Brother HL-L2380DW Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled

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Yep, after over two decades of both personal and professional usage of Inkjet printers a variety of work environments as both a personal geek an IT support specialist, I finally had enough of the Inkjet Insanity. After getting laid off from Christmas this year and starting to go job hunting and dealing with that fiasco only to find my 4th or 5th inkjet printer in around 8 years was clogged AGAIN from my very sporadic lack of use and I would have to shell out over $60 in ink and then spend God knows how much time troubleshooting, running test prints and wasting tons of ink and money trying to unclog the dried jet heads on my $120 Canon Pixma printer, I finally snapped, NO MORE!!!!!!! Being the IT guy for over 14 years, I have worked with many Brothers over the years and though I am sorta of biased to HPs Laserjets, Brothers laser printers have had a good record in my book for being mostly reliable, solid, easy to troubleshoot and fix and also pretty dang good up front cost e vs other brands, namely Canon and HP. I have worked on many MFC models over the past decade and the more basic HL printer only series pretty much falls in line with the MFC series. After doing my research like I always do, I decided to spend the extra money over the popular but older 2014-2015 HL- L2380DW https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HRG01A4/ as there were two major differences between that model and the newer HL-L2395DW 1. CPU speed increased from 266mhz on 2380 to 600mhz on new 2395 2. RAM from increased 64 Megabytes on 2380 to 128 Megabytes on new 2395 These two component upgrades are important for laser printing functions for many reasons but mostly due to: 1. Faster CPU results in less processing of more complex print jobs, especially using built in printer apps cloud storage apps 2. Larger RAM will result in less frequent communication between printer and computer and jobs will be cached and print faster as a result The new 2395DW model also has a slight edge in these areas as well vs the older 2380DW: 1. 2395 does 36ppm vs 32ppm of the 2380 for both prints and copies 2. Monthly max page usage amount increases from 10,000 on 2380 to 15,000 pages a month on 2395 3. Near Field communication for smartphones added on 2395DW 4. Decreased energy usage. 2395 in sleep is 1.2Watts vs 5.8Watts of 2380, Ready mode is 43.5W vs 60W and Printing is 450W vs 510W Visual changes: 1. New 2395 has more squarish appearance with larger side handles and thicker scanner lid. A personal preference here 2. New 2395 has removed the touch sensitive buttons and gone with traditonal push buttons on main control panel. Time will tell if this a good or bad thing And by far the biggest difference which may throw some people off is that the toner cartridges and drums are TOTALLY NEW & DIFFERENT for the new 2395DW model vs the older 2380DW model. New 2395DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN730 / High Yield Toner TN760 / Drum DR730 Old 2380DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN630 / High Yield Toner TN660 / Drum DR630 In short, if you have stocked up supplies of TN630 or TN660 Brother or refurbished/cheaper non brother toners, they WILL NOT WORK in this new 2395DW model! Brother has introduced a new 700 series of toners and drums for this new unit and you HAVE TO USE TN730 or TN770! With that clarification out of the way, I decided to unpack my black laser beauty and see if it was worth the extra price of admission being totally new and ditching Inkjets forever: 1. Setup is childs play. Seriously. Download newest Brother drivers from website, click and run and follow the directions for USB, wifi or ethernet install. Dont use the outdated CD, trust an IT guy on this. Also, dont download and install the iPrint@Scan software, its too bloated to be useful, ignore it. 2. The printer fired right up the first time and pulled its setting from the computer via my ethernet connection, didnt even need to set the time the hard way, thank God. 3. Printing via Ethernet is instant and fast but USB is also a good option if its right next to your computer. Wifi connections can be flakey at times, it will all depend on your Wifi setup and router quality on how good or bad this will be. 4. Printer touch LCD screen is responsive and clear to use and easy to read. 5. Brother thankfully kept the ability to switch Low Toner END to CONTINUAL which means it will let you drain your toner empty until it stops working entirely vs the printer telling you to replace it. But your print quality may suffer, so keep that in mind. 6. The printer is not quiet, most laser printers are not but its not an issues for my needs. There is a quiet print mode if you are really picky about noise but your printing speed is cut by at least half, so expect slow print outs 7. Even with Eco toner mode enabled, the prints Ive done still come out pretty black and dark, so I recommend this mode to save on toner. 8. Default print and scan setting result in good quality prints to my eyes. You can increase DPI if you are picky but will result in slower prints and scans 9. What really sucks is that Brother got rid of the backlighting for the number pad and non LCD buttons, so if you are printing in the dark, your gonna have fun CONS: This printer sadly isnt perfect and Brother made some really stupid cost saving decisions for this upgraded model namely: 1. No built in .AC wireless, it maxes out at .N, same as the older 2380. Cmon, really Brother? Wifi is king nowadays for flexibility 2. Ethernet is still only 100megabit. What the hell? 1 gigabit NICS are pennies nowadays, there was no legit reason to cut back on this either 3. No USB 3.0? Absolutely no reason for printers to have old USB 2.0 nowadays. All in all, I was very very happy and shocked how fast this sucker shoots out prints from a dead power to ready mode, especially compared to my years of waiting and waiting for damn slow and noisy Inkjets to prime, test and get ready, its so freaking wonderful! I will miss the color of Inkjet but I sure as hell will not miss the horrid cost effectiveness, speed, noise, troubleshooting and the horrid horrid memories and blacked out hands from unclogged inkjet heads! All praise Brother and Laser!

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Computer HW Professional. Real Buyer. INITIAL ASSESSMENT: Printer was exceptionally easy to set up. Remove from box. Remove tape downs, Install toner, Power on, Connect to your WIFI. I tried a copy, got a blank page. Tried it again, all is OK!. Went to my computer. (Windows 10). Printer already showed up in the printer list. Printed a couple of pages. No problems, No installation steps required. Boring is wonderful! Just for good measure, I set a fixed DHCP address in my router. Laser printers have to heat up, and this one does so very quickly just when needed. Power draw at this time is apparently significant, so plugging into a shared UPS may make it complain. Best to plan for a dedicated power plug or UPS for this printer. and to add a surge suppressor to protect it from lightning damage. Check out my review describing my long term hate/hate relationship with my HP printer if you want to know why I bought Brother. FIRST UPDATE: When installing the printer software, the install failed because I had a more recent version of the Microsoft visual C redistribution run-time. I had to remove my latest version to get the install to work Brother should be building their code against the latest run-time. Prior to that, I found scan software on the Microsoft store that connected with the printer and scanned just fine. SECOND UPDATE: Watch the price. I bought mine for $129.99 and now I see they upped it to $136 THIRD UPDATE: Still no issues. Was surprised when I found out it will print Duplex also. Amazon still playing games with the price. Now it is $150 May inkjet and HP go the way of the Dinosaur.. FOURTH UPDATE: Owned for 3 months now. Has worked flawlessly. FIFTH UPDATE: Owned for 9 months now. Has worked well. Needed to be power cycled once. Had to re-install the apps in windows once after a windows update. The Microsoft scan app can no longer find the scanner, but the brother app works just fine. Still Highly Recommend this printer. Fortunately for all of us, Ink Jets will soon be a technology of the past.

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There are plenty of reviews for this printer that go into detail...maybe too much detail. Information = Good. Manifesto = Bad. I dont run a business or anything, just kids in school and the occasional need to print coupons or something. Like a lot of people, I grew insane rotating through inkjet printers. I shouldnt be going through printers more than I do underwear. Inkjet printers work great. When you first get them. But unless you continuously use them, the print heads get violated by the ink or something and you end up with streaks, blotches and half printed papers. If you dont use it...a couple of weeks to a month, you should pretty much just plan on buying another one because no amount of pushing the "clean heads" prompt is going to fix it. So after every winter break, spring break, and summer break...the printer breaks. Good thing you can get one for about $30 now. But that $30+ each time adds up, and I could be using that money for underwear my wife keeps claiming I need to replace. I suppose you could just remember to print something or clean the heads on an inkjet every week. But I dont have or want that kind of relationship with my printer. I just want it to print something when I need it to. Even if I dont even talk to it for a few weeks or more. Since we mostly print text and laser printers arent supposed to do the same thing , it seemed like the logical choice. So far this one has worked great. I had no problems getting it set up and connected to my wifi and was printing 10 minutes out of the box. Compared to inkjets, it prints insanely fast and the text is much cleaner. Scanning and copying also work really well on it. A couple of times I had to reconnect it to the wifi, but Im not sure if that was my router or not. It connected again quickly both times. Also recently, it wasnt responding for some reason - everything looked normal, had paper, connected to network - just wouldnt respond for some reason. However, after a restart, it worked fine again. Hopefully that doesnt become an issue. Ive only had it for about 6 months now, but very happy that it prints nicely every time - even if you dont talk to it for a while. Because its a printer. It doesnt need a relationship. It just has to print. Now I just need to change my underwear. FIVE STARS!

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Based on the reviews, I thought this printer would be very reliable, at least more so than my old HP inkjet. I gave up color with that expectation. It doesnt seem to work well with Mac OSX. I get an assortment of error messages-- printer not found, incoming (but its not), too heavy, whatever that means-- or it claims to have finished printing when nothing has come out. Rebooting the router, printer and computer does seem to help but thats time consuming and doesnt always work. And when it does print or scan, theres a long, long wait before anything emerges. Ive reinstalled the driver a couple of times thinking I must be doing something wrong.

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After years of being a fool when it comes to home printing, I finally learned about the benefits of laser printing, and I will no longer be taken for a ride by inkjets! A little backstory: since my husband and I moved in together in 2009, weve had a rotating door of inkjet printers. Wed have one for a year or less, it would crap out or gunk up, and thered be no saving it. We recycled probably three printers in the last 5 years alone. Not only was that an egregious waste of money but also an unnecessary tax on the environment. While researching laser printers for my boss, I found a great article about reasons to buy laser, and I was sold instantly. Heres a quick rundown about why I switched to laser and why I chose THIS printer: --Low cost to run. Im an infrequent printer. Inkjets would dry out because we dont often print, but of course there are times that demand it--like tax season and receipts or tickets. It would drive my husband batty that he couldnt print when he needed, and printing at work was a pain and also not something I wanted to do. This machine prints a lot of pages for us even with the non-XL cartridge. --Toner doesnt dry out. You can sit with toner in its cartridge without clogging a printerhead like an inkjet. Your investment in your machine stays an investment because it lasts a much longer time. --Monochrome printing. For people like me who dont have much to print, monochrome is a great investment because you dont have to buy four different kinds of toner, and since were just printing perfunctory stuff anyway, its an ideal fit. --Clean text. Laser prints text much sharper than inkjet. For me, an amateur graphic designer, its noticeable. Of course, Im not printing anything graphic in nature because lasers generally do not print images cleanly like inkjets, but I like seeing how sharp even plain old receipts come out. --Speed. This thing blew ALL of our old inkjets away with the speed with which it prints. Holy cow, it spit out its inaugural test page before I could even pull the arm out to catch it. Inkjets had such long warm up and cool down times, which stinks if youre printing tickets or directions and trying to hurry out the door. Love it! --Scanner. Easy to scan from this machine, and the scans are clean and sharp. The flatbed works just fine. Were not big scanners, and Im usually only scanning pictures anyway, so this model works great for us. --Wireless. We set this up in no time at all without connect a single wire to our PC. Just had to connect the machine to our Wifi, and it was done. For the price, this Brother, a name I already trusted from experience at the office, is unbeatable for our family use. I will still need to use a high quality printer when I do invitations, but I wasnt running those at home anyway, and printing pictures are just better to pay a few cents at a pharmacy to have them printed. So happy for this machine!

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Avoid - we have used Brother laser printers previously, including the 2380. This newer model, the 2395, jams regularly and does not handle labels well. Not worth it - well stick with the older far more reliable model 2380.

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This has been by far the worst printer I have ever owned. For the single reason that I had high expectations of being able to print wirelessly from iOS, Mac and Windows devices. From the day it was first started and until just now when I have decided I will replace it, it has consistently let me down. This printer will not stay away and print. It has to be power cycled every time I use it, no matter what device. I have updated the firmware, and always used the latest (and prior) softwares available. After lengthly talks with customer service, and numerous troubleshooting methods (none of which online worked), I have come to realize this is a half baked printer. Even if the printer is awake, I have to open the brother app 20-30 times until my phone will recognize it on the network, and then hurry up and print everything in one shot because when it sleeps you have to start all over again. With about 98% toner remaining, nearly all of the pages printed were related to troubleshooting. Out of all of the IT equipment I have had the pleasure of troubleshooting this one particular printer has been the most unpredictable and frustrating to work with. I have even managed to use 3 routers, all of which with various settings in an attempt to prove myself wrong. The device is live on the network and will respond to nmap and ping but will not wake to be printer. So, for all the time it took to purchase, unbox and troubleshoot, I venture Brother owes me about a solid 1.5 days of wages. I regret having purchased this too early and not put it in service right away so I could have returned it. Lesson learned. If you buy a Brother, dont wait, try it out first. Hopefully the newer models are better, but for me Im going to another brand.

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I got this recently to replace an older Brother printer which worked great. Unfortunately, I relied too much on the glowing Amazon reviews. This thing has been a problem since day one. I have great wireless connection to everything else in the office, but this things connection is spotty, at best. I often have to restart the printer before any print job, which gets to be a hassle. The most annoying thing, though, is the toner warning. My office doesnt do a great deal of printing, but I got a "Toner is Low" warning all of one work day before the little monster shut down and refused to do any work until I fed it a new toner cartridge. Is it really worth it to get a cheap printer if youre going to have to spend a fortune feeding that little toner-hungry beast? If you depend on this this, I hope you have a back-up. Sadly, I didnt.

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This printer is simply a nightmare. I purchased the first one in late August 2018. (You need to purchase a separate drum unit, close to a hundred dollars, in addition to a toner.) The printer, as soon as I turned it on, claimed it had a paper jam. One week spent trying to resolve "paper jam" in a machine that had never printed a single page. After trying to reach the customer center for two days, I found that the machine was defective. OK. I was told they would send me a second machine. The second machine arrived after nearly two weeks, which I couldnt really blame Brother for as there was a hurricane, but the customer center had given me a specific date on which I could expect to have the new machine and did not reach out to me until I called after a week from the date. The second machine, during the test print, decides that the toner is not genuine. Of course, Ive installed a brand new genuine drum unit and toner. After I reboot the machine, the printer now says there is no toner. I tried reinstalling the toner for thirteen times, and the only message I get is NO TONER. I HAVE INSTALLED THE TONER AND THE DRUM UNIT IN THE PRINTER AND THE PRINTER TELLS ME THE CARTRIDGE HAS NOT BEEN INSTALLED. I just dont know what to do. Its in the middle of September, and I have hundreds of pages to print every other day. I am going to the library to get all my papers printed, multiple times per day, while two defective machines sit glumly in my poor graduate students abode. Should have gotten an inkjet printer from Target. I am convinced I am getting punished for assuming that a broke graduate student deserves to have a fancy printer. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY. GO HP.

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So sorry I bought this printer. Prior printer worked fine, but was tired of buying color inkjet cartridges, when I only print black & white, so this seemed like a good solution. HOWEVER, the install was the worst, most tedious, problem-ridden ever for a piece of computer-related hardware. Do not know if it is because I still have Windows 8.1 on the computer I use with it -- but it was a full-day wasted, trying to get the software to boot-up, then download directly, then waiting on hold for tech support. The first guy worthless, and promised a call-back from someone more knowledgeable at a specified time -- which never came. Called again, and got a woman who was very good. But it should not have been this hard. Worse yet, it seems that any hiccup in the WIFI signal causes the thing to totally shutdown, and you have to reboot it. Did not have this issue with the prior printer (Epson Artisan Inkjet), nor with my husbands printer (HP Envy Photo). When I can face dealing with again, will give this to Goodwill and buy something else.

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