Freedom, truth, love, beauty.

Brother HL-2170W

Erika tried printing some really basic flyers a couple weeks ago. Only instead of a bright page of sharp text and decent spot color it was a pale, streaky mess: the ink was either dried up or low again. We’d printed maybe 100 pages in the six months since I last spent $50 on ink.

Sick of this, I spent $100 on a Brother HL-2170W laser printer that was on sale at Best Buy. It came with a “starter” toner cartridge good for 1000 pages.

It is a great printer. Text is sharp and printing is fast. Graphics are good, if only grayscale. New toner cartridges are supposed to be good for 1500 pages and cost ~$40.

The best and coolest feature is a built in wireless print server. I have it plugged into power in the basement, but can print from any computer anywhere in the house. It also has a wired Ethernet jack and USB 2.0 connection.

I’ve printed a ream’s worth of paper over the past couple weeks, including some old d&d adventures, long news articles from the web, and some tax forms. I am really impressed with this little thing.

I have only two minor nit-picks: the wireless is only b or g, no support for the draft-n spec, so really big jobs take a while to transfer to the printer; and the paper tray holds 250 sheets instead of the 500 that come in a ream; so you’ll tend to have a half-ream sitting by the printer.

I saw in today’s Best Buy flier that they have this printer on sale again for $100. That is $50 cheaper than I could find it anywhere on the web.

If you’re sick of the expense of your inkjet or in the market for a new printer I really recommend this Brother.