upgrade module, not some expensive, proprietary memory. I'm not sure if this is a common practice but it definately made sense and I applaud Brother for choosing to use something generic and consumer friendly.
The network sharing took me a little to figure out, but after installing the Brother network manager the printer worked much better. At first it would totally drop print jobs since I had Windows interfacing with the printer directly. Now, after installing the Brother network software and printing to the BNT port, every print job is handled successfully.
I've had the printer since January (so coming up on six months), and 780 pages later this printer is still performing wonderfully. I've never had a paper jam or a bad quality print. The 5250DN just sits there patiently waiting for me to give it something to do, and I never have to worry about clogged nozzles or poor quality output. I have noticed that it draws quite a bit of power initially (I can tell when the printing starts because the lights in my house flicker ever so slightly). The printer is quiet overall, it just makes a nice humming noise as it is working and it spits out pages like you wouldn't believe.
The Brother 5250DN is the perfect low-maintenance printing solution and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a laser printer. I would definately buy from Brother again.
Customer Review: Almost Perfect Home Printer
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought a laser printer for home use because I don't print very much (average about 10 pages per week)and I disliked paying big money for inkjet cartridges only to have them dry out before they were empty. I based my purchase of the Brother HL-5250DN on online reviews from both PC World magazine and CNET. I'd recommend reading those reviews and I agree with what they say. My review focuses on things not pointed out in those reviews.
The printer has a "well built" feel to it. While many of its components are plastic (like the paper tray), its beefiness more resembles a business laser printer than a home inkjet printer. It's also a very nice looking printer.
This printer has ports for connecting either a network, USB or parallel cable. I used an Ethernet cable to connect to our home network because this allows wireless printing from a notebook computer. You don't need a wireless printer in order to print from a wireless-equipped computer as long as you have a wireless router/hub on your network and the printer is connected to the network.
The HL-5250DN is a duplex printer, meaning it can automatically print on both sides of a page. I have printed about 20 duplex pages so far without any paper jams or misfeeds. There is no angular misalignment of the images; the images on both sides of the paper are aligned square to the sheet. The rollers that reverse the page for duplex printing do leave the page with a slight curvature. The curvature is noticeable, but not annoying. The curvature would probably go away by itself if laid flat, but the discharge try is not flat; it too has curvature. The roller-caused curvature does not occur during single-sided printing, but the sheets might be curved by the tray if allowed to stay there very long. The printer also has a "Booklet" printing option that prints two pages on each sheet of paper. The sheets can then be center stapled and folded down the middle to create a booklet.
This printer has numerous other capabilities not mentioned in any review I read. It can print a watermark on the page. There are built-in watermarks such as "Draft" and "Confidential" and you can create custom watermarks from a text or bitmap file. The printer can add a date/time stamp to the footer of each page. There is a "Toner Saver" feature that produces lighter images and text.
The HL-5250DN has numerous other printing options that I'm not mentioning. All the features are incorporated in the printer driver and are accessed through the printer "Properties" box of your application software. The only button on the printer that I use is the power switch.
The included CD walks you through unpacking, connecting, test page printing and driver installation. Very painless.
In summary, I love this printer. The paper curvature is the only problem I've seen and it's pretty minor.
Customer Review: Epic Toner Cartridge Scam
Summary: 3 Stars
I've had this printer for a while and been very happy with it. It's a good printer. Works perfectly with Linux out of the box, just plug it into a switch and it auto-discovers and double sides. The printing can get really slow with anything more than simple text (even one graphic or something with funky pagination is enough) but not unacceptably so. It's loud. But all and all for the money it's a great printer.
Fast forward... the printer comes with the low capacity 550 toner. This is a classic printer company move to get you in to a new printer thinking "it's less money for the printer and cartridge than the cartridge alone" and then give you one that is half empty. Fine. I've come to terms with that deal a long time ago. But Brother has a new scam: faking the lower toner warning.
As of today I've printed 3108 pages on my low cap cartridge. I've done the last 500 or so pages with a flashing "low toner" warning light. Tonight, after printing a perfect looking page the printer just stopped. The web admin said it was out of toner. Obviously this isn't true, given that it printed the last page perfectly. So I turned it off and on again, same thing. Did the cartridge shake trick, same thing. Finally I found the trick. When this happens to you, and you are looking at a clearly working cartridge on your 5250 refusing to print because of low toner you can fool it:
- Turn your printer off
- Open the front panel
- Pull the cartridge / drum out
- Pull the cartridge out of the drum (little tab on the right that you push down to eject the cartridge).
- look on the side of the cartridge that doesn't have gears and you'll see a little clear plastic grommet / eye thing. If you go to the geared side you'll see it has a matching buddy on that side too. The printer looks through these doing a sort of reverse Mission Impossible laser beam number (when the toner drops under the grommet eyes the beam hits the sensor and the printer stops).
- Black out the eye on the non-gear side (because it is easier to get to) with a sharpie or electrical tape.
- Put the cartridge in the drum and the drum in the printer.
- Restart
- Print happily (I am)
- Order a refill on Amazon and toss it in the closet (I'm banking on needing it in the not to distant future).
This sensor is a total scam. The printer shouldn't ever stop. If I tell it to print with a totally dead empty cartridge it should do so and let me work out what to do next. I know the money is in the consumables but seriously sending a low capacity cartridge isn't enough Brother? You've got to rig it to die early too?
Bottom Line: Good printer, scam on the cartridge that can be fixed in 30 seconds or less.
Customer Review: No good for Macs
Summary: 1 Stars
We have just gotten this printer, but it's going back ASAP. An extremely knowledgeable computer expert suggested we purchase this printer and installed it for us. The first thing I noticed was that the print was too light. It turns out that this printer is not really Mac compatible, despite the manufacturer falsely advertising it as such. There are a number of features only available for PCs. Here is the fiine print of page 33 of their own Brother Laser Printer User's Guide:
You can change the following printer settings when you print from your computer.
__ Paper Size
__ Multiple Page
__ Orientation
__ Copies
__ Media Type
__ Paper Source
__ Resolution
__ Toner Save Mode
__ Duplex printing (Manual Duplex printing 1, 3 / Duplex printing with Duplex tray 4)
__ Watermark 1, 3
__ Job Spooling 1, 3
__ Quick Print Setup 1, 3
__ Sleep Time
__ Status Monitor 1
__ Macro 1, 3
__ Administrator 1, 2, 3
__ Insert Command/File 1, 2, 3
__ Page Protection 1, 3
__ Print Date & Time 1, 3
__ Density adjustment 1, 3
__ Error Message Printout 1, 3
1 These settings are not available with the BR-script printer driver for Windows®.
2 These settings are not available with Windows NT® 4.0 and Windows® 2000/XP.
3 These settings are not available with Brother Laser driver and BR-Script printer driver for Macintosh®.
4 This setting is not available for HL-5240.
Note the large number of features not available for the Mac. You can fiddle around with print features in Acrobat, Word, etc..., but obviously this is neither convenient nor satisfactory. Already I can see I'm never going to be happy with the print density. The most basic function of a printer is to print pages that are easily readable. This printer is always going to come up short in that department.
I fully believe the other negative comments I've read about this printer. I'm not waiting around to see them come to fruition. I'm so disgusted with the lack of proper Mac compatibility this time-wasting contraption is going back to the dealer forthwith. This is one of those cases where you get what you pay for. The time involved messing around trying to set this thing up properly completely oblitereated the initial attractiveness of its price.
Having said all this, we kept the printer after all. I must say it is fast. The print density was finally adjusted so it is deep enough, but there is no easy way to change it. So far we have no way to stop a job if we change our mind after hitting the print button. While this printer is fast it is still very far from ideal for a Mac user.