Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer Plus Review

Brother is renowned for its laser printers and personal printing devices, and made a name for itself in the early ’90s with its innovative multifunction devices, as well as its creative and quirky ads. Brother’s single purpose devices have also found a niche in the market, including its HL-2170W laser printer.

The Brother HL-2170W looks like an appliance that belongs in your kitchen from afar, but it is actually a laser printer with wireless and wired network interfaces for better flexibility in usage. Going back to the design, its sleek look makes it ideal for small rooms and can conveniently be placed on any office desk.

As a laser printer, it has the usual advantages: Low cost per printed page (we’re seeing it at about 7 to 8 cents a page, versus 25 cents per page for an inkjet), and it’s a pretty fast printer – getting 23 pages per minute on straight text, and about 7 pages per minute with graphics. It comes with 32 MB of RAM built in, which explains a good chunk of the speed.

In the paper support category, the options available are just enough for businesses to make the most out of the Brother HL-2170W. It is capable of holding 250 sheets of either letter or legal size and is also capable of printing on envelopes and letterheads using the bypass feeder. The toner which is loaded conveniently in the front to keep yourself clean can print around 1,000 pages which is basically up to par with the other bigger machines out there.

One of the fantastic features about the Brother HL-2170W is its wireless interface. Although the wireless can be a bit of a pain to set up since there is no printed documentation available, you can enjoy the freedom of letting other desktops with wireless cards and laptops to print from a distance after you have successfully set the printer up. The printer also works reasonably well with Apple computers also and the setup difficulty can be significantly reduced if you have a router that supports SecureEasySetup.

There are a few minor annoyances in addition to the lack of printed documentation and noise is one of them. If you are in an office environment that isn’t very noisy, expect this laser printer to do all the noise for you.

Cons on this printer include some oddities in network configuration, and a driver that makes duplex printing (printing on both sides of the sheet of paper) troublesome. All that said, the price is hard to beat – it’s about $120 at list price, and regularly goes on sale with instant discounts of $40 to $50. Given that wireless connectivity usually adds $30 to the cost of a printer, this is a bargain indeed.

While it’s got a mix of benefits, the primary role of the HL-2170W is that it’s a good plain text printer with reasonably priced toner cartridges and blazing speed for its size. It’s compact, will fit nicely in a dorm room and permits wireless access. The price and low cost of ownership are its main benefits, with the drawbacks being noise and graphics printing.