Customer Reviews

Brother HL-5070N Laser Printer

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

 

 

This printer works great on my SOHO LAN. Two Win XP systems print to it from a hard wired network connection. Several Macs running OS X also print to it wirelessly via 802.11b. Super easy setup, no jams, fast and high quality. This is a big winner!

I've owned Brother Laser printers before, and found the quality of the device and the prints to be quite high.

So, I was inclined to give this 5070N a shot when I was looking for a network-enabled printer. The interesting thing about my research was that no other company's network enabled printers came close to the price for this Brother.

I had an additional incentive to buy this printer: I'm using Mac OS X and wanted to take advantage of the Rendezvous feature. It worked like a dream, was remarkably easy to configure, and was network - connected within a couple of minutes.

My only criticism of this printer is the noise it makes while printing. The fan and motor are a bit loud for a SOHO setting. That occurs only while you're printing however; You can configure the printer to switch to silent standby mode in just a minute or two (via rendezvous) after it's done printing. All is all, it is remarkable quality for the price.

I have two Macs in my home office; one running OS 10.2.6, and an older Mac running OS 9.1. They are networked together through a Linksys Ethernet Hub, and this HL-5070N is ideal as a shared printer of great quality on a small network.
I previously had all kinds of trouble finding a way to get both machines to print to one printer (inkjet) using USB printer sharing - which does not work if one Mac is OS X and the other is OS 9!!!! So I had to go for a printer with an Ethernet print server in it so I could plug it into my Router. This was more expensive than say the HL-1440, but it was worth it, because I just plugged it in, installed the driver software on both Macs, and I was printing in 10 minutes. I considered buying a less expensive laser printer, and a third party print server, but after so much frustration with somthing as seemingly simple as PRINTING a page, I decided it was worth the extra money to get a solid unit that was easy to set up.
I do music, so I needed good print quality for music notation, and the quality of this KICKS BUM over an inkjet. Musical notes are crisp and clear and easily readable. Well worth the investement. Plus, since it works with Rendezvous, I will be able to keep this printer for several years, even after I replace my OS 9 machine with a new OS X Mac G5 or beyond....

I have wrestled with this printer for over a year and as the title indicates, I am through with Brother printers once this one fails for good (or I throw it out). I bought it because of the price, networking capabilities (including Bonjour for my Mac) and the generally good reviews. What a disappointment the printer has been. It drops off the network (disappears from Bonjour) every few days, requiring a restart of the printer. It regularly chokes on print jobs that I am forced to send to other printers on our network (HP and Xerox, generally) - where they never fail to print. I tried upgrading the memory three times with memory from three different sources, all with the specifications detailed on the Brother web site. Each time, the printer became unusably slow to print and the built in web server ground to a halt (firmware is up to date, by the way). The printer tears up paper from the input tray on a regular basis - you can hear it wanting to jam as it feeds paper. The toner life has also been less than advertised (for mainly text jobs). As for print quality, who cares? I have been too aggravated to evaluate it. I know this printer has been discontinued (at least from Amazon) but I wouldn't doubt some of these issues live on in the newer models.

Very Good value. Network feature is why I bought it. Easy to set up. Quality of output is excellent in this price range. It is a bit noisey when it starts up to print. Haven't experienced a paper jam or any other problems in over 6 months and 10,000 sheets.