Brother HL-5150DLT Observations

[Don Allen]

I recently purchased a new Brother HL-5150DLT B&W laser. I've used
laser printers since around 1990 with the HP LJII, LJIII and IIIp, and
the Brother HL-10V, an functional clone to the HP LJIII. All of these
older 300dpi lasers were built like tanks. My HP LJIIIp still works
fine (cost $1100 new back in the early '90s), and the HL-10V recently
died due to a scanner unit failure.

So, I bought the new Brother HL-5150DLT, a 2400 x 600 dpi laser with
duplexing and a lower tray - all for $299 at Staples. Overall, the
printer is excellent with fast printing speeds (quoted at 21ppm for
text), and the duplexing works extremely well. Paper handling is fine
with no jams as yet. It includes 16MB RAM standard, upgradeable to
144MB.

The only negative so far is its noise level. When printing it is noisy,
much more so than the earlier HL-10V or any of the HP lasers. It's not
so much the scannning unit which appears to make the noise, rather the
cooling fans!

The software (both the drivers and the utility software) is bug-free,
and works extremely well - installed on a WinXP Home SP2 PC.
Installation went without any glitches. Overall, I would recommend this
B&W laser. The ethernet networked model is available for around $100 to
$150 more. I believe it is known as the HL-5170DN - LT suffix if
supplied with the lower tray. It comes standard with 32MB RAM.

Don

 

[Ken]

Thanks for telling us about your new printer. Especially useful to me as
this was on my shortlist because of the duplex printing.

Do you know the actual speeds with and without the duplexing in normal mode?

Did you have any other duplex printers on your shortlist?

Would be good to hear.

Ken