Brother HL-L2350DW - Review 2022

When it comes to monochrome laser printers, the Blood brother HL-L2350DW ($119.99), which is close in price, features, and capacity to the Editors' Choice Canon ImageClass LBP151dw, is nearly equally entry-level as you tin can get. Also similar to another top option, the Dell Smart Printer S2830dn, the HL-L2350DW is fast for its lean cost, and it prints well overall, too. The Dell Smart Printer comes at a somewhat higher purchase price than the HL-L2350DW, only the former delivers significantly lower running costs, thereby making it a improve value over time. If your print volume doesn't exceed a few hundred pages each month, the Blood brother HL-L2350DW should serve your low-volume habitation-based or small office or workgroup quite well. It should also make a skilful personal monochrome laser printer.

Lean, No-Nonsense Printing Car

Measuring vii.2 by 14 by 14.2 inches (HWD) and weighing only 15.9 pounds, the HL-L2350DW is part of a multiple monochrome laser printer release Brother announced a few months ago. The HL-L2350DW is one of the lower-priced of the bunch and as such comes with i of the smaller feature sets. For example, its paper handling consists of i 250-page input tray augmented by a one-sail override slot, and its maximum monthly duty wheel is 15,000 pages, with a recommended print volume of upwards to 2,000 pages.

Several of the HL-L2350DW'south competitors are quite similar in size and weight, varying by only an inch or pound or two here and there. Newspaper input chapters from model to model is similar, likewise. The Catechism LBP151dw'south paper input chapters is identical to that of the HL-L2350DW, whereas Dell'southward S2830dn holds up to 350 sheets, split between a 250-canvas cassette and a 100-canvas multipurpose tray. HP'south LaserJet Pro M102w paper capacity, on the other hand, consists of a 150-sheet tray with a ten-canvass override. As for duty cycles, the Canon LBP151DW's is the same every bit that of the HL-L2350DW; the Dell S2830dn's duty cycle is 25,000 pages college than the HL-L2350DW, and the HP M102w'southward is v,000 pages lower.

Connectivity options on the HL-L2350DW, while robust plenty, are somewhat minimalist. Y'all become a pared-down standard fare—Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, and connecting to a single PC via USB (only no Ethernet), along with a few tertiary-political party protocols, such as Apple tree AirPrint, and Google Cloud Print, as well equally Brother iPrint&Scan, for press emails and attachments.

You lot can manage these and other features from the HL-L2350DW'due south somewhat sparse control panel, which consists of a scattering of buttons—power, Wi-Fi, Dorsum, OK (Enter), Plus and Minus (for increasing and reducing the number of copies), and Go (or First). In addition, like most other laser and business concern-oriented printers, you can manage this 1 over its born HTTPS (SSL) encrypted website; although, since this feature requires a TCP/IP network, you'll need to connect to the printer via Wi-Fi for this feature to work. Security features consist primarily of the ability to turn specific settings on and off (Brother calls this Setting Lock), and some encryption protocols.

Fast for the Price

Blood brother rates the HL-L2350DW at 32 pages per infinitesimal (ppm), which is a lot of processing oomph for a $120 printer, just not necessarily unusual. Catechism's LBP151dw, for instance, is rated at merely 4ppm lower, and its LBP251dw at just 2ppm lower. Dell rates the S2830dn at 3ppm higher, and the HP M102w is rated at 9ppm lower. I tested over USB using our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows x Professional. When press our 12-page Microsoft Word monochrome text document, I clocked the HL-L2350DW at 33ppm, 1ppm higher than its rating. This was 5.5ppm faster than the Canon LBP151dw and four.5ppm slower than the Dell S2830dn. (Unfortunately, the HP M102w was tested nether an before set of benchmarking criteria, rendering its exam scores inappropriate for comparing here.)

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When I combined the score from the previous 12-page Word document with the results from printing several carve up Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, the HL-L2350DW's ppm dropped by nearly ii-thirds, to 10.3ppm. That comes out to near 3.6ppm slower than the Dell S2830dn and 0.9ppm behind the Canon LBP251dn.

To finish up, I printed and timed two highly detailed and colorful 4-by-six-inch snapshots, which, of course, the printers in this grouping convert to grayscale. In this examination, the HL-L2350DW printed our snapshots at an boilerplate time of 12 seconds, which is about right for a monochrome laser printer, and run of the manufacturing plant for the machines discussed here.

Pretty Expert Black-and-White Output

Keeping in listen that the HL-L2350DW isn't designed to churn out sleek, glossy documents and images, it performed its allotted task—printing reasonably bonny and highly useful monochrome and grayscale documents—quite well in testing. Text looked well-shaped and legible down to the smallest point sizes I could see comfortably without magnification (about 6 or vii points), making text output more than acceptable for all but peradventure the almost exacting applications.

Our full-page Excel charts and PowerPoint handouts printed well, too, with only minimal and occasional banding hither and there—hardly disruptive or disfiguring to the documents themselves. I also saw some abrupt tint shifts from one gray shade to some other, but, over again, hardly plenty to brand the document unusable, and these little flaws occurred infrequently.

Photo output is non the all-time I've seen, though information technology's respectable for this class of printer, compared with some competing models, such every bit the Catechism LBP251dw, and it's certainly good plenty for distributing in house, or perhaps embedded in larger documents. Overall, the HL-L2350dW prints well enough for what it is.

Running Costs

Entry-level laser printers cost a lot on a per-page bases to use, and, at iii.vi cents per folio, the HL-L2360DW's running costs are about average for this class of printer. It's the nature of this detail beast. If yous program to push it to its recommended 2,000-pages-per-month impress volume, those 2,000 pages will price you about $720 each month. Obviously, paying a few hundred dollars more upwardly front for a higher-volume printer (such as, say, the Dell Smart Printer S5830dn, at ane cent per page) to become toner at ii-to-3 cents lower per folio makes a lot of sense.

If, on the other manus, you're press but a few hundred pages (say, 200 to 300) each month, that 3.6-cents per page isn't virtually equally draining on your monthly budget. Y'all should evaluate your needs, and not be swayed by skimpy price tags. That said, compared with the HL-L2350DW'southward 3.six cents per folio cost, the Dell S2830dn running costs are 1.six cents lower; the Canon LBP251dw'south and LBP151dw's is 0.vi cent and 0.i cent lower, respectively; and the HP M102w'due south cost per folio is 0.iv cent higher.

Respectable Upkeep Printer

Granted, in that location's nothing specially thrilling about an entry-level unmarried-function monochrome printer. But the Brother HL-L2350DW does print most fast plenty to hinge on beingness interesting. If y'all need terrific-looking grayscale graphics and photos, you should look at one of Canon'due south entry-level models, including the LBP251dw. For lower ongoing monthly running costs, consider springing for a more powerful (and therefore more expensive) machine, such equally the Dell S5830dn.

The bottom line here is that the HL-L2350DW prints well enough and inexpensively plenty to hold its ain equally a $120 unmarried-function light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation printer. If what you demand is to churn out 200 pages or then of simple graphics and highly legible text each month, the HL-L2350DW should serve your home-based or small office, workgroup or personal laser printing environs well.