Brother - HL-L2460DW Wireless Black-and-White Refresh Subscription Eligible Laser Printer - Gray

I’m already a Brother printer fan. I bought one about 10 years ago that I use for printing shipping labels and it’s still going strong. The new Brother printer HL-L2460DW is smaller - roughly 14x14x7 inches. It’s strictly a printer and doesn’t copy or scan. It has a one line LCD screen and 4 navigational buttons - Back, OK, Up and Down. There is no keypad to input letters or numbers. I had a horrible experience with the wireless set up. My first try was through the app. The app told me to press the wireless button and when “Check PC/device” showed on the printer screen to go to the “next screen”. “Check PC/device” showed up on the printer OK, but there was no next screen on the phone or on the printer LCD. The app couldn’t find the printer, the printer timed out, and after 5-6 tries, that was the end of that method. Next I downloaded the set up software and tried that way. The instructions were poorly written and it still couldn’t find the “machine”. The only recommendation was to unplug the router and retry. 10 times of that method got me nowhere. I was just about ready to buy a USB cable and resort to that method when I remembered the printed Quick Setup Guide that came with the printer. On the back was a Manual Wireless Setup section. The instructions omitted some steps that were needed to find the Network menu option using the 4 buttons on the printer, but I was eventually able to find it and then WLAN (Wi-Fi). The printer quickly found my router and I selected it. Then it asked for the Network Key (password), followed by a blank screen. How was I supposed to enter my password without a keypad? The answer is: press the up and down keys to cycle through numbers 0-9, then a lower case alphabet, an upper case alphabet and finally about 20 characters. I couldn’t type ABCabc123 quickly because the next character up was random. It took at least 500 button pushes to enter a 10 character password. That was ridiculous. There should be a way to connect where the password can be typed using something that has a keypad. At least I shouldn’t have to do that too many more times. The menus are a little tedious to navigate with just one line of text and 4 buttons. I was able to find a list of the menu options and sub options in the online manual which helped me find my way around. When I first used the printer, it was quite noisy and made me jump when it started. Changing it to quiet mode helped. I also changed the “Replace Toner” setting from “stop” to “continue” when low toner was detected. The printer is great. The shipping labels are clear and clean. The ink doesn’t smear or chip off. Some other printer brands I tried didn’t get hot enough to fix the toner to the label. There have been no paper jams or network issues. It quickly goes into deep sleep (sleep timing can be adjusted in the menu) but when it gets a print job, it’s ready to print in a few seconds. With any luck I’ll get more than 10 years out of this one too. Like most printers these days, Brother offers a toner refresh program. I haven’t been able to calculate cartridge purchase vs. subscription price because I can’t find TN830 toner for sale anywhere yet. With the subscription (which allows Brother to monitor your printing), 300 pages a month costs $9 and 100 pages costs $3.49. Three cents a page could be a little below retail but if I pay for more pages than I use or if I have to buy additional sets of pages at 5 cents/page, I lose the savings. When printing shipping labels I print on half the page and put it back in the printer to print the other half later. That would count as 2 subscription pages. For now, I’ll just hope that there is enough starter toner to get me through until TN830 is available for sale.

The Brother - HL-L2460DW is a nice budget friendly printer with duplex printing that’s great for a home office. Setup is easy and straightforward with the brother app and even someone who isn’t good with setting up tech can have it up and running quickly. Besides the duplex printing feature the other big feature for me is being able to print from an iPhone or iPad via AirPrint. Using more and more mobile devices this is a huge convenience when not on my pc. Though I’m not sure it’s needed with a printer, it is capable of using either 2.4ghz or 5ghz wireless spectrum. While using the app to setup the machine is easy, the app doesn’t have much functionality. You can use it to print, though with AirPrint you don’t need to. You can’t update the firmware for the machine with the app which is kinda surprising. When you try it directs you to Brothers website and wants you to create an account. Not the end of the world especially if you are using this with a pc, as it can easily be done from there. Overall, it’s a nice budget friendly printer with good speed and duplex printing.

This printer replaces a +20yr old Brother printer. I went to get a toner cartridge for it and it was hard to find, and when I found it it was more expensive than I expected. My old printer was 300dpi, this one is 1200dpi. My old printer printed 10-12ppm, this one prints 36ppm. My old printer was not wireless, I could not easily print to it from my phone or tablet. My old printer had no security services, this one has all the latest. My old printer consumed 12w in standby, this consumes 0.4w. Both printed double sided, but this one is SO much faster. my old printer had 4gb memory, this one has 64gb (handling graphics much better). And this printer is so much quieter when printing (49db). I took the toner out of its package, removed the protective plastic on the cartridge, ran the cleaner back and forth (green tab on cartridge) and then inserted the cartridge. I turned it on, and then followed instructions using the Brother "Mobile Connect" application, which optionally allows you to print on your printer from anywhere in the world (over the internet, when registering it and setting up an account with Brother). And this printer is eligible to work with the Brother Refresh program, which will ship you new printer cartridges before you run out of toner (program based on number average number of pages printed per month). Set up was complete in under 5 minutes. Extremely easy to do with their app. I printed a couple of documents that I had on my phone and found that the quality of normal and fine printing to be nearly identical. Normal uses less toner. And the speed to get the first page printed was under 8 seconds. The output was exceptional. So for a few dollars more than a new cartridge for my old printer I have a printer that is 3x faster, with 3x the quality output and it's quieter and uses far less power and I can print on it wirelessly. New standard output cartridges are about $50/cartridge (less than half what I need to spend on a new cartridge for my old printer. Seems like a winner all the way around. I am most happy with my upgraded Brother printer. If I get another 20 years out of this printer it's an excellent deal.