Thread: Brother HL-2170W Printer

If you're in the market for a personal monochrome laser printer or a printer for a small or home office, put the Brother HL-2170W on your must¬see list. It's fast, it prints at reasonably high quality (particularly for text), and it's small enough to share a desk with. The HL-2170W replaces the HL-2070N in Brother's line, adding wireless support and more speed, but keeping essentially the same small size. In fact, it's both lighter and smaller than some inkjets. Since it's just 15 pounds and a compact 6.7 by 14.5 by 14.2 inches (HWD), you can easily find room for it even if space is tight.

Setup is easy, too. Select a spot for the printer, load the toner cartridge and paper, plug in the power cord, and print a test page. If you're connecting to a network, as I did for my tests, you can then connect the network cable and run the automated installation routine from disc. I ran my tests using Windows XP, but the printer also comes with drivers for Windows Vista, Win XP x64, 2000, Server 2003, Server 2003 x64, and Mac OS X 10.2.4.

When it comes to speed, the HL-2170W lives up to the promise of its 23-page-per¬minute (ppm) rating. On our text tests, most fonts qualified as both easily readabie and well formed at 6 points, with some passing both thresholds at 4 points. Only one heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed more than 8 points to pass both tests. Graphics quality is typical for a monochrome laser. That trans¬lates to being good enough for any internal business use but a bit below the level I'd insist on if! were trying to convey a sense of profes¬sionalism. Photos were good enough for uses like printing Web pqges or client newsletters with photos, which is about as much as you can expect from a monochrome laser.



The printer also offers reasonably capable paper handing, with a 250-sheet paper tray and a one-page manual feed slot, so you can feed an envelope or a special type of paper with¬out having to change the paper in the tray. A 250-sheet capacity is more than enough for a personal printer, and appropriate for a typical home or small office. By comparison, the HP P1505 comes up short, with only a 150-sheet tray plus a 10-page multipurpose tray.

By any measure, the HL-2170W offers an attractive set of features for its target audience, with fast speed, reasonably high-quality output, and surprisingly good paper handling. Factor in the low price and it's more attractive still. Even the claimed running cost, at 2.7 cents per page, is a bit below the more typical 3 cents or so for most inexpensive monochrome lasers. However, the HL-2170W offers a lot of fea¬tures for the price as a budget monochrome laser for personal use or for the home or small office.