ShoppingBuzz.net

Perfect Printer for what I needed! (2010-08-23)
Printer is perfect for what I needed it for. It is actually a little more noisy than the last brother printer that I had, but other than that, it is great. Service and delivery were perfect.

Excellent functionality and quality for the price (2010-08-23)
When I finally got tired of the price of inkjet ink and the horrible speed of my old printer, I started shopping for small laser unit. This one consistently received great reviews as a simple home/small office printer, and they were right on the nose. It prints very quickly, although there is a very slight delay in spooling to the printer. It is reasonably quiet, although there is some noise. The print quality is excellent, it hasn't jammed even once so far, it was easy to set up, doesn't take up much space, loads easily from the front, and just plain works smoothly. I waited for a few weeks to submit this, but I've put quite a load on it in the past weeks, and it performs as advertised. It has no fancy features, so I hesitated to 5 star it there, but for everything else, I can highly recommend it.

A Phenomenal Printer for College Students and Families (2010-08-17)
I'm a 19 year old college student and I use this printer on a regular basis. This printer has been THE BEST college investment that I have made.

The Pros:

Value for Money 5/5 stars.
-The printer itself is dirt cheap. It's cheaper than most of the inkjets that I was looking at before it (don't buy an inkjet!)
-Extremely economical. The cheapo included "starter cartridge" lasted me my entire freshmen year. I printed over 1200 pages with it.
-Replacement toner is dirt cheap! I bought the "Brother TN360 High Yield Black Toner Cartridge" for $44 (about what you'd pay for the average inkjet set of cartridges) and just swapped it last week (Over a year later).
-Energy Star Approved. Need I say more? (all you cheapo college kids without electric bills might not appreciate this until you start renting an apartment!)

Reliability 5/5 stars.
-I've had 1 (one) jam. That's it. 1 single jam in over a year of use, and it was while I was trying to print on an envelope (see point below in Cons).

Print Speed 5/5 stars.
-Relatively fast printing. For $60, this printer is more than fast enough for even my lengthiest reports. It's not a business workhorse like the HP P4014's on campus, but then again it's about $550 cheaper.

Ease of Setup 5/5 stars.
-Setup takes less than 5 minutes:
-Take it out of the box
-Pull the safety tape off of the tray and toner.
-Insert toner and paper.
-Plug it in.
-The printer is the PERFECT SIZE. It's almost perfectly square, so it stacks well. It's not heavy. It easily fits right on my desk without getting in the way.


Ease of Use 5/5 stars.
-Windows 7 found and installed it automagically (including the correct printer thumbnail).
-Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop found it right away.
-Toner Saver Mode (which is an ABSOLUTE MUST), was very simple to turn on.



The Cons:

Features 4/5 stars.
-First of all, know that I didn't dock the star because of the lack of color (that would be unfair since this is CLEARLY a monochrome printer).
-It doesn't print color. Big deal, 99/100 college reports and documents have 0 pages that need to be printed in color. Why waste money on expensive color ink if 50% is used on those stupid color advertisements in the page margins? I'll run to the library if I need to print 1 or 2 pages in color. Plus, for the family type, why do you need to print in color? If you're not printing out Birthday Cards or Cheesy Certificates, I'd save the money and just print in B&W.
-Printing on envelopes using the dedicated slot is a pain. I've tried multiple times and never had a good experience, or awesome results. This printer loves 8.5 x 11.

Noise 4/5 stars.
-When in use, it's a tiny bit noisy; however, all laserjets are.
-At idle, this thing is silent, and power-up time out of stand-by is fantastic.


Overall:

This is THE BEST investment I've made in my college career. It's cheapy cheapy, extremely reliable, relatively fast, so-easy-to-setup-that-a-caveman-could-do-it, the perfect size, and OS friendly. Yes, the lack of color might bother some (it doesn't bother me), just ask yourself "why should I print in color?" And it's a little bit noisy (meaning that staying up till 4AM printing out sources for your research paper might irritate your roommate (if you have one)). Do either of those matter even the slightest in the grand-scheme-of-things? No. At least not in my opinion.

Do yourself a favor and buy this printer.

Works well for our needs (2010-08-05)
I homeschool, and needed a cheaper alternative to my Lexmark inkjet. It works really well for printing long documents that I need for homeschooling, and is a lot cheaper than purchasing inkjet cartridges. I haven't figured out the exact dollar amount saved, but my laser cartridges are $40 on Amazon, and it's been months since my last purchase. My Lexmark prints color, but it takes two inkjet cartridges for a total of $75. They also last less than a month. I use the Lexmark for scanning and color copies. The quality on the Brother is good, the speed is quick, and other than an occasional paper jam, I have no problems with it.

Laser printer (2010-08-05)
For someone looking for a low-cost, reliable, b/w Brother HL-2140 Personal Laser Printerlaser printer without a scanner this is a nice choice. It is small and fits nicely on my desktop. Set-up was extremely simple. Skip the drivers on the disk and download the updated versions directly from the website. I've only had the printer a few weeks and don't print a lot so I can't say how long the toner will last. I bought a laser printer because cheap color ink-jet printers were costing a fortune in ink. I had one issue where the wi-fi connection was lost so I simply had to reconnect it through my Apple Airport "add a printer" menu item. I connected the printer directly to the usb port in my computer for a quick copy before I found how to correct the problem. This model is a few years old and has lots of very positive reviews.