Comments on: Brother HL2140 Personal Laser Printer

By: G. Wolff

G. Wolff — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:17:27 +0000

Got it all
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Perfect device for a small home office. We print a lot and the price per page is good. Its fast, clear and has had no paper jams.

Lightweight, we can move it around easily. No complaints with this one yet. Use toner saver setting to extend cartridge life with no visible loss of quality

By: Brittany T. Rawls

Brittany T. Rawls — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:25:43 +0000

Great Cheap Monochrome Printer
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great black and white printer. I thought it had an automatic duplex feature when I bought it tough (e.g. Put it on duplex and just put the paper back in the printer the other way and its done). You have to do odd pages on one pass and evens on the other or vice versa depending on what the last page is.

Otherwise, good printer.

By: greenchic

greenchic — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:19:28 +0000

NO 2-Sided Printing & Paper Jams
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
For a product that advertises "Environmentally Friendly Design" as one of its features, I assumed that double-sided printing would be one of its features. Not true. Although the B&W print quality is good so far, I'm now stuck with a one-side-only printer, so I have to print odd pages only and refeed them face up and upside down into the printer tray and print even pages only in order to get a double-sided print job. Annoying.

Also, the 2.0 USB cable that you need in order to print from your computer (where else would you print from?) is not included with the product. Again, annoying. Moreover, the Belkin cable that Amazon suggests for you to purchase in the "Frequently Bought Together" section comes from a non-Amazon retailer and took forever to ship. Thus, I had to wait an extra week, after the printer arrived, to print. Uber-annoying. So, I suggest, if you must buy this printer, go to Best Buy, Walgreens, Staples, etc to buy a cable, so your printer is ready to use when it arrives. (On a somewhat related note, the printer booklet says not to use a USB cable longer than 6 feet, so why is Amazon pushing a 10-foot cable in the "Frequently Bought Together" section? Anyways, the 10-foot Belkin cable works fine...after it finally arrived!)

UPDATE: Paper is now jamming on a fairly consistent basis. Since the printer is barely a week old, I wish I could demote my rating down to 1 star.

By: Cramer

Cramer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:32:25 +0000

Great, with minor flaws
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have had this printer for about a year now and it’s been great with minor flaws.

First the positives, above all price! It’s a great printer that keeps cash in your pocket. It’s easy to set-up and I have had no big problems with it

The print quality is great. I read a lot of scanned journal articles for school and if you have a bad printer, a scan of a copy that’s then printed often becomes unreadable (on ink printers especially).

On the other hand, sometimes, if I don’t use it for a few days, next time I print it claims it’s jammed. 9 times out of 10 it’s not. To fix it, just open the cartridge bay, and close it again and it’ll work just fine. Other times it will jam in the middle of printing several pages for no reason, but I guess all prints jam from time to time.

Another issue I’ve had with it is the toner. It will tell you the toner is low and refuse to print. It’s low, not out! You have to remove the toner cartridge and reinsert to get it to print again. It’s as if they designed it this way purposefully so you buy toner more often.

Aside from a couple tedious methods to get this thing to do its job, the bottom line is it’s a great printer for the price. I’m not afraid to coax it into working, and if you aren’t either you can’t go wrong with this Brother. Just don’t believe you’re out of toner until your printer icon flashes red instead of yellow

By: southtropical

southtropical — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:16:38 +0000

Great choice!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Initiated considerable internet research to find an inexpensive yet reliable printer to use at home. I am extremely pleased with this product and the timeliness of the shipment. Excellent buy for the money.

By: Raymond Schwartz

Raymond Schwartz — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:27:04 +0000

Great alternative to inkjet printers
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is a fantastic printer. The output is fast and sharp. I’ve had no paper jams or errors of any kind. I’d recommend this to anyone over an inkjet unless they had to have color output. Brother HL-2140 Personal Laser Printer

By: R. Kasudia

R. Kasudia — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:25:45 +0000

Good Cost-effective printer
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Basically, the printer is pretty fast at printing. Its good quality. I am on my rotations right now and I, like the fellow below, have to print a ton of articles and papers. The other day I printed 500 pages. How long did that take? 20 minutes.

The best thing, you can highlight without smearing.

Cost wise, its about 2 cents a page. $[...] dollars for a high-yield toner which printer 2600 pages. Also, you can get more out of the toners by shaking them. I usually do that to squeeze out another 200 pages ish.

Also, if you can get a hook up to get the toners cheaper through like a staples business account then its even better. I was able to acquire the brother cartridges (new) for about [...]. Making my cost/page about a penny.

All in all, toss out the inject printer. If you need color to print photos, then get a photo printer for photos. For all the other crap you print out on a day to day basis, the laser printer will do you good and save you money for taco bell.

By: Matthew J. Shade

Matthew J. Shade — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:51:34 +0000

GREAT Infrequent Printer
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Why did I ever buy an ink jet printer? I print about 2 documents a month. My ink jets always got clogged because I didn’t print enough. I almost never print in color. What was I thinking? The toner cartridge for this printer will probably last me several years with NO CLOGGING. If you don’t print in color very often, and you don’t print very often, this baby is the way to go. I can’t believe a laser printer exists at this price. Awesome printer for infrequent printing.

By: Ellen Anne Eddy

Ellen Anne Eddy — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:21:14 +0000

Miserable set up
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
In fairness, I really can’t say how the features are or the print speed, quality, noise, etc. I’ve been trying to set this up since last Tuesday and it’s Sunday. The instructions are not helpful and it’s very fussy about what cables it has ( made much worse by the fact that it does not supply it’s cables). The third ( identical) cable did the job. I would not recommend this printer although it seems to print just fine once it’s up. The set up was monstrous.

By: C. Goffinet

C. Goffinet — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:21:55 +0000

Great Printer, Especially for the price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I picked up this printer for around 50 dollars and it is a champ . I have probably printed out 200 pages to date with no problems. The only thing i didnt like and wasnt aware of is that you need to buy a usb to fire wire cable to set up the printer, maybee im just not with the times, as i havent purchased a printer in quite a few years and the last one i did came with all cabels needed.