Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Setup - easy
Basic Operation - fast and reasonably quiet, appears to be well built.
Printing text - excellent, as good as a much more expensive industrial hp laser printer I frequently use. Nice and dark.
Printing graphics/photos - in highest settings (1200dpi, "improved gray scaling" checked) it's good, but nothing exceptional. The output is not too dark, as is sometimes the problem with other inexpensive lasers.
Manual Duplex printing - this was at first confusing to me because I wanted to use the lower paper tray to do it all: print one side and then feed the output back again into the lower tray to print the other side (if you have more than 50 sheets you need to use the lower tray). This did not work for me until I finally hardwired the tray settings from "auto detect" to "tray 1". The manual did not mention this step. New drivers from Brother (as of January 14, 2004) did not fix this. Printing duplex from the multi-purpose tray works fine without having to hardwire the settings.
Customer support - so far not good. I went through much trepidation figuring out how to get the lower tray to work on duplex because I could not reach support people. The number always seems to be busy.
Highs - good, fast prints and reasonably quiet operation.
Lows - documentation is not completely accurate, customer support isn't good. Could use a sleep mode indicator as the previous reviewer mentioned.
Click Here to see more reviews about:
Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser PrinterThe HL-5050 laser printer is a flexible, expandable printer for your home, office, or small connected workgroup. With fast print speeds, graphics-quality printing, upgradeable memory, and outstanding user support, the HL-5050 sets a new standard for quality monochrome printing--the perfect balance of performance, flexibility and value.
The HL-5050 can handle virtually any media via its 250-sheet paper tray and 50-sheet multi-purpose tray. The multi-purpose tray accommodates card stock, letterhead, and envelopes. The printer delivers its highest-quality output (HQ1200, up to 2,400 x 600 dpi) at up to 17 pages per minute--its fastest print speed. With its fast print speed, 16 MB memory (expandable to 144 MB), PCL6 and BR-Script3 (PostScript3) compatibility, and great print quality, this printer delivers both performance and productivity.
A convenient job-cancel button to make unwanted print jobs disappear easily, and the printer's "first-page out" speed falls under 12 seconds. The unit offers the option to add a second 250-sheet lower paper tray to expand the paper input capacity to a total of 500 sheets. Its standard-yield toner cartridge offers up to 3,300-page capacity and the high-yield toner cartridge offers up to 6,500-page capacity. The drum is rated at up to 20,000 pages.
The printer comes with USB and parallel interfaces and standard Windows drivers, as well as drivers for Mac OS X (10.1 and higher) and Mac OS 8.6 to 9.2. An optional external 10/100 BaseT Ethernet print server is available. Brother provides toll-free technical support, a one-year limited warranty, and the online Brother Solutions Center.
Click here for more information about Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser Printer
