printer and another guide

Brother HL 5170DN

The Brother HL-5170DN is another strong contender in the mono printer market aimed at small or home businesses.

The real strength of the HL-5170DN is the ability for it to be networked. Workgroup discovery is simply a matter of connecting it and turning it on. It arrived in our workgroup a few seconds later. Once we had downloaded the drivers it was ready to use. Warm was a respectable 10 seconds too. With the first print appearing a further 10 seconds after issuing the print command.

At 21 pages per minute, the HL-5170DN is plenty quick enough for most offices. The prints themselves are reproduced in high quality up to 2400 x 600 dpi. Text is clear, with very crisp edging. There was no bleed at all when we tested ours, which is unusual for a modestly budgeted printer like this. Image reproduction is about what you would expect from a laser. Good but not great. Plenty good enough for office use and even handouts where of sufficient quality as to not embarrass.

The SPARC processor runs at 133Mhz and is plenty powerful enough to process even the longest print queues. The 32Mb provided memory is respectable, even more so when it’s upgraded to the maximum 160Mb.

With good memory, a decent processor and a good quality finish, you would expect to pay much more for this device. The 250 sheet standard paper tray is expandable to 500, a further 50 sheets can be added to the multipurpose tray, and the output tray is enough to cope with 150 sheets. Handling large print jobs is something the HL-5170DN can do with ease.

High yield cartridges can last up to 6500 pages, and are competitively priced making this a good printer for the cost conscious user. Drums will keep going up until 20000 before needing replacement, which again, is a great deal.

Installation is simple, just connect the Ethernet, USB or parallel port and away you go. Drivers are installed in minutes, without issue on our Windows Vista test box, and we were up and running within 10 minutes.

The 5170DN is ideal for those business users who want a no-fuss printer that does exactly what is says on the tin. It can easily cope with almost anything you throw at it. The built in automatic duplex allow double sided printing, and produces prints fast enough for even the most enthusiastic employee. The consumables are great value and easily obtainable through online retailers like Quikshiptoner.com making this a cost effective as well as quality solution.