Jun
08
Laser printer Brother HL-5370DW with Wi-Fi and duplex
By laser printer Brother HL-5370DW ![]()
Prints up to 32ppm in monochrome
List Price: $ 399.99 Price: 188 $ 78
laser printer Brother HL-5370DW
5 Comments
June 8th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Review by Good_Person for Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Rating:
This little boy is excellent. And you can’t beat it for the price too. Also extremely easy to set up.
I am coming from an HP LaserJet, also 30 papers per minute. So I was comparing it to the HP when I shopped.
My HP, while it served me good, was not as sharp black as the Brother is. I like the print results from the Brother much better. Plus, the Brother have settings whether you’re printing text only, graphics, general, or office documents, in addition you can choose “manual” and tweak the settings yourself to your liking. I also like that the size of the printer is pretty small.
The HP was a little faster from sleep mode (like 8 seconds), while the Brother 5370 takes approx. 14 seconds. Not a biggie. The processor was faster in the HP, but 99% of the time you won’t notice the difference. Once it starts printing, it spits out papers like crazy. Very fast. One important note, though: The fast 32 ppm is only if you are printing in 600 dpi mode. If you need the higher quality 1200 dpi mode, print speed will be down by half! But there again, 99% of the time the 600 dpi is more than enough. Some higher quality graphics may require 1200 dpi, though.
Printing envelopes thru the multi-purpose paper tray is very good, and they’re not getting curled (like many old Brothers did) as long as you open the rear output tray. It can not print thru the regular printing area (if you do, it will still print, but envelopes will get wrinkled). I miss the HP in that area. It’s much less cumbersome.
The printer is quite noisy. But most fast laser printers are noisy.
The duplexer worked beautifully. You just select “Duplex” or “Booklet”, and the printer does the rest. Very good job with that.
I did not use the wireless networking, but from the manual it seems to be a little complicated. Also from the manual, is the following: “…Although the printer can be used in both, wired & wireless network, only ONE of the connections methods can be used at a time…” So keep that in mind if you want to use both.
I would suggest the following improvements, if Brother is interested to listen:
- Make it quieter;
- Add a little high-quality display instead of all the lamps (also miss from my HP – all cheap inkjet have’em today!);
- If out of paper, it should beep, so I know to add paper (optional – not everyone will like beeps);
- Enable the multi-purpose paper tray to be opened with one hand (like my HP), not force me to use both hands.
Overall, though, it is a pleasure to use. Highly recommended.
**UPDATE**
I contacted Brother to help me setup wireless network. I must say I am amazed at the support I got. I can’t recall if I ever had such a good experience with any other company! No waiting, knowledgeable staff, and helped me in less than minutes! And it works like a charm!
June 8th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Review by Steven Weigand for Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Rating:
This printer satisfies every gripe I have about printers. Usually there’s some quality about one that makes you say, “It would have been perfect, but if only it didn’t have this one problem.” Each aspect of this printer is as good or better than pretty much all other printers out there at this time. And I’m a person who is relentless when it comes to researching products before buying them for myself.
Resolution: It goes up to 1200×1200, which is the highest out there currently. 1200×1200 is best for text. But it also does 2400×600, which is typically better for graphics. Most other laser printers only do up to 2400×600.
Toner: Cheap! You can pick up “compatible” cartridges for $30 now which will last 8000 pages. This is the cheapest of any printer I’ve seen. Other printers (such as HP) cost $70 for 2000-3000 pages even with a “compatible” cartridge.
Print quality: Excellent. I used a magnifying glass to try to detect any imperfections in text or graphics but didn’t find much. No white raster lines, “jaggies”, smudging, bleeding, noise or random dots printed anywhere. Large black rectangles are solid and consistent. Gray scale patterns didn’t appear to have any defects.
Memory: 32MB. Most other laser printers only do up to 8MB currently. You need memory if you want to do full-page graphics. It lets you expand memory by adding an inexpensive ($30 new) 512MB memory card. Many printers don’t even allow expansion, or they force you to buy their own special memory cards at a huge price.
Paper: Doesn’t jam. Easy to load. Has a manual feeder also. Allows 2 extra paper feeders if you want. Most printers don’t allow that.
Duplex mode: Fast, easy to use, saves paper. I’ll never buy another printer without it.
Paper curl: You wouldn’t notice it unless you were specifically looking for it. Barely detectable even with duplex mode printing and cheap paper. Even envelopes print with hardly any curl.
Rear output tray: Has it! Many printers don’t. Its predecessor model didn’t. This “straight out the back” mode allows you to print envelopes, cards, and special paper without ever bending it if you really want perfection.
On/Off switch: Has one! I mention this because many printers don’t. Without one, a printer is left on all the time, which uses 10 watts of power (not much, but still) and reduces product lifetime somewhat.
Lifetime: The predecessor model (HL-5250DN) has great reviews. People said they’re still using it 3 years later. The HL-5370DW has just about the same design, and I expect it will last a while. Not a cheap, throw-away printer like you often see.
Networking: Haven’t tried it. But it has it, and it will become very useful when I get a wireless laptop to add to my existing desktop PC (both will need to share it).
Languages: It speaks both Postscript 3 and PCL. That guarantees it will be compatible with any OS out there, even older ones. And since it doesn’t use “host based” language like cheaper printers do, it won’t eat up your CPU and slow things down during printing.
In conclusion, this is a well-designed, high quality printer with low long-term operating costs, and I’m completely satisfied. I’ll add an update to this review if I ever encounter problems with it.
– Steve
June 8th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Review by Super T for Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Rating:
Pros:
* super fast print speeds – this thing is crazy fast even on duplex
* fast warm up
* excellent print quality
* great variety of print options (duplex, booklet, scaling, header/footer print, watermark, multiple page [2 in 1, 4 in 1, 9 in 1, 16 in 1, 25 in 1 and the reverse 1 in 2x2, 1 in 3x3, 1 in 4x4 and 1 in 5x5] – it has some options about running macros, but I haven’t read anything on it yet
* easy wireless setup, very easy
* sharp tech support – brother has NOT outsourced their tech support. I had someone on the phone in 1 minute who knew the product.
* wireless – I was actually going to hard wire it, but my cable wasn’t long enough and it would have taken a circus act to get it hooked up
* from magazine reviews it’s my understanding that the cost/page is cheap
* cheap – I bought it during a $70 off sale at the home depot of office products
* comes w/a standard toner cartridge instead of a starter toner cartridge
Cons:
* ever so slight paper curl w/one-sided printing
* slightly more pronounced paper curl when printing duplex automatically (it has a manual duplex feature too)
* the print options don’t appear to allow you to save your common settings as favorites
The paper curl wasn’t an issue for me, but I remember reading reviews on other printers where this was important to them.
I’ll try and upload some pics so you can judge the curl for yourself.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Review by A N for Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Rating:
I got this printer to replace my 11 year old HP 6MP. The specs for this replacement printer are great, but I think the reality is a bit different.
First the good news. This printer setup easy with both Mac OS X 10.6.1 and Vista and XP. The Mac was the easiest by far, because OS X just went out and downloaded the correct driver automatically. Vista and XP require you download the driver, then do the old Add Printer routine. (It comes with a driver CD, but its always best to get the latest.)
I didn’t try wireless, but it looks easy to configure ASSUMING you can hook it up to a wired Ethernet connection to configure the wireless.
Once in the setup for the printer, which is pretty basic in design but full of every imaginable setting and feature you could want. There is e-mail warning, different emulations, you name it. Some settings aren’t really apparent and there isn’t much help on the page. (I guess they expect you to go on-line or printout the manual on the CD. The included paper manual basically tells you how to connect it and not a whole lot more.)
So as a printer works. That is the best I can say.
So the negative? Just about everything else. The overall quality seems fair, but the real problems are with the operation. There is no LCD display, and the lights are a bit cryptic without the guide to decode it all. It print fast, but rattles, and when it prints, the pages don’t stack well. Pages just shoot out and after three or four pages, they start falling on the floor. There is a fold-out paper catcher but it works poorly. And this is with letter size. Forget legal. Perhaps worse is that the paper doesn’t stack neatly. Print more than about 30 pages and you have to stand there and watch it.
Single or double sided, pages have a pretty strong curl to them. Forget using this for resumes or business presentations.
And then there is the toner. The drum is rated for 25,000 pages and is changed independently of the toner. It’s about $100. It comes with a 3000 page toner which is available locally for about $80. A larger 8000 page toner is about $120. So think about this. The toner and drum it comes with costs $180 to replace. Almost the same price as the whole printer. When the drum needs to be replaced, you might as well replace the printer. This is at 25,000 copies, and this printer is rated for 30,000 a month. Yeah, right.
But wait, there is more. When in the setup, you see that other components including the laser are only rated for 100,000 pages. If you actually did print 30,000 pages a month like its rated, the printer life would be UNDER 4 months.
So in summary, despite the “workgroup” image and the 30,000 monthly page duty, this is a very light duty printer for very non-critical applications. It has the specs and features, unfortunately it doesn’t have the quality or durability. If you don’t expect much from it, you won’t be disappointed.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Review by Doug Pardee for Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Rating:
Fast, quality printing with double-sided capability, comes with a full standard 3000-page toner unit in the box, has wireless and wired and USB and parallel interfaces, all at an amazing price.
On the other hand, toner costs seem to be quite high. The standard 3000-page TN-620 is currently about $57 here on Amazon, while the oversized 8000-page TN-650 is $91. That’s way above the price of similar HP toner cartridges. The “toner save” setting (or whatever it’s called) produces nice results, at least for text… I wonder how much toner it actually saves?
The paper curl is mildly annoying on single-sided print and quite prominent on double-sided. Take a printed page and set it on the table, and the top and bottom edges are sticking up. Sticking WAY up for a double-sided print. That paper must really get run around some tight rollers. On the paper that I’m using, the curl does relax fairly quickly.
I didn’t see where it said anything on the packaging, but setting it up for wireless setup will probably require initially setting the printer up wired. Once you’ve got the printer configured, you can lose the cord. I imagine that most of us wireless users still have at least one network cable lying around, but it’d be nice if you had some warning.
The printer drivers installed fine on a 64-bit Vista system, an XP tower, and an XP netbook (the latter required copying the installation CD onto a thumb drive). I’d configured the printer with a static IP address, and there was no problem at all getting all three systems talking to the printer. Considering the amount of grief that I usually get from drivers and configuration (especially on Vista-64), I was astounded. Everything went like it was supposed to.
When you go to actually print a document, the “properties” panels aren’t as well organized as I’d like but they’re not really bad.
As has become standard practice these days, there is no paper manual except for a quick-start. The manual is on the CD. Someday I’ll have to look at it and see what all the buttons and features are for.
In summary, there are certainly better printers to be had, but it’d be pretty hard to find a better one at this price.