blackfriday Small enough to serve as an individual monochrome laser printer, the Brother HL-L2340DW ($139.99) can be a prospect for sharing in a micro office. It provides suitable speed and paper handling for either role, and it supports mobile printing with Wi-Fi Direct as a welcome extra. Having less an Ethernet connector will rule it out for sharing oftentimes, but if you wish a printer that connects to your network via Wi-Fi, it’s really worth a look.
Paper handling is among the HL-L2340DW’s strong points. Just like the Samsung Xpress M2825DW, which is our Editors’ Choice moderately-priced personal or micro-office monochrome laser, the printer offers a 250-sheet tray, a one-sheet manual feed, and an integral duplexer for two-sided printing. This will easily be enough for some personal or micro-office use. If you want more capacity, however, you need to look elsewhere, since Brother doesn’t offer any paper handling upgrades for the printer.
More Basics
The HL-L2340DW also earns points for personal or micro-office use because of its small size and weight. At only 7.2 by 14 by 14.2 inches (HWD), it could fit on your own desk without taking on much room, and of them costing only 15 pounds, one individual may easily move it into place. That means it is an impression smaller and lighter than both Samsung M2825DW and the next-generation replacement in Samsung’s line-the Samsung Xpress M2835DW.
Going a step beyond the fundamentals, the HL-L2340DW offers mobile printing support. If you hook up it to a network, it’ll enable you to print through the cloud and print from an iOS or Android tablet or smartphone through your network access point. If you hook up it to an individual PC via USB cable instead, you will not have the ability to print through the cloud, however the built-in Wi-Fi Direct will still enable you to hook up right to the printer from mobile devices-a feature which can be highly useful even for an individual printer.
Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
For my tests, I linked the HL-L2340DW to a Windows Vista system. Setup is completely standard for a USB-connected monochrome laser.
Brother rates the printer engine at 27 pages each and every minute (ppm), which may be the speed you should see when printing a text document or other files that require little to no processing. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), I timed it at 8.9ppm, that is a respectable speed for the purchase price and engine rating. Compared, the Samsung M2835DW managed a somewhat faster 9.7ppm, essentially tying the Samsung M2825DW’s 9.9ppm.
Unfortunately, the HL-L2340DW’s output quality is an impression below par overall. Text quality is sufficient for just about any business use, so long as you don’t have a unique dependence on small fonts, but it’s a step below the number that includes nearly all monochrome laser printers.
Graphics quality can be a step below the particular level that almost all of your competition delivers. It’s sufficient for just about any internal business use, but few persons would consider it sufficient for PowerPoint handouts or so on. Photo quality is typical for a monochrome laser, but that is clearly a low bar. The output is sufficient to print recognizable images from webpages, however, not ideal for any other thing more demanding than that.
If you want better-looking output or an Ethernet connector, you should look at the Samsung M2825DW or the Samsung M2835DW. The Brother HL-L2340DW still includes a lot choosing it, with mobile printing support, ample paper handling, practically the same speed as the Samsung models, and a somewhat cheap. If you don’t desire a wired link with a network, and you care more about cost than output quality, it can be the printer you want.
