Review - Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer & TN360 Toner Cartridge

The laser printer Brother HL-2170W tops the ranking of tests conducted by the magazine, The Personal Computer. The laser printer was put to the test by 3 magazines in total and was generally considered good. It received a majority of positive feedback. "The Personal Computer" gives the highest score to Brother HL-2170W - 17/20 points - in its issue No. 206 (June 2008).

One thing is sure, we like the laser printer is not because of its look. A block of plastic in two shades of gray that swears a bit next to a nice flat screen or a small laptop. No duplexer or screen control but just three small indicator lights. And the gear proves rather noisy during its startup and while printing.

However, still, this small Brother printer is proving as a good entry-level laser printer, which prints office documents quickly at low-cost, no matter locally or in a wireless network. At least $150, the models come with a standard USB 2.0 interface, Ethernet 10/100 Mbps and Wi-Fi 802.11g wireless network. Installation is simple and fast, especially when using USB and Ethernet. As for Wi-Fi, you only need to indicate the encryption key used for the network and the installation interface does the rest.

Thanks to its extraordinary printing speed, the Brother HL-2170W stands out from the crowd. Almost 18 pages per minute for plain text, 16 pages / min for our PDF of reference, and 10 seconds on average for the first page: the Brother laser printer is one of the fastest around $150. The print quality is satisfactory, at least for text and simple graphics. For images, it is much less well, the flat areas lacking regularity, as gradients: Unable to get it with a monochrome photo correctly. We forgive it since the page here costs only 3 cents with the original Brother TN330 cartridge (1,500 page yields), or 2 cents with the high capacity Brother TN360 toner (2600 page-yields).

The Brother HL-2170W monochrome laser printer provides an affordable solution to the endless hole of money that has become the inkjet printer. Modern photo, tricolor, and high-capacity ink cartridges can cost between $20 to $ 100 per refill, so multiply that by your volume of prints and try not to recoil from the real cost of owning a inkjet. Alternatively, supplementing a printer set up with a monochrome laser printer is less expensive to reduce costs in home offices that tend to cycle.

Want to find out more about Brother toner cartridges, then visit LaptopTraveller.com on how to choose the best Brother HL-2170W Toner for your needs.