Brother - HL-L3210CW Wireless Color Printer: The Brother laser printer’s biggest surprise is its low price. I never thought I would own a color laser, but this new LED technology apparently lowers the bar to entry into the world of laser printing. SETUP: This Brother L3210CW is no lightweight. I’m a real fan of Brother printers, having found them to be very reliable. The weight and quality of build suggest this printer may last awhile. Getting the printer ready for connecting to my computer and phone took no more than a few minutes of removing plastic protectors and a little bit of blue tape. Before your purchase, be aware that this model, HL-L3210CW is either WIRELESS or USB direct to the computer. NO ETHERNET. NONE. NO ADAPTER. I was not surprised, but just be aware of the implications for you. Connecting to my laptop was relatively fast, but not at all intuitive or according to the directions. I usually have an easy time with Brother printers. But …. Following the wireless-to-computer directions explicitly, the Brother Installation Software could not find my printer. After a few failed attempts I was directed to connect using the USB cable, if only to get installed. OK. But, the Install Software still did not see the printer. The installation software never acknowledged the printer-computer connection using my Wi-Fi or the USB cable. The next troubleshooting instructions were frightening: simply undo, redo, re-configure my entire network and router. Whaaaat? No way. It’s here I decided none of this made any sense and I bailed out of the Installation and tried sending a page to the printer. PRINTING. My computer is printing successfully, and all programs print successfully. I can’t explain it. Next STEP, setup my iPhone. Well. no setup required. My phone had no trouble seeing and printing to the Brother. No issues at all. So, is the installation process a fail or a success? I’m happy with the outcome, not so happy with the process. RESULTS: A printout of a few emails with text and colorful images were delivered quickly, not much slower than a black & white page on my older but monotone laser printer. An attempt to print out a full color, full page (8.5 x 11) photo took much longer. I actually wondered if the printer had given up, but, no, a print followed up eventually. Those first mixed media print-outs were fine on standard paper, but they were not photo-quality. On the same standard paper, my colorful real Photo images created a nice color picture, but not a rich professional looking print. Close inspection revealed nice, smooth, fairly accurate colors. It only seemed fair that I try using higher quality photo paper. (Paper quality makes a huge difference with ink jets also.) Now, my photos were richer, more colorful and detailed. Were they as contrasty and rich looking as a photo ink jet? Would they match a drug store photo? Close. Photo inkjet printers (home and professional) have brighter colors with wider contrast. For graphics, mixed images and text, and especially high volume printing, nothing beats a laser printer for speed and supply costs. This Brother looks like it will be reliable, easy-to-use, with acceptable replenishment costs.. Keep in mind, my photo results are not that surprising for any laser printer. SUMMARY: This is not a perfect printer. It’s only fair to note that the feature set is limited. No auto double-sided printing. No Ethernet connection. An old fashioned minimalist LCD screen. Doesn’t scan. If it’s like most printers, you’ll want to ignore (or force reset) the low toner warnings. The warnings are almost always premature and will waste toner if you follow them. This is still a compelling printer for me. I like the Brother HL-L3210CW Color Laser Printer quite a bit. The price is super. If it inherits the reliability of the typical Brother printer, you’ll own if for years with no problems. It couldn’t be easier to use (even if setup is confounding). Text is perfectly legible. Graphics with gradients were very smooth on my printouts. It’s always ready to print with its 250-sheet tray. I’ve not had a single printer jam and I’ve fed it different size and weight papers. Owning a color laser printer always seemed out of reach. Not any more. I can recommend this printer.

This LASER printer might not be as fast as some of the more expensive laser printers, but it's still faster than most inkjet printers with 19ppm for color or black&white prints.Even full page photos print just as quick. I have noticed some banding in full size prints on plain paper and thicker matte paper, but to be fair laser printers are not really known for their photo printing. For best photo prints with a laser printer, make sure to buy photo paper designed for laser printers, as there is a big difference in how inkjet and laser printers print. Inkjet printers use liquid ink, that needs to soak into the media to create the images. Laser printers use a laser to heat up powdered ink off a roller, to create the image on the media. Using the wrong type of photo paper will not turn out favorable results with either type of printer. While inkjet printers usually have more of an assortment in printing media, you can still find some decent options for laser printers, including waterproof, labels and photo papers.Where laser printers really excel is with volume and overall price per prints. The standard cartridges can yield 1300 to 1400 prints, while the high yield cartridges put out about 3000 pages. Printing per page is usually less than half the cost of inkjet printers. Although when you are first setting up your laser printer, it might seem a lot more expensive, because most of the expenses are up front. Just keep in mind that it will be a lot longer till your need for more toner. Inkjets typically yield between 300 pages for standard and 600 pages for high yield, which is partially why the hardware and ink tanks are a lot cheaper. Even though this model does put out some good fast prints, it lacks some of the higher end features, like a lcd touch screen. The display on this printer is very small, and only one line. The buttons are just as limited as the screen, with basic functionality. You can still access the wifi settings, and general options, but it seems a little tedious. Especially using the manual paper feeder. First off, you have to access the general settings, then the paper tray settings, and finally the "manual tray" option. Here you need to scroll to "on" , and then exit the menu. From here anytime I pre-loaded my piece of paper into the paper feeder, I would forever get an error, saying there is a paper jam in the manual paper tray. I even called customer support, but they were not much help, as they wanted to sync up through my laptop with the printer to try to diagnose the problem. I eventually figured out that it would print from the manual tray, if I didn't try to pre-load the piece of paper. So, just to re-iterate, the settings were set to print from the manual tray, but would only do it, if I left the manual paper tray empty while I hit print. then the printer would ask for the paper to be loaded. I would then load the paper and insert it into the machine as far as it would go, without bending the paper up. The printer would notice the paper, and then take it for printing.  Overall I am still pleased with this printer for my needs, it gets the job done pretty good, and there will not be much of a need to constantly change any settings or use the manual paper feed. So the two negatives, about this printer shouldn't pop up very often.  ( I am including some prints for quality purposes, everything is on plain paper)

When we decided to move a few months ago I sold my color laser printer we had as I didn’t think it would make the trip “and didn’t want toner spilled everywhere”, really missed having a color laser but we had a color inkjet also, “easier to pack up” and a plain Brother B&W printer, “smaller and needed a new toner, so no worry about spilling that”. When I saw Brother had a color laser that was very reasonably priced I wanted to give it a try. Unpacking: This thing came in a really big box, and even the UPS guy commented it was pretty heavy. I was surprised at the size of the box and wondered how big the printer actually is. Luckily inside the box is a heavy frame of Styrofoam surrounding the printer protecting it very well, the printer itself is smaller than the box fortunately. Inside the box you will find the printer, manual with CD, power cord, and that’s it, the cartridges are already installed but you have to prepare the unit before the first use. While the printer is bigger than the B&W Brother we already have its understandable why. 4 colors means 4 toner cartridges and 4 drum units, so they take up a good bit of room, you’ll have to plan accordingly if you are limited on desk space. Setting up: After unpacking and finding a good sturdy spot for the printer I removed the blue tape that held the back and front covers down, then followed the instruction sheet hanging from the front of the printer. First you have to open the top, remove all the cartridges, “yep take them all out or you can’t remove the shipping protector underneath”, you have to slide a switch on each end of the toner cartridge to remove it, and then remove the sheet with the foam pad from underneath them. Then carefully remove the protective orange cover from each toner cartridge and place each one back in their corresponding slot and close the top. Now that all the cartridges are in place I turned on the unit after connecting power, notice there’s only a USB port on the back, no Ethernet port, and it does not come with a USB cable either. Once powered on the single line display asked about setting up Wi-Fi which answered yes. Now here it’s a little difficult being that it’s a single line display and you are using arrow keys to enter everything. I scrolled down through the available Wi-Fi connections and found mine. Entering the password took the longest as I have a very long key, it’s not hard but it takes time, don’t rush it, and once entered the printer connected right away. Instead of using the included CD I went to the Brother website and downloaded the driver suite there as those are usually the most up to date. After downloading and running the installation the setup found the printer on my network and set it up. It’s using a default IP address and I ended up going into the advanced section of the interface and changing it to a fixed IP address. You can directly access the printer by its IP address and the admin password is listed in the startup guide, you’ll want to change that also while in the admin page. That’s about all to the setup, apparently Brother really wants you to use the Wi-Fi connection as they don’t even include a USB cable and show that it’s “optional” in the manual. I installed the drive package on all our other computers around the house and it’s was easy to do. The software package found the printer every time and I didn’t run into any problems setting it up. I even downloaded the Brother app for my Android phone and it had no problems finding the printer on our network. Not often I have something that installs this smoothly. Actual Use: Now for actually using the printer, it works, and works very well. For the price range I really can’t expect more from it. Black text is super sharp like our other B&W Brother laser and pretty fast. I also have a HP laser printer and it takes forever to start printing after sitting on standby. The brother only takes a few seconds and it’s up and running. This is a full color printer, but it’s not really for printing photos, it works very well for full color graphics but photos came out duller/faded looking over our color inkjet, but the inkjet is also considered a photo printer there so there’s really no contest. This one does really good at color text and graphics, and is perfect for flyers, business cards, letter head, and things of that nature. If I want good color photos I’ll use the inkjet along with photo paper. Speed wise this one is just as fast as our older Brother B&W printer, the only thing it is lacking is a Ethernet port and automatic duplex printing, but for this price range I guess I wasn’t really expecting those. An Ethernet port would have been nice but I haven’t had any problems printing and it does leave only one cable “power” hanging out the back of the unit. Final Thoughts: If you are looking for a color laser printer that prints very sharp txt, plain graphics and very quick to do so then this may be all you need. But if you are looking for something that prints photos, and automatic duplex printing you’ll have to keep looking as the photo printing is ok just not great, “would be good for handouts or flyers”. And remember if you don’t want to use this on your wireless network you’ll have to purchase a USB printer cable to directly connect it to your computer, not sure why they didn’t just include it with the package. I really liked that I could easily print with the app on my Android phone, I had a couple PDF files emailed to me that I wanted printed and had no problem doing so. I also printed a picture I had taken earlier of a concert we attended and wasn’t impressed with the quality, I’ll have to experiment with some better paper and see if that makes a difference for photos, but our old HP color would print really good looking photos on just about any paper I threw at it. If you keep the limitations of this printer in mind it will be a great printer for your home or small office.

Pros: * Great print quality for a color laser printer * Fast printouts * Easy to set up for wireless printing (Mac, iOS tested) * Nearly silent while printing * Included toner prints a lot of pages Cons: * Larger than average might not fit everywhere * WiFi or USB - no wired ethernet * Doesn’t duplex * Expensive consumables My Review: This is a really great value for a color laser printer. Print quality is what one would expect for a modern color laser printer, and it was faster than some other brands that I’ve tried. But what surprised me most was how quiet it is! Other laser printers have clicks and whirs while feeding the paper, but this Brother printer just silently spits out finished pages. Set up was as easy as one could expect. Unbox the beast (over 40 pounds of heft) and remove all of the blue tape and orange protective plastic bits. Add paper. Go through the on-unit wireless setup wizard to select an access point and (laboriously) enter the network key. Done. Next step was getting my Mac to use the printer. This, too, was easy. Select to add a printer, choose the Brother unit from the list and done. You can optionally download the full driver package from the Brother web site listed on the setup poster to get more printing options. Last was printing from my iPhone and iPad; both recognized the printer on my network via AirPrint and worked without fuss. The tabletop footprint is on the larger side, and it doesn’t help that the power cord comes out of the back and needs additional depth on a counter. This printer definitely commands space on a desk or shelf. This is Brother’s more basic unit so it has a simple one-line LCD display with buttons rather than a touchscreen, there’s no Ethernet adapter for wired networking and there’s no duplexing. If you’re OK with these limitations, then this is a great value option for you! Sadly, as with nearly all printers these days, the cost of replacing the bundled toner (or ink in the case of ink-jet printer), far exceeds the cost of the unit’s original purchase. This printer’s bundled toner is good for about 1000 pages after which it costs nearly twice the original price of the printer to replace all four with new ones. While not ecologically correct, it’s typically cheaper to replace the printer (and get another set of bundled toner or ink), than it is to keep the printer and replace just the toner or ink. Overall, this is a great color laser printer for home or small office use. As long as WiFi connectivity works for you and you don’t need to duplex, this printer will serve you well for a lot of prints.

Thie Brother HL-L3210CW is an incredibly affordable Color Laser for the home office to the point this is better value than an Inkjet. I am only giving this 3 stars though, as there are some limitations you need to be aware of before you buy - but I can guarantee the print quality and speed is impressive. Setup - I don't understand why but Brother ship the HL-L3210CW with a CD of the drivers you need (yes, it's 2019 and they incude a CD). Not sure about you, but I don't even have a computer with a CD since the 1990s so you will need to download drivers. If you are like me, you can download the drivers you need here. https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll3210cw_us_eu_as&os=10013 The next limitation is setup. There's no Printer USB cable included (but hey, you get the useless CD!). Fortunately, the printer has WiFi and you can smart connect to your router or VERY slowly key in the password on the LCD screen. In our office, we have WPS disabled, so it was a case of keying in one letter at a time on the black and white screen like an old-school phone (making me want a cable even more). Fortunately, it paired to my WiFi but honestly setup on a small LCD screen is not the best user experience. Once you're on WiFi, then you can connect to the printer from your PC via the wireless LAN. From there you can configure everything else you need from paper size, print quality, time out, to Google cloud print. Mobile printing supports iOS AirPrint which worked perfectly for me. They also have a standalone Brother printing app "Brother iPrint". Sadly this app is a UI nightmare. Brother really need to work on the quality of their app. And that's not just me, there's a 2.8 AppStore rating that backs that view. Brother position the HL-L3210CW as compact but it is bigger and heavier than expected. I don't have a scale in the office, but size-wise it's 16" wide, 17.5" deep, 10" high. We placed it on a separate desk as it was too big to share space with our monitor. The PLUS side is that Brother don't go cheap on the size of the ink cartridges. The HL-L3210CW ships with 4 color starter rated for 1000 pages each (see photo). If you're wondering, the drum is rated for 18,000 pages I really want to love the Brother HL-L3210CW. It's affordable, fast, and the color printing is great but there's just something that stops me using it as the everyday printer - maybe it's the size, the black & white LCD UI, or the huge size. The HL-L3210CW will have a permanent home and will be my color printer replacing an aging inkjet but I do plan to buy a truly compact black and white laser printer that I can keep on my desk, especially for when I need to print confidential material (finance, HR docs) and I think that really sums up my problem, the HL-L3210CW is just not as compact as I hoped and would like. I would recommend to a friend with caveats but there are definitely no complaints about the color print quality (or affordability). Would suggest you see it in store first before you buy, just so you know the size.