Customer Reviews

Brother HL-5240 High-Speed Desktop Office Laser Printer

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Just unpacked and set up the printer. Initial results on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets are great. Excellent quality, good speed, setup went without a hitch.

Unfortunately, no matter what I do it mangles #10 envelopes fed through the manual feeder. I believe I've tried all the pertinent thickness settings in the driver, including envelopes, envelope thin, envelope thick, etc. Every envelope comes out badly wrinkled. The envelopes are ordinary Staples #10s, which I've used without much trouble in a Laserjet5 for years (the heat in that printer does glue the flap a bit, but just lightly. I'm debating returning the Brother HL-5240. The online FAQs from Brother seem completely useless, as they mostly repeat the manual's instructions for inserting the envelopes.

Anyone have ideas on getting around this? Are there special envelopes that will work?

If you don't need envelopes, I'd give this **** or maybe even ***** based on just a few hours use. For envelopes, it doesn't even rate one star, and that makes me nervous about the overall quality.

**UPDATE***: I've managed to get at least some envelopes to print cleanly. Thanks to the comments posted by John Bissel on the HL-5250, as those led me in the right direction. Anyway, what's worked for me is:

* Office Depot sells some #10 envelopes under their own brand name that are specifically listed as working with laser and inkjet printers.
I found those wrinkle a lot less than the many other #10s I tried.
* Use the com-10 size and envelope-thin media.
* Here's the tricky part. Those two fixes get you close, but there's still a bit of a wrinkle on the trailing edge. Thanks to Mr. Bissel, I found the secret pressure release flippers in the back of the printer. Yes they are documented. No, they are not mentioned under envelopes, or in the general guides to the printers features. No they're not in the printed documentation. You have to go into the PDF user guide that gets installed along with the printer (use the Windows Start/Programs to find it). Then you have to look in the troubleshooting section under crinkled pages or some such. Then you find the flippers. It warns you to fip them up only for envelopes, then down, which would be a huge hassel. Like Mr. Bissel, I've had fine luck leaving them up all the time. Perhaps my output on regular pages is a tad less dark.

So, now I'm happy. Printer is great. I should say that I sent a query to Brother's email-based support service. They promise response in 1 business day. It's been 4 days, and so far I've heard nothing.

We have these on all of our executives desks at work, so the can print documents confidentially. They look nice, have a small footprint, are very quiet, and are trouble free. We have far fewer support incidents or erros on these as we do with other laser printers. With their price and performance, we couldn't recommend these highly enough.

I bought the Brother HL-5240 Laser Printer the last week of December,
2005. This is my first laser printer, and I wanted something to replace an
inkjet printer which became erratic after 25,000 cyles. I'm what I call serious
retired, I'm not going to use the printer in business but I do a lot of printing
pursuing my hobbies of genealogy, bridge, and photography. I wanted a
productive black and white printer mostly for text or line type art work, I do
my photo printing on an Epson R1800.
My first impression was that setup was a breeze. I am running Windows
XP Professional in a Hewlett Packard Workstation xw4100 computer. The
quick setup sheet led me through what to do, and everything loaded off the single
CD furnished with the unit. I understand that if I had Windows XP 64x version,
it would have been necessary to go to Brother's website for the printer driver.
I loaded up some paper, and ran a few prints of things I had in my hard
drive. Yes, it really DOES print 30 pages a minute, of printed text, by the stopwatch!
However, there is a ten second delay after sending a print command before the
first copy begins.
With regard to paper. I had LOTS of inkjet paper on hand, and I ran a
couple hundred sheets of Hammermill 24 lb inkjet through the Brother before
I discovered, buried in the Manual, a caution NOT to use inkjet paper! So I got
some house brand 24 lb printing paper from the local office supply.
I thought a good test would be to print out the manual for the unit, since it's
on the CD but there's no paper copy included in the box. Besides, I needed a
copy of the manual, and having it on the computer was inconvenient. So I
offer here a set of instructions for BROTHER HL-5240 owners who would
like to give their new unit a bit of a test, and get a manual besides: The Manual
for the unit runs 137 pages. My instructions will print it out in booklet mode on
35 sheets of paper, using both sides. It will take approximately six minutes.
I assume that you have the printer up and running, that you have loaded
the bottom tray with paper, and that you have located the Manual Print (upper)
tray, it folds down from the front and some flaps extend; it is light gray plastic.
Click on the HL-5240 Program from the program list on your desktop.
Click on USERS GUIDE IN PDF FORMAT. I assume you have Adobe Acrobat
and can read the user's guide. Click on your part of the World Map (USA Canada
for me). This will bring up the Manual for the HL-5240. Click on FILE. On FILE,
Click on PRINT; click on PROPERTIES. At Duplex/Booklet, select BOOKLET.
Click on ADVANCED; click on the A/B panel. Next click on BINDING OFFSET
and enter the figures 0.4 inches for the binding offset. Next, OKAY each window
in turn.
Now, I have just given you the instructions to the printer to print a booklet
with the left edge left unprinted for margin so you can punch and bind the result.
Give the print command for using lower tray paper.
The printer will begin printing after a minute or so, and should complete
printing one side. This will require about 90 seconds. Draw a light pencil arrow
on a corner of the pile of printout before removing it, pointing toward the printer.
Take the pile of printout, jog it so it is nice and even, and put it blank side
up in the upper tray with the pencil arrow pointing toward the printer. Click on MP
tray on the computer and the printer should complete its run in another 90 seconds.

I purchased this printer for it's fast printing speed and long life in toner and drum, but it's really been a let down. The printer has this habit of creasing and wrinkling the paper on the first 2 pages of every print out. So now I have to send 3 copies of everything I want to the printer, wasting paper and ink. I've tried different kinds of paper, and every troubleshooting option offered to me by the fine folks at Brother, but it continues to do this. I've looked around the Internet, and found this is a common defect in the 5240 and 5250 models. It's really an inconvenience, and now I have to purchase a new printer because it's such a pain. If you love to be frustrated and angered over print quality and paper use, this is the printer for you. Otherwise, avoid at all costs.

I replaced an ancient HP printer and this puppy certainly pumps the pages out! The printer driver has some interesting multi-page options (shrinking pages to fit on a single page and also expanding pages to fit on multiple pages). That said, I'm not too sure of the usefulness of such options. Very happy with this printer!

After a couple of weeks of use, this printer exceeds my expectations. It is a truly an excellent low cost high-speed laser printer. The quality of printing is superb. My only negative is the high wattage of electricity that it draws when it awakes from the sleep mode. Each time it awakes,it causes my battery backup to beep.

Have two of these printers. Both began creasing the center of paper after a short period of use. Creases got worse and they started to jam. Went to Brother online tech support. Was told to use other paper. Emailed back that I used high quality paper but was told that was the cause. Not so. This seems to be a common problem with this printer and Brother will not acknowledge. Past Brother printers work great. Not sure I will try another Brother.

I needed a laser monochrome printer for work and decided to try this printer out. I researched many printers, including the "professional" models from Ricoh/Lanier and Xerox. I have since ordered 8 of these Brothers and been very satisfied with them overall.

PROS:

1. Speed - At 30 PPM, this printer is very fast. To get the equivalent speed from the high end printers, I would have to spend at least $800. From the time I hit the print button to the time my paper is printer is about 7 seconds (assuming it is warmed up). Once it gets started it takes about 2 seconds to print subsequent pages.
2. Cost - This printer is very inexpensive compared to other printers. Also, the toner and drum unit are only slightly cheaper than the cost of the printer. Whenever I need to replace the toner and drum, I actually just order a brand new printer, since it comes with them and is only a few dollars more!
3. Reliabaility - I own eight of these printers and some of them print as much as three reams a day, and none have failed in the last two years. Although two of them that print the most have gotten significantly louder and something is not right, but they still print just fine. I did order one that was "recertified" that arrived dead on arrival though.
4. Toner cost - The cost of the toner comes out to around $0.01 per page if you order the Brother TN580 (7,000 YLD) High Yield Toner Cartridge, which I highly recommend since it is more cost-effective. This is cheaper or equivalent to some of the name brand workstation printers from the larger companies. A high yield toner cartridge will last 7,000 copies and a drum unit about 20,000. I have manually checked this and found it to be fairly accurate.

CONS:

1. Loud - This is definitely the loudest printers we have in the office. Not enough to bother me personally, but several employees have complained about it, and I probably would not print anything and make a phone call at the same time.
2. Envelopes - This printer WILL wrinkle envelopes. It is not just certain printers, but a design flaw. Every single printer we have wrinkles envelopes, regardless of what you do or try. It is not enough to bother me, but I would not use it to print return envelopes I was using for a wedding or invitation. This is a fairly significant problem with this printer in my opinion.
3. Print quality - This isn't a huge con, but the quality is not as good as a professional workstation printer will be. It is fine for legal and medical documents, but I wouldn't use this printer to create a document I was presenting to a client or to print photographs. It is fine for simple text, e-mail, etc.

Overall, the cost and speed of this printer make it great for small and medium sized businesses that do a lot of printing. However, for anyone thinking about getting it, I would strongly recommend the Brother HL-5250DN Network Ready Laser Printer with Duplex over it. It is 2ppm slower, but it adds network capability and doubles the memory to 32Mb, and is only slightly more expensive "if you shop around." For people that won't be printing very much, I would recommend the Brother HL-2070N Network Monochrome Laser Printer (Black)

I have used NEC and Samsung laser printers in the past, but the writeups on this Brother printer attracted me. My experience after just a month of use is awful: the print quality is mediocre (seeming very gray in comparison with past printers), and the print drum appears to have failed, leaving streaks of print gaps on the page.

An earlier Brother laser printer that I had (HL-1440) did not exhibit any problems, so I bought this one which is significantly faster.

Like others, I have had problems with this printer. Specifically:

* When I first used it, it would only accept a small number of pages before it would make a clicking sound and refuse to print. This problem can be corrected by adjusting the plastic tabs at the rear of the paper tray.

* I have had the same problem with the printer crinkling envelopes that other users have had. This is a serious problem if you're using the printer for formal correspondence.

* The printer runs hot after the first 20 or so copies, causing paper to curl. To some extent, this problem can be dealt with by turning the paper over in the tray, trying to take advantage of its natural curl to offset this effect, but it is impossible to offset it completely.

These problems are irritating enough that I would not purchase a Brother printer again.