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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Automatic Duplex, Network Capability, Customer Service for a Low Price Make This Printer a Winner!, May 24, 2007
I bought the Brother HL-5250DN printer from Amazon for five reasons:
1) fast monochrome (black and white) printer.
2) network capability.
3) automatic duplexing (printing on both sides of the paper).
4) Enclosed paper tray.
5) Price (and the one-year manufacturer's warranty is nice, even on the refurbished product).
I also like the low toner, paper, and drum replacement indicator lights on the printer. The cost of the toner cartridges is about the same with other printers I've seen.
What comes in the box:
Printer, drum and toner assembly, AC power cord, paper Quick Setup Guide, CD-ROM. The CD-ROM has the drivers, entire Owner's Manual, and animated installation guide.
Note: No cables are provided.
If you are going to connect the printer to a wireless router, you will need an Ethernet cable.
If you are going to connect the printer directly to one computer, you will need either a USB or parallel cable. The printer has connections for both.
Setup
The setup did not go as easily as I hoped.
I had two problems with installation and setup:
1) I was not sure which network to use (peer to peer or shared).
2) After installation, I could not print from one of the two computers on the network.
After easily removing some shipping adhesive tape, inserting the drum/toner assembly (looks like a full toner cartridge, not a starter cartridge) and paper tray, I was ready to proceed with installing the software drivers.
The Quick Setup Guide presents you with choices for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP: USB interface, parallel interface, and network interface. There are also choices if using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Macintosh. The manufacturer's website indicates Microsoft Vista has "built-in" drivers but Brother drivers are also available on the website.
Upon clicking "Install Printer Driver" from CD-ROM menu, I was presented with three choices: USB cable users, Parallel cable users, and Network cable users. I chose the network cable users since I wanted to add the printer to my wireless network router. I was presented with a license agreement that I accepted. I then had to choose between "Brother Peer-to-Peer Network Printer" or "Network Shared Printer". I chose peer-to-peer to print directly to the printer over the network rather than to a central server on a shared printer. On Step 8 I had to choose "LPR" or "NetBios". I had no idea which one to choose and I didn't find any useful information to help with the decision. I chose LPR and clicked Next. The printer was recognized. Make sure to write down the IP Node Address (for a wireless router it is something like 192.xxx.xx.x).
Now, I needed to access the printer from my wireless computer running Microsoft Vista. I went to the Control Panel and double clicked on Printers. I then chose "Add a Printer" and selected "Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer". The computer searched for and found the printer. A couple more clicks and I was successfully printing from the wireless computer.
Printing from the desktop computer running Windows XP, connected to the router with an Ethernet cable, would not be as simple. The computer recognized the printer but would not send any data to the printer. I went to Control Panel, Printer and Faxes, right clicked on Properties. The General tab did not have the Location of the printer. I added 192.xxx.xx.x and clicked OK and tried printing a document but I was not successful. After two hours of dealing with it and looking at the company's website, I called the company (toll-free phone number right on the box). The company was closed; I called the next morning just after the company opened at 9 a.m. Eastern. I went through a very brief voice prompt menu and I was connected to Robby in all of about two minutes. He was polite but he was not able to solve my problem. He told me second level support would call me within 24 hours. Just over two hours later I got a call from Debbie, who was in Memphis, Tennessee. She was very helpful and quickly identified the problem. When hovering over the printer icon in the Printer and Faxes folder, the little popup message indicated the printer was offline. I don't know how I missed that. To correct the problem all I had to do was right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online". After a few seconds the printer was in Ready status. Problem resolved.
Summary
This is my first Brother printer and I am very favorably impressed. I don't think there is another printer on the market with these features at such a low price, at least at the time of this writing.
The product is shipped in the manufacturer's box, not an Amazon box, so all your neighbors will know what's in the box on your doorstep. The box looks like the box for a new printer, listing many features of the printer but it is clearly marked "Factory Refurbished". The printer itself has a sticker on the back with "Re-manufactured Product". My printer was originally manufactured in September 2005. I bought it in May 2007.
My experience with Brother International has been very positive. I got a great printer with excellent features, a full-size toner cartridge TN-550 (not a starter toner cartridge!), and a one-year warranty. From idle/sleep, the first page took only 20 seconds to print and the text quality is great. The icing on the cake was the technical support provided by Americans. Their promptness and knowledge was impressive. This was easily the best technical support experience I have ever had!
Update December 4, 2007:
I am still very pleased with the printer but it is noisy when printing and it does make "tick, tick, tick" noises sometimes. Neither of these issues has effected performance. The only annoyance I've experienced is with envelope printing - the envelope always crinkles. This isn't a big deal for me but it is something to consider if envelope printing is important to you.
Update October 7, 2008:
I purchased another refurbished HL-5250. The toner and drum are also factory refurbished. The drum unit (DR-520) has life expectancy of 22,500 pages, about 90% of new. The toner cartridge (TN-550) has an expected yield of 3,150 pages at 5% coverage. A new toner cartridge has an expected yield of 3,500 pages.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Choice!, December 14, 2007
I am a medical student that requires several printouts (10-20 pages each) per day for class lectures. So this little unit has been getting alot of work for the past month.
Prior to this I had a HP inkjet...but it was eating ink so fast that it wasn't cost efficient (after like 50-100 pages it would give me low ink cartriage). So I decided to invest in a laser printer. I knew i wanted automatic duplex to save paper (better for environment)...my old HP had duplexing but required me to manually refeed the paper after 1 side printed.
I'm VERY pleased with this Refurbished model.
PROS: It came in a pretty big box, but was basically a new model (i could not tell what was wrong with it before...maybe they just replaced the drum unit). It prints SUPER fast...even on duplex...and I love the fact that it's network capable...bc it frees up an extra USB slot on my laptop and will one day allow my gf to print on the network too without having to mess with any cables. It only takes about 5 seconds to warm up, but it'll print right after that. ITS SUPER FAST - at least 20 pages a minute single sided...probably even 20 ppm on duplex. And it has a large tray underneath - holds like 200 or 250 pages at a time. I only print 8 by 10, and have not tried envelopes or 11 by 14 paper. It's not too huge either...just sits in my living room next to the wireless router.
CONS: The paper that comes out does have a slight bend to it on the 4 corners...nothing too bad, i just put them in my binder and it goes away on its own. I once printed 100 sheets in a job, and they curled up a little...prob cuz the printer got warmer...but still it wasn't a big issue. But if you were a small business and were printing this stuff for clients, i'd recommend a laser printer that didn't curl the corners. Also, the noise clicks that the printer makes may bother you upon start up...if you are printing right next to your own computer...but it doesn't bother me cuz its in a different room. If this model was in color and did not curl the corners...then it would get a 5 star rating.
ITS DEFINETELY AN UPGRADE from inkjet...(much faster and cheaper - i think it comes out to be only like 1 or 1.5 cents per page) and for the price, i dont think you could beat the network features plus true automatic duplexing. It shipped fast too.
If you are deciding whether to buy refurbished or new...i highly recommend the refurbished model (it's brand new to me).
This is my first review of an online item - so if this helped you, please let me know!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Value But Not Without a Major Flaw, December 27, 2008
First the good. Don't hesitate to order the refurb model. It looked brand new. Even though the drum had a sticker saying it was only 90% full, the printer told me it was 99% full. It prints *fast*. Duplex is great and paper saving. Having it on the network is a dream. I can print from laptops and desktops all over the house.
Now the bad. The page curling complaints others have mentioned are real and significant. If you print a number of pages single sided, then you'll end up with a mess. My spouse prints large documents and she basically has to babysit the printer so she can pull pages out and straighten them because of this curl problem. I don't know why this printer has it...I haven't seen curling like this since the mid '90's in a laser printer. The problem is a real drag.
When the printer arrived I had to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out why it wouldn't wake up after sleeping. It's a known problem. Read the discussion on this Amazon page for the answers--it was the *only* place on the 'net I found them (including Brother support).
So, overall, it is still a good value. However, had I known just how bad the curling problem really is, I would have researched a bit more in case I found something else just as good but without the curl.
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