Not worth it - Get an older HP
Written: Sep 19 '05
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Pros: Fast.
Great text quality.
Cons: LOUD.
Horrible quality on anything other than text.
Lousy service.
Shady quality.
The Bottom Line: If you just want text, and don't care about noise (or error lights that may or may not mean anything), it's fine.
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| mkaake's Full Review: Brother HL-5140 Laser Printer |
I bought this in hopes of finding myself a nice fast high quality monochrome laser printer.
Well, it's fast. And the text quality is great.
Unfortunately, there are several other issues that would make me think again about buying the 5140.
1. Noisy. I mean, it's really noisy. Loud. Not an issue if you don't plan on having it near your desk, but if you do - just be prepared. It's loud.
2. Lousy pictures. Words can't really describe how bad pictures look (well really, anything other than text) on this printer - we're talking a DPI that has to be below 100.
3. Quality. After 2 months and 1000 pages (included toner is an approx. 3000 page toner) the 5140 began to whine every time it printed, and the toner light started to flash. There was no degradation of print quality, it was just noisy and kept blinking at me. Contacting brother support was a joke. After about 15 emails back and forth (no joke), they told me that my toner was low, and that I should replace it (55 bucks). I insisted that it was not low, I had only printed 1000 pages, and there was no sign at all of there being low toner (if you're familiar with laser printers, you know that the last couple hundred pages or so have light and dark bands running through them). Customer 'service' informed me that Brother toner cartridges don't do that - I was just out of toner.
I won't go into the full argument here, because it was rather ridiculous. Needless to say, they never solved my problem (they told me how to clean it, and that took care of the noise, but my toner/error light still comes on now and again). And I was informed that any action I wanted taken with my printer would have to be taken up with the retailer I purchased the printer from.
All in all, it was a great exercise in frustration. Now I'm at about 2500 pages on the toner, it's still printing with excellent quality (on the text, of course), but it still squeaks (cleaning will make it stop for about 40 pages or so, and not all of the squeaking). And my error light comes on every now and then.
But the good news is, according to Brother, my printer has no problem whatsoever.
As for the title, I now have an HP that I use with another computer - an older model. And it's rock solid. It might be slower, but the print quality is excellent, it's built like a tank, and the toner costs a fraction of what the Brother does.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 178.00
Operating System: Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
mkaake
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Reviews written: 6
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