Brother DCPL2540DW Wireless Compact Laser Printer
- Fast high quality printing and scanning at up to 30 ppm
- Automatic duplex printing
- Wireless and wired networking
- Standalone copying
- 1 year limited warranty with free phone support for the life of your machine
Monochrome laser multifunction copier. Connect via wireless networking or USB. Print/ copy speed up to 30 ppm. Adjustable 250 sheet capacity paper tray. 35 page auto document feeder. Mobile device printing over wireless network.
List Price: $ 179.99
Price: [wpramaprice asin=”B00MFG57ZK”]
[wpramareviews asin=”B00MFG57ZK”]
Good for light to moderate black and white printing, copying, and scanning,
Good for light to moderate black and white printing, copying, and scanning
* GENERAL INFORMATION and SET UP
This Brother DCPL2540DW Monochrome Laser Multi Function Printer / Copier / Scanner has a small footprint, and comes with a 35 page automatic document feeder (ADF), adjustable 250 page capacity paper tray, starter toner cartridge, but not a USB cable (most printers these days don’t ship with USB / printer cables anymore). The on-device control interface has a two-line lcd display and a few labeled buttons. The on-device menuing system is at most 3 levels deep only, and is easy to navigate using the MENU, +/UP, -/DOWN, OK, and STOP/EXIT buttons. The device is easy to set up for wireless printing, and if you have a USB / printer cable, for wired printing as well. The included Basic User’s Guide is minimalistic but sufficient to get you started in the right direction, and a link to a fuller online user’s guide is provided.
I have a USB cable so I initially set this device up for wired printing from my Windows 8.1 computer. The device driver that’s automatically installed after Windows detected the device is not a full-featured driver, so I installed the MFL-Pro Software Suite from the included CD. Once that software suite has been installed, if you bring up the Devices and Printers view from the Windows Control Panel and right-click on the icon for this printer, you’ll see that the context menu that pops up has separate Printing Preferences and Printer Properties menu items. The Properties dialog box gives you options such as what pages of your document to print, and a check box to select or unselect duplex printing. The Preferences dialog box gives you options such as enable Print Preview, and Print Document with a custom settable Watermark (such as the word Confidential, or Draft, etc).
After some initial testing of the printing and scanning functionalities (discussed more below), I went back to the MFL-Pro Software Suite mentioned above to set the device up for wireless operations, which required some software to be installed, detection of your network, and providing the appropriate password for your wireless network. The set up process was a breeze and I did not encounter any problem.
* PRINTING
The print speed is as advertised — about 30 pages per minute (ppm), slower of course if you’re printing double-sided. You can set resolution to 300, 600, and 1200 dpi. Both text and graphics outputs are clear and crisp. To save money, if the documents you’re printing are not that important, you can enable ‘Toner Save’ option, and / or print multiple document pages per output page. I’ve done several 30-50 page print jobs, and have so far not experienced paper jams.
You can use different sized paper, including legal and envelopes, by just adjusting the paper guides. Printing on envelopes requires more work that’s described in the user’s guide, but there is a cool video in the manufacturer’s support website that shows you what to do. If you have the MFL-Pro Software Suite mentioned above installed, look for the Brother Utilities desktop icon and click on it, then choose Support -> On-line help and FAQ’s. On the manufacturer’s “FAQ’s and Troubleshooting” web page that this gets you to, look for the Video FAQs in the “Other” category, and you’ll see an entry for Printing on Envelopes.
One thing I noticed with printing is that once a document is opened, changes to Printing Preferences (say, enabling or disabling printing watermarks) do not take effect until you close and reopen the document, which can come as a surprise to some.
* SCANNING
You can scan by putting your documents through the automatic document feeder or placing them one at a time onto the scanner glass. There is an on-device SCAN button that you can press, but I find it easier to control scanning using the software installed on my Windows computer. Click on the Brother Utilities desktop icon if you have the above-mentioned MFL-Pro Software Suite installed, then select SCAN -> ControlCenter4 (CC4). With the CC4, you can do Image or OCR scans, and save the results in formats such as JPEG, TIFF, Windows Bitmap, PNG, PDF, Searchable PDF, etc. By default, the results will be saved to labeled folders within the Control Center 4 folder under Documents>Pictures, unless you specify a different location.
If you have a supported email application such as Microsoft Outlook, you can set things up so that scan results can be automatically attached to an email. Because I only use free web mail services (which are not supported), I wasn’t able to test this functionality.
Scanning speed is fast. In my testing, I can confirm that saving results into JPEG, PDF, and Searchable PDFs did work without a problem at all (I did not attempt to save the results into the other possible formats).
* COPYING
There…
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Good AIO device (no FAX) * Requires INTERNET ACCESS,
The unit functioned exactly as stated, Stand Alone. I unwrapped it, inserted the printer cartridge (a “TN-630” which has to be installed in a plastic tray) and then plugged it in. I warmed up quickly and worked right away, using a one button (“START”) to print. It is a black and white laser printer, which mades durable, permanent copies of documents, which several people found impossible to differentiate from the originals. That’s high praise (Hint: Stamp your originals with a colored ink or a check mark).
Later, I connected it up to my computer (Macintosh), but found no drivers included for Mac OS. (Hence the lower rating) The disc included was a huge disappointment! Instead of including any kind of software or printer drivers, the disc only has one URL (web address) that points to the drivers you have to download over the internet. The home where I installed this AIO had no internet access or any kind of wireless network.
So, I connected up my iPhone and turned on the HOTSPOT mode. That allowed me to connect to the Mac and get to the internet site, long enough to download about 175 MBs of software and printer drives. To my amazement, the software worked perfectly and the printer was immediately available for work, in a stand alone office.
Pros: Light weight (~23 lbs), simple, safe, intuitive. Fast set-up. Fixed power cord, heavy duty wire.
Cons: Requires INTERNET ACCESS for MAC OS users. Uses a lot of power (makes the lights dim like a hair dryer)
Duplex printing is awkwardly implemented. Does not duplex copy from feeder – only from one page at time on the glass top.
Note: Did not use it on a Windows PC
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