Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: Brother HL-L3230CDW Colour Laser Printer Wireless and PC Connected Print and 2 Sided Printing, USB, Light Grey/Dark Grey, 18 PPM, A4

Good Printer but PAINFUL to INSTALL wirelessly.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 26 May 2023

Style Name: HL-L3230CDWConfiguration: PrintVerified Purchase

Firstly, I would advise you to check the printer's dimensions as it is fairly larger than the standard size of a typical mono laser Brother or Xerox printer.

◉ Unpacking the printer and seals = no issues.

◉ As for the installation, it is worth mentioning here that my experience was based on installing the printer on my Windows, Mac and mobile devices, and on my use over the first three days. Here is what I did:

1) I connected the printer to my 2.4 GHz band WiFi by entering the WiFi password on the printer. It's worth pointing out here the printer cannot be connected to your 5 GHz band WiFi, so if you have separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks, you must connect the device you are printing from to the 2.4 GHz band network when sending your print jobs. (I would highly advise you to use the WPS method when connecting the printer to your router/hub, if your router has the WPS connection button)

2) If the printer's WiFi button is flashing in green, it means it has not established a connection to your WiFi; and if it's solid green, it means it's connected to your WiFi successfully. In my case, it was solid green, which meant I was going in the right direction.

3) Here comes the fun: on one of my Windows machines, I downloaded the full driver software from Brother's website for the printer model. I ensured the Windows machine was connected to the same WiFi network (2.4 GHz band). The Brother's software, in theory, should detect the printer when selecting the wireless installation option, having already connected the printer successfully, as outlined in step 1. If it fails to detect the printer, you won't be able to go to the next step on the installation wizard, where it downloads and installs the relevant driver for your printer on your Windows device. I went around in circles for more than two hours but to no avail. The install wizard failed to detect the wireless printer even though the printer had already been connected successfully to the WiFi and was assigned a valid IP address by the router. After looking online, some suggested powering off the printer and unplugging the power lead for 30 seconds before replugging it to the printer. When I did that, Brother's install wizard eventually detected the printer, and I was then able to proceed to the next step. The driver was fully installed, and I managed to print a test page wirelessly.

4) As for the Mac device, there is no driver to download from Brother's website. You just need to use the MacOS native AirPrint to detect the wireless printer and install it. It took a few attempts for MacOS to detect the printer, but I completed the on-screen instructions and installed the printer successfully in the end. I printed a test page from my Mac device, and it came through fine.

At that point, I thought I was done, and everything was hunky-dory, but...

The next day, after the printer went to sleep mode, I noticed the green WiFi button was flashing (remember Solid Green = Connected, Flashing Green = Dropped connection). At this point, all my devices were showing the printer as offline, so I couldn't print.

I pressed the WiFi button on the printer and asked it to reconnect to the WiFi. It was trying, but it failed with no error message. Restarting the printer didn't help either. I had to do the following then:

1) I reset the printer's network settings and reconnected it to the 2.4 GHz band WiFi using the WPS method.

The Mac could see it go back online after a minute or so. The Windows devices still showed it as 'offline', but I noticed the printer's port address was registered differently on Windows to that of the printer's IP address.

2) I removed the printer from Windows and reinstalled it with the correct IP address using TCP/IP connection.

3) On my router, I bound the IP address to the printer (fixed IP address), so it doesn't get a different one in the future and will result in Windows devices getting confused and failing to talk to the printer.

The printer's WiFi button remained solid this morning, and I'll keep monitoring the connection over the next two days. If the printer drops the connection again in that timeframe, the printer will be returned.

The whole purpose of having a wireless printer is to be able to print on the fly without having to troubleshoot every time you want to print something.

9 people found this helpful

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Mr Andrew W Knights

Not a great replacement for my previous Brother LASER printer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 June 2023

Style Name: DCP-L3510CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

What's to like? It was delivered quickly. Easy to set up and so far, after six months usage, reliable. Paper handling is good.
For an office it would probably be fine. For most home use, also fine, or mostly fine?
That is my problem. On occasion I use the laser to print photographs/scans. The scan bit works great, once you work out what it is trying to ask you to do. However the colour rendition is the worst I have ever had from a colour laser printer and far worse than its previous Brother printer. It was the previous model that misguideldly led me to buy this thing. Colours are heavily shifted towards red and yellow. Green grass shows as pale yellow and anything brown comes out red or at best maroon.
I have tried modifying the pictures to suit this machines distorted coulour output to no avail, as this has to be done in separate software it is a process deeply frustrating, all "poke and hope", only to produce another poorly coloured image.
Sorry Brother, this is one very disappointing machine. There is a possibility that the colourrendition is due to the Brother Toner? My previous machine made use of various non OEM suppliers and produced generally acceptable colour rendition. Maybe when the toners run out on this thing I will try that.
But if you want colour pictures I cannot recommend this machine.

One person found this helpful

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TheReader

Good printer overall but issues with wireless connection

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 June 2023

Style Name: 24PPMConfiguration: PrintVerified Purchase

This is a LARGE printer, suited to a small office. Print quality is good and off brand cartridges are reasonable, especially when compared to the dreaded inkjet! It has features such as double sided printing and full colour. One problem we have encountered, it recently and spontaneously lost connection to our PC leading us to use a USB cable!

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George

Bigger than you think

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 9 May 2023

Style Name: DCP-L3550CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

- Read the dimensions! We just made it fit where we needed it although it is wireless so could be set up anywhere with sufficient space.

+- The toners cartridges are pricey but work out better than inkjet page per print

+ No hassle or faults that come with inkjets

- Periodic long-term maintenance as the drum will need replacing eventually

+ Overkill for the home environment but with 4 kids doing homework all sent online but requiring printing it seems like this will be a solid investment

+ Paper feed scanning plus scanning bed,

+ duplex printing without turning the page by the long side and reinsert paper thank god

+ Software is easy to use, set up Install and WiFi instructions clear and easy, don't forget to get the password and SN number off the back for firmware updates and registering for warranty.

+ In summary use laser printers at work and love how quick efficient and low maintenance they are. Our old inkjet from certain brand that now has disgusting chipped ink cartridges forcing buying from them saying empty when not and even when you buy only official product 2 out of 3 cartridges have to be returned as the don't work. Paper wouldn't feed right is now where it belongs, in the scrap. Expensive buy in but to press print and it work flawlessly is well worth it.

Would recommend over any inkjet.

4 people found this helpful

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Starry night

Brother DCP-L3550cdw Duplexing Multifunction LED laser printer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 7 August 2019

Style Name: DCP-L3550CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )Verified Purchase

I like this printer a great deal. It’s an ideal printer for a home office or small business with mid-level printed output – the recommended duty cycle is 300-1500 pages per month. The printer is not by any means small, and the box it comes in is absolutely enormous. This is a heavy printer, and may need two people to lift it. The printer is supplied with a complete set of 4 full-sized toner cartridges. This printer can take two sizes of toner (manufacturer codes TN243 and TN247 – roughly 1,000 pages at 5% coverage per cartridge, and 2,500 page coverage at the same level). The toner cartridges supplied with the printer are the smaller TN243 size, but nonetheless full-sized products rather than reduced size starter versions.

This is an efficiently functional, boxy, but pretty rugged all in one wireless printer/scanner/copier. The plastic it’s made from is matt and for the most part fairly pale in colour, although around the output, flatbed, and controls, there’s a darker contrasting grey.

I connected this directly to my router from the machine itself. Setting up in this way is slightly fiddly as the on screen keyboard is tiny, making selecting the correct characters a bit awkward. Apart from this, the printer has a fairly easy to use combination of touch screen and button interface, although it does feel a little odd to have to use a physical back button rather than an onscreen one. The screen is decent enough for the job it does – but in quality terms not remotely comparable to the touch screen on a smartphone.

The printer is supplied with a software installation disc, but can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website if you don’t have a drive – indeed, as long as your broadband is decent speed, this is probably easier than faffing about with the usually out-of-date software supplied in hard format with a new printer. I didn’t need to install any new software as my preceding printer was from the same brand, and I’d kept my software up to date – to connect, I just sought out a newly available printer with my iMac, and it connected without issue. The software isn’t always intuitive/as easy as it could be to navigate. Features such as double-sided or reduced quality printing aren’t available from the top-level menu. Draft/resource-saving options could be made more prominent.

You can also print to this from a smartphone/tablet, if you install the Brother app. I have an iPad and an Android phone. The app was easy to install on both, and with this in place the printer could be identified immediately. The space/memory saving interface of the app isn’t my favourite thing ever, but works reasonably well – and even using this you have options to make resource-saving choices such as printing multiple pages to one, and using the duplexing unit to print double-sided. The problems I have discovered with using the app to print are that this does seem to impose constraints on printable file size that aren’t present when working from my desktop, and processing files for printing can be quite slow.

Output speed is a reasonably quick 18ppm (at 5% coverage), though if duplexing function is used this does work rather more slowly.

The copier function works really well, using either the flat bed or sheet feed options with A4 pages, and can also cope with reproducing book pages (though thicker books need to be opened out well to prevent light bleed from turning the centre of a copy black). Adjustments to copying settings can be made fairly easily via the touchscreen menu.

68 people found this helpful

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Guy B. Stacpoole

Goes the EXTRA MILE!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 30 June 2023

Style Name: DCP-L3550CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

Smart piece of engineering, multifunctional and shipped with1000 pages ink supply. Promptly dispatched and easy set-up. Excellent agent support including registration and swapping out as soon as fault found with fan of first delivery. High quality print and multiple variations on output easily selectable using led screen.

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Lester Li

fast response and multi function

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 June 2023

Style Name: DCP-L3550CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

comparatively cheap with 4 in 1 function. feeder for scanning and auto double side printing is superb

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David Croucher

NOT THE CHEAPEST OFFICIAL CONSUMABLES; VERY EASY TO USE AND MAINTAIN

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 8 April 2021

Style Name: DCP-L3550CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

See the note at the end about extracting from packing carton.

In this 3000 series, Brother has produced a ridiculously easy printer to set up and use, which gives crisp and accurate results. The printer is quiet in operation, though there are mechanical clicks in feeding, etc. It is quicker than any consumer inkjet as well as far cheaper to run. It works well with the cheapest paper, even double-sided, and gives superb results with heavier papers and thin card - there's a straight-through feeder if needed, though you'll need plenty of space behind for that.

Some rival models have cheaper-to-use 'official' consumables, a few have cheaper-to-use remanufactured toners.
But if you buy remanufactured high-capacity toner cartridges and then refill these several times, in the way that U-refill Toner Ltd. recommends, it's about as cheap as any colour laser printer gets. There are no cheating lockout chips which prevent using third party consumables or refilling.

Operation is very straightforward: press 'on' and allow a few seconds warmup (the failing of all laser printers, though these are actually LED , not laser), then print from your USB, wired or wireless network; it can (I think) also be set to print wirelessly from a phone. Copying and scanning are as straightforward: a few seconds after switch-on, press the touchscreen for what you want and feed the originals in. No messing about unless you want something awkward, in which case the manual is voluminous and online - I downloaded it as a PDF and have it ready in the computer.

This model is 'basic' in Brother's L5000 touch-screen controlled printer/copier/scanner/fax series; the top model is faster and is the only one with auto-duplex copy/scanning as well as the duplex printing all models have. Worth £100 more? Your call. They share consumables with the MFC-L basic printer-copiers and and HL-L printers, including new drum units at 18,000 cycles, waste toner box similarly and transfer belt and fuser unit at 50,000 cycles. That's better than most rivals, and low-volume users will probably not get to replacing the last two before wanting a more modern replacement - 100 packets is a lot of paper!

The paper draw (the usual half-packet paper load) is at the bottom of the printer. Single sheets can be fed in from a drop-down tray just above the paper draw - all very convenient. The 50-sheet auto-feed scan unit lifts up for flatbed copying, and rises to accommodate books and hold them flat ; below it, the paper is delivered onto the top of the 'works' in the centre section. Paper is fed from front to rear, and unless the 'straight-passage' exit is opened at the rear, paper then exits forwards between the printer and the scanner; there's plenty of space for a pile of copies.

Unpacking and setup is similar to other lasers, beginning with getting rid of plenty of sticky tape, and removing the securing whatchamacallits - Brother has allowed for serious mishandling during shipping across the world. There's a driver CD in the info pack and a fold-out setup sheet, but best to go online for help. The instruction sheet is OK, and the YouTube setup videos meticulous.

The central 'works' of the printer includes the four "drum unit + toner cartridge" sets, the paper transfer belt below them and the fuser at the back. A latch opens up the whole scanner and top of the printer to replace these; they're very easy to get at - drum/toner units just lift out. Essentially, to set up a new printer, each of the four drum unit/toner cartridge assemblies needs to be taken out (just slide the lock tabs and lift), the securing cradles removed and disposed of, then the units dropped back in, one by one. Takes a few minutes. Note that, as with all lasers, don't touch any roller surface or gold electrical contact or you're likely to damage it with finger grease. While they're out, check one for how to pop out the toner cartridge on its own - by sliding the green tab on the right when pulling the handle. This is what you'll replace when toner runs out. Only a 'Toner Value Pack' starter is supplied as new - typical these days.

Finally, a WARNING.
The lifting points of the printer (it's quite heavy, though much less than older models) are at the BOTTOM SIDES and nowhere else. Unlike some other brands, there are no warnings or help at all for where to lift the printer out of its box (except on the printer, so only visible when it's already out!) The correct lift points are difficult to access and not at all obvious, deep in the box. I found 'secure' points halfway down, but they turned out to include the handle to open the printer, and by lifting there, the safety catch is operated, so that only the securing tape then holds most of the weight. If this breaks, the printer falls apart - which can destroy it! In the end, I discovered that the strong bag in which the printer is packed in the box can be used to lift it out safely - though it needs to be pierced to construct handles.

71 people found this helpful

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JOHN LOWSON

Great printer at great price

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 1 July 2023

Style Name: 24PPMConfiguration: PrintVerified Purchase

Easy to set up and real quiet.

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Amazon Customer

Set Up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 1 April 2023

Style Name: DCP-L3510CDWConfiguration: Print/Copy/ScanVerified Purchase

Set up via USB cable is a doddle. Please note it doesn't come supplied with one but only needs a std printer cable, so unless it's your first ever printer you've probably already got the right one.
Windows 10 onwards has the basic drivers required pre-installed for printing but you'll need to download a driver for scanning or you can use the drivers on the supplied CD.
Setting up Wi-Fi connection was again straight forward the only pain being entering the password on the small LCD screen means you have to scroll through upper & lower case alpahbet for each letter but you only have to do it once.
Printing from an Android phone is again straight forward once you download an app. The Brother iPrint & Scan app doesn't have great feedback but for basic printing etc. it works fine. Setting up is just selecting the model of your printer once it's scanned for those available and allowing access t media etc.
For a basic home printer it does what you want without any frills it's great. If you need scan multiple docs or print lots of pages really fast you'll need an higher spec model.

3 people found this helpful

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