Brother HL-L5200DW Printer review - Wicked fast printing

Even though there are a plethora of color printers available now, mono laser printers still dominate many homes and small business set-ups. The main reason is perhaps the need for printing out high quality black and white documents at affordable price. Brother HL-L5200DW is one such medium-range printer for home use and start-ups without major demand for image printing.

Design Features

With a cuboid shape and a simple black and grey case, it has a simplistic but efficient design. It has a single line LCD display screen with a simple but effective control panel situated next to the paper output slot. Measuring 10 x 14.7 x 15.3 inches and weighing about 23.5 pounds, it is no different in shape or size from any other printer of the same capability. The weight is just right for one person to move it around if required. It can easily fit in a small desk and allows straightforward setup and maintenance.

The good news is that the Brother HL-L5200DW is designed for heavy duty printing and is quite fast for its price. The print quality id also good and it offers a wide range of connection choices, excellent paper handling and low maintenance cost.

Paper Handling

The main paper tray can take a maximum of 250 sheets and slides out from the front panel at the bottom. The printer is also equipped with a multipurpose tray that can take 50 sheets of different sizes ranging from envelopes to A4 size and folds down from the main tray.

The printer definitely excels in the paper handling department. It offers auto-duplexing or automatic two-sided printing. This is great for saving paper and reducing manual efforts. It offers a monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages and a standard paper capacity of 300 sheets in two trays.

When you buy the printer, you can also opt for the 250 or 520 sheet tray based on your printing demand. If you add two 530-sheet trays, the maximum paper capacity increases to 1340 sheets and is a major boost for any office that has large scale printing jobs. For any typical home printing needs, the regular 300 paper capacity is more than sufficient.

If there is a minor hitch, it is the placement of the paper level indicator – It is set right into the tray front and is not easy to read as it is almost indistinguishable from the rest of the case.

Ink and Toner

The printer comes with a two-part drum and a toner cartridge that easily slides from behind the front panel. The high capacity cartridge is also attached, and can easily yield 8000 pages before needing a replacement. The drum yields about 50,000 pages before you need to replace it. That’s a big advantage, considering that you only need to replace it very occasionally over the printer’s life.

Print Quality and Speed

The overall print output quality is excellent for text among similar printers and sub- average for graphics. With graphic format prints, the printer seems to suffer in differentiating between similar shades and printing dark text against a dark background.

For a mono laser printer, it offers very good photo print quality. It offers a print speed of 40 - 42 ppm, which is good enough for most printing needs. In real-world printing tests, it did respectably enough, clocking about 30.8 ppm. Printing out a 15 x 10 cm photo took merely 7 seconds from a desktop computer connected via USB cable. The same document took twice the time to print when remotely activated through an Android phone.

With a default resolution of 1200 dpi, the text is crystal clear and crisp and shows no noticeable ink spattering.

Connectivity

The printer connects to the desktop computer via a USB cable or through Ethernet or Wi-Fi network. It is possible to connect it directly via a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi Direct connection to any other compatible device. Since it connects to Google Cloud Print (GCP), it can be used for printing remotely from anywhere in the world through a smartphone or other devices with the help of a Google account.

It is also compatible with Airprint and Mopria for printing from Apple and Android devices, respectively.The printer comes with Brother TN-3420 cartridge with a yield of 3000 pages. Brother TN-3440 is the high-yield version offering approximately 8000 pages of printing.

Why buy the Brother HL-L5200DW Printer?

This is an efficient black and white printer ideal for small office and home use. It can be shared within a small work group if needed. It is not only quiet and fast at printing but also inexpensive to run, making this a great value for money.

Pros

        " Small footprint, relatively high print speed, reasonably quiet " Trusted Reviews

        " Wicked fast printing, good text quality, low running cost " PC Mag

Cons

       " Hard to read paper readout, higher running costs than rivals " 

       " Slightly below-par graphics "