Brother HL-5370DW A4 Mono Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Auto Duplex

My previous Brother 5050 mono laser printer was incredibly cheap to run and was still working well after 70000 copies (in seven years). The drum was supposed to last only 20000 copies, but I only needed two in all that time, as the drum counter can be overridden to extend its life. The printer mechanism was showing signs of wear, however, and a third drum would have soon be needed so I decided to replace the printer instead.
I'm extremely pleased with its replacement. The HL-5370DW's extra facilities work superbly well. It connects to my wireless network seemlessly - if I print a document to it whilst it is switched off, the job just sits in the computer's printer queue until the printer is powered up. Thereafter, the document is printed in seconds - the printer reconnects to the network and prints without intervention.
The duplex facility also works well, but is switched off by default. (This can be reversed in the printer driver, however. The ability to reprint from the control buttons on the printer was similarly switched off by default, but I've switched that permanently on in the printer driver controls. The reprint facilty also enables control of the number of copies printed from the printer). When duplex is used, printing slows down marginally but there's a great gain in convenience.
Print quality is also very good - text is sharp and the quality of photographs is noticeably better than my previous Brother - which itself was acceptable.
Only two slight negatives. The plastic fold-down tray for the manual feed seems rather fragile, although it does its job adequately - just handle with care! Finally the rear door seems to be needed more than on my old printer, which would print envelopes easily using the normal paper path. Brother recommend that the rear door is opened whilst printing envelopes and card - just allow space behind the printer if you plan to print on either of these media.
In summary, an exceptionally good printer, so far, at a very reasonable price. The cost of consumables for this printer can't be beaten. Oh, I've passed my old printer on to my son, who is well pleased!!

Excellent purchase. Installed into Windows 7 without a hitch. First time I've encountered a drivers disk specifically for Windows 7 in any printer. I haven't tried the wireless feature; it's part of a wired network.

Print quality is excellent and the duplex feature a real boon. Construction is robust - no flimsy plastic bits sticking out of it and the paper tray is completely within the footprint of the printer. One small niggle: it's silent when in power saving mode but is noisier than any other laser printer I've used when it's actually printing pages.

Overlooking the noise aspect, I'm more than satisfied with this printer.

It was ordered on 10th December and shipped on 17th (O Brother where art thou) and delivered two working days later by Parcel Post on the 20th - Installed 21st. I also bought the 8000 page toner cartridge which arrived much earlier.

The installation manual is comprehensive but its sheer size makes it a bit scary at first glance. - All in English.

Because my Wireless router has no magic button to press to exchange network details with the new printer I had to use a computer to make the installation. Load the CD and follow the on screen instructions - all relatively simple apart from the instruction to make a note of some technical data before starting - If you don't know the details - it said - ask your Network Administrator - so as I'm the Network Administrator here at home I had some research to do and one Guess - I guessed "AES" and it worked. Connect the Printer directly to the Router with a LAN cable and click, click until finished - 20 minutes maximum. Then another 5 or 10 minutes loading Printer Drivers into other computers in the house. Then printed the 172 page User Guide double sided at the rate of about 6 seconds per double sided page.

Warm up good - Print Quality good - Print speed good - Installation relatively easy. Unable to comment on reliability after less than a day's use.