Laser printers don’t have the problems with output quality that ink causes for printing on plain paper. Toner particles, often chemically grown brother monochrome laser printer to uniform size and shape, are tiny bits of plastic. Unlike ink, they can’t bleed into the paper to soften sharp edges for lines and graphics.
Like our top pick, the M479fdw requires official HP toner cartridges. HP’s one-year warranty for the M479fdw is shorter than what some rivals offer—Canon in particular provides three years of coverage on its machines—but it may actually be better than competing policies. That’s because it provides on-site service within one business day, while other warranties require you to ship your printer to a service center, sometimes at your own cost. For professional-looking brochures or presentations, you’d probably want to use a printer like our upgrade pick, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw, or punt the job to a pro print shop instead. The HL-L2350DW works with Windows PCs, Macs, and even Linux systems. It’s also compatible with all major mobile printing standards, including Google Cloud Print, which means it’s a solid pick for Chromebook owners.
If youdon’tneed them, you can often find an identical or similar model for less from the same manufacturer, minus only the PCL or PostScript support. “Duty cycle” is a specification for the monthly page count a printer is rated for. Some printers don’t offer one, which is not an issue if you don’t print much. If you print enough to wonder if you might overtax the printer, however, don’t buy one that doesn’t offer the spec. Almost any printer will include a USB Type-B connector for a direct wired connection to a single PC. And even if that’s the only connector, Windows will let you share the printer on a network.
The L2350DW reliably maintained a connection throughout testing—even several rooms away and a floor below our router. You can operate this printer over USB if you prefer, but in that case you have to supply your own cable. If you want an Ethernet port for wired Internet, you can upgrade to the otherwise nearly identical HL-L2370DW. A basic inkjet can cost as little as $40, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a laser at that price. This gives the MFC-805DW a slim appearance that lacks the elegance of a large color touchscreen, although the physical buttons are probably more reliable than the virtual buttons on many touchscreens.
They use an LED or laser beam to project an image of the material you’re printing onto a photoreceptor drum that’s positively charged. As the beam hits the drum, it removes the positive charge from the print areas. These stick to the drum and then print the text and graphics onto paper that the drum rolls over. Finally, heat fuses the toner ink onto the paper for a permanent print. There is a choice of printers, with some more suitable for fast-paced environments and others suitable for the home. The Canon ImageClass MF264dw and MF267dw are very similar to the MF269dw we tested, but both have a smaller ADF capacity and neither offers duplex scanning and copying.
They’re also great for people who don’t print often but want a machine that will work without complaint on the rare occasions when they do need to print. For this guide to laser printers, we’ve considered 157 different printers and tested 19 of them since 2011. And for this particular update, we put in about 25 hours of research and testing, looking at 15 models and brother monochrome laser printer ultimately testing three. To start, consider who will be using the printer, how they’ll be using it, and how many pages they’ll be printing per month. There is also a multipurpose tray that can hold an additional 50 sheets of special media, such as envelopes, and which opens above the main tray. Additional compartments for 250 or 520 sheets are optionally available.
(It sounds absurd, but such hacks have happened.) It also allows for PIN-encrypted print jobs, so you can make sure no one else is intercepting your documents. Role-based access control for multiuser environments allows you to choose who can access which printer features. If your work involves sensitive material, these are legitimately helpful additions—and features you can’t get from other manufacturers. Laser toner cartridges don’t have to be replaced as often as ink tanks, and they won’t clog—as inkjet print heads sometimes do—if you go weeks or months between print jobs. The MFC-J4335DW prints, scans, copies, functions as a stand-alone fax machine, and allows faxing from the computer using the Brother Fax application or a driver that allows faxing from almost any Windows program. Paper handling for printing is suitable for most small offices, home offices and personal use.
Both of these estimates assume you’re using the extra-large 206X replacement toner cartridges; if you use the smaller 206A replacement cartridges, replenishing costs less up front, but you pay more per page. HP’s toner cartridges feature an integrated drum, so you don’t have to worry about buying a new one after a couple of years.2 And the M255dw defaults to duplex printing, which brother monochrome laser printer will save you on paper costs, as well. We also tested the flatbed scan quality of each multifunction printer using a glossy test photo printed on our inkjet all-in-one pick, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015. We scanned at all available resolutions and looked for notable qualitative differences in each machine’s output, in everything from sharpness to color rendition to contrast.