7. Brother HL-5350DN
Brother HL-5350DN
For some users, being able to print immediately is essential. If you want to hand a customer a copy of their reservation, for instance, the time it takes to print the first page is a very important factor. Brother claims that the 5350DN can produce this first page in 8.5 seconds, but this is only true if the printer has already been going. If it starts in standby mode, the first page takes 17 seconds, twice the time advertised by the manufacturer. And if you've only just switched it on, then you'll need to wait 38 seconds ... with delays like these, it's difficult to talk about 'immediately available' printing. In normal mode, the printer uses 600 W, and 4.4 W on standby.
Build Quality 
The HL-5350DN is monochrome, mono-functional, small and fast: it produces 30 pages per minute in normal mode of 13 ppm of double-sided documents. It also promises to produce its first page very quickly--in under nine seconds. We beg to differ on this point (see inset).
It can be used on a network, includes a paper tray capable of storing 250 sheets and a small internal memory of 32 MB. Its cartridges separate the toner--available in four sizes from 3000 to 8000 pages--and the drum, which is good for 25 000 pages. Drivers are available for Windows, Mac and Linux and it's every inch the professional printer.
The pre-installed toner is the smallest available size, 3000 pages.
Printing Speed: Office Use
Brother suggests that the HL-5350DN will reach 30 ppm with the first sheet arriving in 8.5 seconds. We can certainly confirm the former claim, and we even reached 31 ppm.
The latter, however, is only true when the printer has warmed-up and is ready because it's recently printed another document. Otherwise, it can take up to four times as long.
The 5350DN is only powerful once it gets going, and small teams that make good use of it will appreciate its fast speeds. If, however, you'll only need it occassionally and don't want to wait, then there are more appropriate printers.
The quality is reasonably high, with perfectly readable characters. Printing is neat, and, overall, different shades are converted accurately to black-and-white. On the other hand, some details could be better, with the gradients in our test documents disappearing into blocks of colour.
Although products like this aren't really suitable for photo printing, our tests showed some favourable results. Gradients were lost and the prints lacked precision. Overall, it seems that the printer prioritises speed over quality, but that isn't a bad thing for either text or graphics.
Cost per page
We looked at the smallest and biggest cartridges, and between the two, it's easy to see the larger offers more economic printing.
| Pluses | Minuses |
|---|---|
-Speed, double-sided printing -Very low cost per page using 8000 page toner -Network compatibility -Quite quick to print the first page if it's already warmed up -Excellent quality text documents | -Gradients lack detail -The first page takes a while coming from standby mode -Just 32 MB -Black and white |
 The 5350DN gets its pages out quickly at a low cost, and is perfect for a small team that often needs to print out a short document. For more heavyweight work, it would need more memory. And for top quality printing, there are better quality printers ... | |
I have the scx-4500w and the review is pretty correct, setting up that Wifi make me want to pull my fingernails out.
My biggest pet peeve is the "scan to pc" button doesn't work as its said to. It will work, if it is in Ad-hoc mode, but if its on the network then you will need to open a program do it, it still works but it takes 5 times longer. Overall a great printer though, its certainly far from an eyesore and fits perfectly on my small filecabinet.
Quote from the Dell 2335dn page: "but when it's printing, that rises to an average of 850 W--contrast that to the 20 W required by an inkjet."
You probably meant 85 w? I'm pretty scared if you didn't.
I wouldn't doubt 850 watts, some of the others hit 600....
Any chance to do a review on the Brother MFC Series MFC-9120CN. It just came out and I can't find anything on it.
Precisely as the conclusions of the reviewer, I have tested the Samsung SCX-4500W and immediately run into several problems during configuration. I cannot see how the average user will get the machine to work with full functionality. Scanning is extremely weird, requiring you to start programs on the computer, click buttons and run back and forth to the machine to feed the document. It should simply scan to email or to a file share by pressing ONE button! For the record I have tested this device with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I believe that the manufacturer of the SCX-4500W would clearly benefit from releasing the software of as open source. The original software and documentation has so many flaws and limitations despite the fact that the product has been on the market for perhaps more that a year. No updates seem to be available. Shall I conclude that further development has been stopped?
There is much more that could be done with a beautiful machine like this if the software and documentation are improved!
I just bought one of these a week ago, and am very happy with it so far. My requirements were basically for something small to live in my home-office, something which could replace other devices, and something which would cope with a print run of maybe just 100 sheets per year.
This printer fulfils all of these. It nicely fits on the phone table in my hallway, taking the place of the four telephone directories which I had been meaning to junk for a while. Nowhere near any computers. It replaces an all-in-one inkjet (fed up of ink cartridges drying up) and an older colour laser.
Bought for around GBP270, I wasn't expecting quality to be perfect, but it is reasonable for the price. I certainly wouldn't be ashamed to use this printer for my normal business correspondencem although I wouldn't try to print photos and expect good results.
I had read a couple of reports about the printer being difficult to set up but really, it couldn't have been easier and was a sub-five minute job. From the printer's control panel I simply specified a static IP address & gateway, then was able to surf to its configuration pages for finer tuning. The actual installation of the printer drivers was easy, the setup program automatically found the printer and I had no real decisions to make.
Something I still want to do but am not sure if it is possible it to set the machine up such that when you scan from the front panel, it sends the result of the scan to a network folder someplace. But they certainly document that it is possible for this printer to email the result to you, so I am optimistic.
Biggest gripe so far? When I phoned my office and instead of my normal answer machine, the printer's fax cut in after just 2 rings. (No wonder I've had no messages for the last 3 days!) This is a factory default, seems a bit dumb to me, but I can reconfigure it either not to answer, or to increase the number of rings to allow the machine to cut in first.
Overall very happy with this printer.