Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser Printer

• Up to 17 ppm; first page out in 12 seconds
• HQ1200 resolution technology, up to 2,400 x 600 dpi
• 16 MB memory, upgradeable to 144 MB
• 250-sheet paper tray, 50-sheet multi-purpose tray
• USB 2.0 and parallel interfaces; PC and Mac compatible

Amazon.com Product Description:
The HL-5050 laser printer is a flexible, expandable printer for your home, office, or small connected workgroup. With fast print speeds, graphics-quality printing, upgradeable memory, and outstanding user support, the HL-5050 sets a new standard for quality monochrome printing--the perfect balance of performance, flexibility and value. The HL-5050 can handle virtually any media via its 250-sheet paper tray and 50-sheet multi-purpose tray. The multi-purpose tray accommodates card stock, letterhead, and envelopes. The printer delivers its highest-quality output (HQ1200, up to 2,400 x 600 dpi) at up to 17 pages per minute--its fastest print speed. With its fast print speed, 16 MB memory (expandable to 144 MB), PCL6 and BR-Script3 (PostScript3) compatibility, and great print quality, this printer delivers both performance and productivity. A convenient job-cancel button to make unwanted print jobs disappear easily, and the printer's "first-page out" speed falls under 12 seconds. The unit offers the option to add a second 250-sheet lower paper tray to expand the paper input capacity to a total of 500 sheets. Its standard-yield toner cartridge offers up to 3,300-page capacity and the high-yield toner cartridge offers up to 6,500-page capacity. The drum is rated at up to 20,000 pages. The printer comes with USB and parallel interfaces and standard Windows drivers, as well as drivers for Mac OS X (10.1 and higher) and Mac OS 8.6 to 9.2. An optional external 10/100 BaseT Ethernet print server is available. Brother provides toll-free technical support, a one-year limited warranty, and the online Brother Solutions Center.

Brother HL-5050:
Setup - easy Basic Operation - fast and reasonably quiet, appears to be well built. Printing text - excellent, as good as a much more expensive industrial hp laser printer I frequently use. Nice and dark. Printing graphics/photos - in highest settings (1200dpi, "improved gray scaling" checked) it's good, but nothing exceptional. The output is not too dark, as is sometimes the problem with other inexpensive lasers. Manual Duplex printing - this was at first confusing to me because I wanted to use the lower paper tray to do it all: print one side and then feed the output back again into the lower tray to print the other side (if you have more than 50 sheets you need to use the lower tray). This did not work for me until I finally hardwired the tray settings from "auto detect" to "tray 1". The manual did not mention this step. New drivers from Brother (as of January 14, 2004) did not fix this. Printing duplex from the multi-purpose tray works fine without having to hardwire the settings. Customer support - so far not good. I went through much trepidation figuring out how to get the lower tray to work on duplex because I could not reach support people. The number always seems to be busy. Highs - good, fast prints and reasonably quiet operation. Lows - documentation is not completely accurate, customer support isn't good. Could use a sleep mode indicator as the previous reviewer mentioned.

Don't Buy This Printer if You Print Checks or Other Forms:
Don't buy the Brother HL-5050 if you need to print preprinted checks or other preprinted forms. The printer will pick up the ink from the checks or forms and transfer them back onto the form as it prints. Apparently some Brother laser printers get hotter than other brands and this heat causes the ink to transfer back onto the printed document. Some preprinted forms with a lot of text become nearly unreadable after passing through the HL-5050. The printer also curls paper more than my previous HP printers, also apparently due to this "excessive" heat. Sometimes after printing several pages, a slight burning smell comes from the printer (like your central heating system the first time you use it in the winter). I never had this problem with my old HP 4P or HP 6P. I called Brother tech support and they were of no help whatsoever. They said the ink transfer was not a warranty issue and would not offer an exchange or a refund. They said the printer was working as designed. The price was good, the features decent, and the speed adequate, but I would not recommend this or any other Brother printer because of this ink transfer/heat problem. We also have the network version of this same printer in another office and it has the same paper curling problem. We don't use that one for printing checks so I can't say for sure if it does the ink transfer, but my guess is that it does. I will never buy another Brother printer. I only wish HP still made a decent quality laser printer for a small office. The HP models I looked at before buying the Brother seemed very cheaply constructed compared to my old HP 6P. 10/06/2004 UPDATE-Found a Solution to the Ink Transfer Problem If "Media Type" is changed to "Transparencies", the ink transfer does not happen. The paper curling seems to be a little better too. Why didn't tech support tell me this? Hope this helps any of you with a similar problem.

Not bad but tends to overheat paper:
This is generally not a bad printer however it does tend to overheat paper so that it comes out curly, which is very annoying if you print large documents or want to print high quality. The support desk said to resolve this by setting the paper type to 'transparency' for normal paper printing which indicates that this is a typical problem. It also doesnt solve it. Overall Im not very impressed with either printer or support and wouldnt get another Brother printer.

My second choice turned out to be #1...:
First I bought an HP LaserJet 1300. I liked the printer and it was fast, but my wife's business' letterhead gets printed on a slightly textured paper and I just couldn't get the LaserJet's toner to adhere well to the paper. After trying every conceivable configuration of print settings, I finally conceded defeat. So back the HP went and I skeptically went with my second choice, the Brother HL-5050... I didn't have high hopes that a cheaper printer would do the job since the HP couldn't handle it... Although it is somewhat slower than the HP (especially for graphics), it has handled everything I have thrown at it, without having to even mess with different print settings. It printed beautifully on the slightly rougher paper, something I could never coax the HP into doing... I am very happy with my "second choice" and the fact that it worked out better and yet me less is icing on the cake...

After 3 HPs in 6 years.... I buy Brothers.:
For cost/benefit, I've been impressed with all the Brothers I've bought, both those for home (5050 B & W Laser and the multifunction 420CN). I also own 2 additional 5050s at my office and have had no problem with them. Suffice it to say that I've had precisely the opposite experience with HPs, with major, irreparable breakdowns in within 6 months of warranty expiration on each one. Plus, Brother has a neat philosophy of common sense cartridge replacement - if your color HP cartridge runs out, you have to replace the whole thing for $50 or so right then. Brother, on the other hand, allows you to replace individual color cartridges (black, cyan, yellow, red) as they run out, for $10 to $15 apiece. Lots of savings. My Brother B & W lasers were cheaper than equivalent quality competing brands, so I wasn't expecting much, but they've been basically flawless for 2+ years now and exceeded the rating on the toner cartridge by hundreds of pages.