Brother - HL-L2480DW Wireless Black-and-White Refresh Subscription Eligible 3-in-1 Laser Printer - Gray

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products or points for an honest, helpful review.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  copy scan and print

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 month

  good printer, copier, scanner combination . fair price. works well, not too simple of a setup. prints look good. nice compact size. I'd recommend it.

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  Posted 7 months ago by ArnoldS

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Fast prints & copies, best for sharp/crisp text

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 100 Contributor

  I’ve used several Brother printers in the past and this is my third monochrome, or black and white only, printer from this brand. The HL-L2480DW is an all-in-one printer that can copy, scan, and print on a variety of media including envelopes, labels, letter and legal sized paper. It cannot, however, print in color nor send or receive faxes. It takes up a decent amount of desk space, and you’ll need to leave some clearance in front, behind, and above it to open the paper tray, rear panels, and scanner lid. That said, I found it surprisingly light at just over 22 lbs. The machine is pretty simple to setup. After plugging it in and turning it on, I connected it to my home’s WiFi network from the touch display control panel, though you can also use an Ethernet cable for a wired connection or connect directly to your computer using a USB-B cable, if you prefer keeping the machine offline (cables not included). Using the color LCD’s menus is intuitive and user-friendly, however, I found the screen’s keyboard for entering my WiFi password very tiny and difficult to tap the right keys. If you don’t want to share the printer on your LAN, you can use a direct WiFi connection to another device that supports it. Drivers and software for the printer can be downloaded from Brother’s website, and installation takes about 5 minutes. I was able to get started printing within about 10 minutes from unboxing. The paper tray on the bottom can be fully removed and holds up to 250 sheets of paper from A6 to A4 sizes. The back of the tray can even be extended to accommodate legal size paper (11x14 inches), though note that it will stick out of the back of the machine several inches when closed. Envelopes, labels, and other custom media can be fed into the manual feed tray that folds out from the front of the machine and is ejected from the rear return tray. Sending print jobs to the printer wirelessly was fast, and printing started within a few seconds of hitting print. In terms of print quality, I found that text-only documents came out quite nicely. Lettering is crisp and clear, and print/copy speed was fast at 36 pages per minutes (ppm). The printer can handle 2-sided duplex printing sequentially and retracts sheets to print on the reverse side. The paper return tray can hold up to 100 sheets and has a flip out support flap for high volume printing. Large graphics and photos, however, printed with less than “photo” quality. I found that across large images, there were very noticeable horizontal bands (light and dark) across the page. These persisted after multiple attempts at cleaning the toner cartridge, rollers, corona wire, and drum. Images also appeared much darker on paper (with default settings) than on screen, losing contrast, textures, and fine details in the print. I did not see a huge difference in print quality when setting the output DPI to 1200 versus the default 600, though contrast improved marginally. Fortunately, the banding isn’t apparent at all with text-only printing. For scanning, you’ll choose upfront where to save the file from the menu, for example, to your computer, in an email, or to your linked cloud storage (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint). Scanning a page of text produced clear, legible copies in about 10 seconds at the default 200 DPI; scanned text was easily recognized by the OCR software and the file contents could be copied and edited in word processing applications. There was little, if any, bleed-through when scanning a page with text on both sides. However, this machine cannot scan both sides of a page simultaneously or automatically, and you must manually flip the sheet in order to scan the other side. After each scan, the control panel will ask you if there are more pages so you can save them as a single PDF file. Scanning photographs at 200 DPI, on the other hand, produced results that were a little lighter than their physical originals, with a warmer tint and softer focus. When zooming in on a 200 DPI image scan, there was a bit of a grid effect due to data compression/loss, though the scans managed to capture most of a photo’s details with accuracy and good color and saturation. When scanning at the max resolution of 600 DPI, each scan took longer, about 30 seconds, and individual pixels were less noticeable with smoother edges and little noticeable grid effect. However, there was a slight rainbowing of grayscale colors. With photocopies, it was much the same results as with scanning, and I noticed text in photocopies appeared slightly darker and thicker, so regular font appeared slightly “bold” faced. You can print from a mobile device using the Brother Mobile Connect smartphone app. This app requires you to login or create an account to link your printer. Once linked, “Scan to Mobile App” will also appear in the Scan options on the printer’s control panel. Just make sure your phone and printer are connected to the same network. In the app you can print documents and photos or initiate a scan that saves directly to your phone. You can also manage or sign up for Brother’s Refresh EZ Print Subscription, an automatic toner refill program; a 4-month free trial is included with this printer. A feature that may be useful for folks using the printer in a shared office environment is the ability to send a secure print job to this printer’s queue; this will require a user to enter a password/PIN entered on the machine’s LCD in order to complete the print. Toner cartridges for this machine are the Brother TN830; a standard version yields up to 1200 pages while the high-yield XL prints up to 3000 pages for a lower cost per print. The starter cartridge included with the printer, however, will only last about 700 pages. I like that you can add shortcuts for functions that you use often to the control panel’s menu, like Scan to Google Drive or Mobile App. One thing to consider though is that there is no automatic document feeder tray for scanning and copying a lot of pages. As these functions are single-sided, you’d have to do one sheet at a time, one side at a time. Overall, the printer is great if you don’t need color printing and mostly print text, as it prints quickly both single-sided and duplex. Graphics will print fine but larger images won’t be “photo” quality. It also functions well as a scanner and copier with decent reproduction quality, though isn’t as fast or convenient with a large number of pages or at its highest resolution. The printer is easy to setup and share on a network with multiple ways to connect, and has a number of useful Internet capabilities like linking to cloud storage, scan to email, and secure remote printing.

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  Posted 1 year ago by ReviewedByPhil

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  All-in-one in a pinch, but excellent none-the-less

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  ***Setup:*** Setting up the Brother HL-L2480DW is easy. Unbox, install the cartridge, connect it, turn it on, and download the app. Wi-Fi connection can be established through the app, and after a quick firmware update, it's ready to use. You can also use Ethernet and USB-B. The process is quick, taking about 10 minutes from unboxing to printing. ***Build Quality:*** The Brother HL-L2480DW is sturdy and well-built, fitting well into home or small office environments and only taking up a moderate amount of space. You will need some room on each side to access the different panels, paper tray and scanner lid. Its sturdy and lets you know, coming in at over 22 lbs. ***Ease of Use:*** The Brother is actually pretty intuitive. Navigation is simple enough, thanks to its color touchscreen and reasonable menu layout. The onscreen keyboard is a bit frustrating if you have a more complicated WiFi password, though. ***Mobile Compatibility:*** The Brother integrates with various devices through Wi-Fi direct, Google Print, and AirPrint. Printing can be achieved from either PCs or mobile devices (phones, tablets) with very little delay. Mobile printing and scanning are supported through the Brother Mobile Connect smartphone app. The printer can also link to cloud storage services and offers secure print job capability. ***Print Quality and Speed:*** With over 30 page per minute printing speed, the Brother HL-L2480DW outperforms many inkjet printers. Its laser technology delivers sharp, professional-looking prints, perfect for business documents and reports. It's notably faster and more efficient than inkjet, saving time - especially with multi-page documents. This isn’t the one to get for photo quality prints, however. You will notice banding. ***Scan Quality:*** The scanner works well for converting documents and photos to digital format, producing clear, legible scans. The Brother lacks an automatic document feeder, however, making it somewhat time-consuming for larger projects. This may work in a pinch, but for regular scanning of multiple pages, a dedicated document scanner with a feed tray would quickly pay for itself in time consumed/saved. One reason for this is the lack of automatic duplex scanning: you have to flip things over yourself. I personally will be using the scanner to place things on and save vertical space, as I already have an auto-feeding scanner. ***Conclusion:*** Overall, the Brother HL-L2480DW is an excellent choice for those in need of a fast, reliable, and affordable black and white laser printer for home or small office use. While it lacks color printing and an automatic document feeder, it offers fast printing speeds, decent scan and copy quality, and versatile connectivity options.

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  Posted 1 year ago by Highly Excellent