15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Brother HL-5050,
January 14, 2004 Mark A. Stettler (Hillsboro, OR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser Printer (Office Product)
Setup - easyBasic 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...Read more
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Fast with Clear Print,
October 14, 2003 Frustrated in the Kitchen (Lander, WY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser Printer (Office Product)
As a die-hard HP fan, (I still have my DeskJet, but my HP laser finally died) I am rather impressed with this printer. Fast and clear output - even with lots of graphics on the page. The printer was easy to set up; the drivers and software easy to install and understand.
However, the "save toner" mode is rather useless: it saves so much toner, the page cannot be read unless I adjust the default to print darker - which defeats the purpose.
This printer has a "sleep mode" that I'm not terribly fond of: there are no lights to remeind me that my printer is still, technically, "on". I forget to turn off the power, and as a cat owner, my cats step on buttons and turn my printer back on at the most inopportune times.
And I'm one of those users who like to have a printed manual in my hands to look at. The manual for this printer is on CD; which one of these days, I will print out (not in save-toner mode, though).
I have other Brother...Read more
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Don't Buy This Printer if You Print Checks or Other Forms,
September 8, 2004 Small Office User - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brother HL-5050 17 PPM 600 dpi Laser Printer (Office Product)
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...Read more
(7 customer reviews)