Customer Reviews

Brother HL-2700CN Color Laser Printer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is another good product from Brother. We use a number of different types of printers in our business and this is the best of bunch.
We have an all Mac office, and set-up was a breeze. We've networked it, and it also works well using the Mac's built in printer sharing over a wireless network.
Color is great, with the right resolutions you get good photographic reproduction. We use it very effectively with brochures.
One of the downsides is that accessories are expensive. Another is that in operation it is a little noisy. While in operation it makes a number of clunks and bumps, something to do with the switching between the various cartridges I think.
All and all though a very good machine. And by the way shop around a little for toner. It can be had for a lot less then the list price.

While I am very happy with the printer, Brother currently has a very serious supply problem. The printer takes something called a waste toner pack, or WT4CL. This is a little plastic thing that probably costs a dime to produce. The manual says that it lasts about 12,000 pages. After 3,900 pages, the printer's red light came on and it would not function.

It seems that you can't get these waste toner packs anywhere in the U.S. Amazon doesn't have them, Staples doesn't have them, buy.com doesn't have them, etc. I did find them at amatteroffax.com, and paid for 2-day shipping, paid a premium over list price, and it took more than a week to receive. I also ordered 2 directly from Brother (after talking to them on the phone and wading through their phone trees...).

I just received a snail-mail letter from Brother saying "We are temporarily out of stock. Please allow 4 - 6 weeks for delivery."
Well, that is just great when your printer will not work without it. I have heard that you can empty it yourself if you are careful not to breathe the toner, but that will violate your warranty.

So -- I love the printer, it prints quickly and the color looks great, but this supply glitch is ridiculous. How can I recommend a printer without supplies?

I did some research and felt that the Brother offered better value than the HP color laserjets. The toner seems quite expensive, but it comes with toner about half-full.

The printer is very heavy, but once I got it out of the box, the step-by-step directions to remove the protective packaging were exquisitely easy to understand. (I am gratified that a company took the effort to really make directions logical and easily understood!)

Installing the software was SIMPLE and I was up and running on my home wireless network very quickly.

It spits out full-color as fast as a copy machine spits out paper. The quality is great for powerpoint slides, but not terrific for photographs.

No more telling my kids they can't print their computer art because the inkjet takes 10 minutes -- we print a lot now! It does take one or two minutes to warm up from sleep mode.

I have read reviews complaining that it is noisy when it comes out of sleep mode -- this is true, although since I have a basement home office it's not an issue for me.

The Brother CN2700 has some nice features, particularly its network capability. I have it set up on my wireless home network so all 3 computers can print on it from anywhere in the house. Installation was a breeze, both with a direct USB cable and via network. Print quality is very good, and this printer's strength is in low-cost color web graphics/line art. DO NOT purchase the printer for photos....the manual states that you CANNOT use glossy paper. Photographic print quality is decent, but NOT worthy of hanging on a wall. For that, buy a decent injet printer. The printer is loud with a fan and clunking noises upon startup, but shortly goes into standby mode and is perfectly quiet. Printing is quite loud, but impressively quick. The toner cartridges are very expensive, but notice that they give you twice as many pages as the competitions' cartridges. They are half full in a new printer and should therefore last for over 3000 pages. This printer is LARGE, so don't forget to look at the dimensions. It is quite a bit larger than my laser multi-function machine. It is also tremendously heavy at 70lbs. Overall a good buy, but make sure you have a large spot to put it. 4 stars because of supply cost...over $600 to replace all 4 toners when the time comes!

i just got this printer. used it yesterday and today to find out that the photo quality in not just "not amazing" but quite poor. solid colors are fine, but, for example, when printing an area that's 100% yellow and 50% magenta, the dots are very noticeable. the registration of the colors is also quite bad, so it looks poor when, for example again, you print a size 12 font with serif that's white on blue. you can see the magenta around the white font. blacks are fine at 100%, but any gradient under that looks just not satisfactory. you can easily notice the dots, and type in gray becomes had to read due to the lack of continued lines -because of the dot size- and the inconsistency of the solid gray area.

Our office purchased this printer 1 year ago (Feb 2005), and have had little trouble with it until two weeks ago. Suddenly, we received an "error EF 5 warning" message. The manual (had to down load that, first) instructs turning off the printer for a few minutes, and then re-starting. This solution worked for a time, until the machine would not warm up without hitting this message.

Brother tech support (email) was slow to respond, but recommended a new OCP belt, at $ 500 to $ 600! A local Brother authorized repair shop technician, in the meantime, suggested replacing the fuser. We could not find a price for a fuser at our office supply sources nor at Brother Mall.

Before going any further, we are going to have the machine diagnosed for $ 50. Even though we purchased a warranty extension, it appears this problem is not covered, as the supposed resolution is a consumable element.

Lesson: stay away from this machine!

For passing 8.5x11 sheets in an office environment, this printer is fine.

It plugs in, defaults to using DHCP to say hi to the computers on your network. You can also config it to static IP. Supports a lot of nice admin stuff and FTP. Check manual before buying. I've been most impressed by the software end of this thing. Very thorough from my POV.

The mixed-tone color is pretty dotty. Would not recommend this if you were using it for release material (like CD art, pamphlets, etc) Solid colors are good and kind of glossy and the picture quality does not degrade to the point of being unreadable or anything like that. (usually - tiny text can sometimes grain up)

Works pretty well with good old fashioned 8.5x11. Paper jams occur but are rare enough.

It's not recommended, but I have been successful printing CD art (j-cards and booklets) with it. Sometimes it experiences a paper jam at A1 but nothing TOO messy*. On some days it jams up a lot with CD art, other days it will do 500 units without a hitch. Weather?

*cardboard stuck in the heating roller was a nightmare though.

It is not LOUD, but it is noisy. Sounds like a microwave making popcorn. Stuff it in the closet and save your sanity.

The toner lasts a long time if you are a causal home user of the printer. If you normally purchase new toner you'll want to get extra toner soon as these are not 100% full cartridges.

Important unpacking advice: If it arrives cold from the weather, take it out of the packaging and just let it sit for a day to warm up - do NOT plug it in. There is mechanical stuff which will squeal, snag, and scrape on the inside if cold and can damage some very expensive parts.

Also be careful when removing the securing tape, particularly from the inside-some of it gets secured in a manner which will rip off components if you're not cautious in peeling the tape. Peel, don't pull.

This product is a work horse it alwways prints in great color clarity and speed, only drawback is the noise when you firsts fire it up a little loud. I would reommend for the price

I purchased this printer at a local office supply store about 8 months ago. It was one of the best bargains I had come across in years. Now, I rue the day saw the sale tag on this sub-par color laser printer.

I work out of a home office and purchased the printer to do small quantity runs of color flyers and newsletters. I discovered from day one (and have verified over and over again) this printer cannot handle the most basic vector line art or graphics without spitting out a Postscript error.

You do get 1 year of service from Brother, and they will eventually answer the phone. However, the two "technicians" I reached both read to me from the same help desk manual and then "escalated" my call to the Mac technicians. After leaving a voicemail for them and receiving a voicemail in return ... twice ... I decided to give up.

Now, I have a big, loud, lousy Brother printer sitting across the office from my HP Laserjet 2100M, a workhorse for over five years.

If you are a Mac user, or you plan to use this printer for minimally complex line art or graphics, do not waste your money. Not only will the "limitcheck" errors send you over the edge, but you'll be left wondering how any small office machine could clunk as loud as this one.

I've gotten over my bitterness with this printer ... I think. Now, if I could just find a way to get rid of it!

I've had this printer since 2005, and it's been a real workhorse in the home office. I use this as the network printer for all the PCs on my home network. The network setup was a bit confusing under XP, but as of Windows 7/Vista it's cake. The replacement toner cartridges seem a little pricey, I'd recommend understanding that cost before you purchase. As to other reviews on this printer which talk about a toner waste cup: not only is it readily available, but carefully dumping the contents into a plastic grocery bag and throwing it away did the trick for me. Not sure what the issue was there.