Customer Reviews

Brother HL-2070N Network Monochrome Laser Printer (Black)

5 star:		(148)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I was a little worried about the paper curling issue at first, but having used this printer for a while, it is not as bad as some people make it out to be. Yes, the paper is curled slightly when it first comes out, but if you set it aside on a flat surface and let it cool for a few seconds, the paper will flatten out by itself. I have seen other laser printers that do far worse curling.

Network setup is very easy, especially if you're using Mac OS X Tiger or Panther. I was able to connect both with Bonjour/Rendezvous wirelessly via Linksys 802.11g router after installing drivers downloaded off Brother's website. Also was able to connect a PC running Win XP, which required an extra step or two. After you're connected, if you need to change any default printer settings, it's all done through a web interface (both FireFox and Safari worked fine).

Overall print quality is noticeably better than any inkjet and as good, if not better than similar laser printers in this class. Even graphic printouts were much better than I had expected and is perfectly fine for non-photo quality jobs. There are settings for 300/600/1200 dpi, a toner saver feature, power saver timeout, print density, and paper type selector (someone mentioned that selecting "thin" paper type causes less curling). Various other advanced printer and networking settings, and emulation modes exist also.

Print speed is very good. It takes about 10 seconds from the time I click the Print button to when 1 page in 600dpi with a fair amount of of text is printed out, even having just awakened from sleep mode. No problems printing out MS Word, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat documents.

I've printed a couple hundred pages so far, and have not experienced any printer errors or paper jams. (The printer also keeps a tally on the number of jams and an error history of the last 10 errors.)

Firmware version on mine is 1.11.

Overall, I would highly recommend this printer for anyone looking to save money on inkjet cartridges and want a very good quality, speedy, easy-to-setup, compact, networkable B&W laser printer for their home or home office.

This is a great way to let all the computers in your house share one printer. In my house I have 5... my PC, my wife's PC, a laptop each, and a low-end DIY box I use for playing with Linux.

The installation of this printer was really easy. I plugged it into one of the wired ports on our wireless router and had all the PCs in the house printing to it within 10 minutes. I not only got our Windows machines using it in minutes, when I recently did a test install of Linspire on my DIY box, Linux printed to it with no problem too.

The output quality is great and it warms up pretty quickly. The only "bad" part is when I'm at my desk upstairs (where the printer is), my wife is downstairs with her laptop, and she prints something. Having the printer start up and print without warning was sort of spooky and took a little getting used to.

But all in all, this is awesome. One printer serves the whole house, gives great-looking output, and was a snap to get working.

This makes my third Brother laser printer that I have owned over the years. All three printers continue to be operational despite heavy workloads that I put on them in my small business. In fact, the only reason I bought the 2070N was because I wanted the convenience of the built-in networking capabilities. When it comes to quality, Brother shined above all the others and continues to do so.

The 2070N is a 20ppm monochrome (black and white) laser that can hook right up to your existing network. There is an optional wireless adapter you can purchase if you don't have a cabled network. One of the things that impressed me the most was how easy it was to get setup and running on the network. I had used HP printers years ago that were 'network ready' only to spend hours trying to figure out how to get the rest of the computers in the house to see it. With Brother, it was a matter of "plug and play". I took it out of the box, hooked it up and it automatically was assigned an IP address and the included software saw the printer and setup the necessary drivers. It doesn't get any easier than that!

There are a lot of features built into this printer that you wouldn't expect to find on a consumer model. For instance, the printer has a web interface that you can use to administer and check the status of the printer. There is also a built-in FTP server so you can literally FTP your large documents over to be printed. Errors and such can be setup to be e-mailed to you automatically so that, for example, when you are running low on toner you can get an email alert before you run totally dry.

The printer warms up faster and from sleep mode to print usually takes less than 10 seconds. Though some of the earlier 2070N models apparently had a problem with heat and curling paper, it appears that Brother has fixed this as I have never had my paper curl -- even during large print jobs.

Overall, you can't go wrong with the 2070N. It's a low-cost workhorse that will serve you well for your print jobs in both your home and small business environment.

Ok, I read reviews here, then went out and bought, so i figured I would give back...

I bought this because of the cheap price, good looks, lack of a "stick out" paper tray, and the network connectivity. I read the paper curling problem, and figured it wouldnt bother me, but its a pretty big thing. it must produce allot of heat, because not only does it curl the paper, but it also fuzes envelopes shut, and completley melts the window in the window envelopes.

I not going to take this thing back, it does have great qualities, like - you can use a browser to modify the network settings (like a dsl router), it looks great, the printing speed is very nice, and the fuser is a nice 60 bucks, oh, and the fit and finnish are much nicer than any of the hp1000 series I have worked with, and being a network adminstrator, i have worked with a bunch, its just the curling, melting, and sealing of envelopes.

I looked for a home laser printer to co-exist with my hp ink jet. The brother HL2070 had more ram than an HP 1022 I was considering and was lower priced. The toner / drum cartridges are also lower cost. When the printer arrived I noticed the quality of assembly was better than the HP 1022 I saw in the local stores. The driver set up was extremely easy. The print speed is quick. Small or full sized text is extremely good. I really like the multiple operating system support. I run Mac OSX and some Mac OS 9 software.

This is a great printer for the price. I have bought a number of HP printers through the years, always because I enjoyed their reliability.

However in recent years HP has become obnoxious with the cost of toner and really sticking it too their customers charging for every little thing.

This printer provides everything you need at a very reasonable price. Ethernet a great deal easily $100 with HP, 20 ppm, 10 second start up, and a 250 page enclosed tray(HP has started charging extra for this option how stupid is that) and in a very small case.

Brother has done an exceptional job the printer is as fast as promised, works flawlessly, installed very easily, and with the ethernet I can hide it in a desk in the kitchen without needing a computer nearby.

Highly recommended.

Pros:
Ethernet
20ppm
10 second startup
250 sheet tray
very small
great print quality

Cons:
Color

This is my first review on anything I've purchased, like most, I do a fair amount of research before buying anything, for this particular product, it is fairly new so there are not too many reviews out there, but most of the reviews seemed positive and the price was right. (There is a great rebate right now) Anyway, I was looking for an affordable B&W laser printer for my small business and I wanted to be able to network the printer to a PC as well as a Macintosh Powerbook, both are setup on a Dlink Wireless Router, PC is hooked up using a cat5 cable while the Mac Powerbook is wirelessly connected. I wasnt sure if the Brother 2070n would be compatible with both the PC and Mac at the same time since I have little know-how on setting up printer networks, but I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.
I connected all the cables to the printer (power cable, network cable). Then, I set up the Mac Powerbook first, just followed the instructions, installed the driver and added the printer to my computer, it took less then 5 minutes and I was able to print wirelessly from my laptop via my wireless router! I was pretty impressed with the ease of setup. Next I went over to my PC to install the driver and prayed that it would print as well. Yes my prayers were answered, the setup again took less then 5 minutes. Popped in the CDROM, setup the driver and the software found the printer on the network. My PC is running XP and there was no need to reset the computer, printed an email and it came out perfect!

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the Brother 2070n, I've only printed out a few things so I cant comment on the life of the cartridge or drum, but as far as ease of setup, this printer was a cinch to setup on a network. Other PROS: very affordable, small footprint, looks sleek in black. Cons: none yet, will have to report that after some more use.

This printer is a fairly basic laser printer. Fast, functional, good for basic office work. The big noticeable difference is that it is extremely easy to setup and get running under Linux and FreeBSD. It listens to port 631 on it's network interface and presents as a postscript level 2 printer as far as your print spooler is concerned.

Using Ubuntu Linux I had it set up in less than 15 Minutes, just clicking on menus. Using FreeBSD and configuring cups by hand took me about half an hour (mostly wrestling with cups and copying the .ppd file from the linux box).

I purchased this printer for sharing between 2 PowerMacs (1 G4 and 1 G5) on a small home Ethernet network. Installation couldn't have been easier - it only took a few minutes to download the latest drivers from the brother web site and I was in business. The printer shows up as a "bonjour" device (formerly rendezvous). The printer has a very speedy warm up time, and while the quality won't win any awards, it's plenty good enough for average home and occasional business use. Overall, this printer is an excellent value and I highly recommend it for a Macintosh network.

I purchased this laser printer because it has Network capabilities at low cost. It is very fast. I have an older much more expensive HP laser and the start up time to print is much slower than this model. Of course that probably has something to do with age (3 yrs old).

I liked the 250paper capacity, since I only print about 10 pgs a week. I just loaded it an forgot about it. The footprint of the printer is quite small. The color matches the filing cabinet that it sits on, but that is neither here nor there. I have a desktop PC and Powerbook, it works well with both. I liked the USB 2.0 though if you don't have the cable already, you'll have to purchase one. My powerbook came with a printer and it happened to supply that printer cable. I haven't tried the watermark function but that sounds great.

The best part though is the cost of operation. With the normal toner cartridge they estimate 2.5 cents per page which is much cheaper than HP's 3.5 but having said that. HP 1022 is a beautiful machine (obviously that is highly speculative, what looks good to me may look ugly to you) but more expensive. The HP 1022n is much more expensive. So go the local store and check them out before purchasing online. CNET has great reviews and this printer was rated 7.1 compared to 6.3 for the HP. Samsung ML-2010 had great reviews, but the ML-2571n which has networking capabilities was over $200.

Neg - It does bend the paper when printing. It isn't a problem for me but some might find it annoying. Some would consider it loud. Which it is at startup, but it is a little less noisy while printing and silent on standby. It comes with a starter toner ~ 1500 pages which is fine but when the standard replacement is 2500 you feel a little ...

Overall - I really like this product and would purchase another for the kids but I don't need to because the network capabilities.