Product Reviews

Brother's HL-2170W is a mono laser printer with built-in 802.11g wireless networking, as well as the usual Ethernet and USB Hi-Speed ports. We were pleasantly surprised by how simple its wireless settings were to configure. A helpful install wizard prompted us to connect to the printer's own wireless SETUP network before entering the details of the network we wanted to connect it to. This is a marked improvement over wireless configurations that require you first to connect the printer to a PC via USB before configuring it. It also has a single-step auto-configuration option that is designed to work with some Buffalo and Linksys wireless routers.

The HL-2170W is compact and inoffensively styled, with a sturdy, functional design and minimal controls. It has just one button and three clearly marked LEDs that warn you when the drum or toner need replacing, as well as indicating more general errors such as a paper jam, an open front cover or lack of paper.

The paper tray can hold up to 250 sheets of A4, and the printer can handle weights of up to 163gsm. A useful sheet-feed slot enables

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you to print on individual envelopes or thicker media such as card. The HL-2170W printed envelopes correctly, but not without slight crumpling at one edge. Paper fed from the tray was dealt with much more smoothly, with no feed problems and minimal curling.

Characters on our mono text document were sharp and solid, and printing 25 pages took just one minute, 16 seconds, which adds up to a quick 19.7ppm. A single page emerged in 13 seconds, which is rapid enough. Our mixed greyscale prints were clearly defined and accurately shaded, but some areas were mottled where it appeared that toner had adhered to the page a little unevenly. Fortunately, this was visible only on close examination, as were slight lines of uneven grey in areas where one tone shaded into another.

The HL-2170W comes with a starter toner cartridge, which will print around 1,500 pages. Replacement cartridges are available in standard and high-yield versions. High-yield cartridges cost around £35 and print 2,600 pages at a cost of 1.34p per page. This is economical compared with many mono lasers, but it doesn't include the cost of replacing the £54 drum, which must be changed every 12,000 pages. This adds an additional 0.45p to the cost of each page after the first 12,000. Most home users are unlikely to print enough for this to become an issue, although small offices should take note.

The HL-2170W produced good-quality prints throughout our tests, and print costs aren't extortionate even after factoring in the cost of replacing the drum. It's simple to use and easy to configure for wireless printing, making it an ideal choice if you need a shared printer but can't easily run a network cable to it.