HL1250 - fast and reliable (Brother HL 1250)

Member Name: pc-tech

Product:	Brother HL 1250
Date:	21/01/02 (2433 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Print speed, quality, price

Disadvantages: 4mb mem not enought for 1200DPI printing, drivers not excellent

I had been researching a home/small office laser printer since November 2000 before buying this in August 2001. I had no previous experience of Brother printers, or any other make apart from HP, as I had owned 3 previous HP inkjets and had borrowed a LaserJet.

SETTING UP THE PRINTER
The set up of the printer was fantastically easy thanks to the provided quick setup guide. Having never set up a printer before, I don?t know what I would have done without the included poster. Instructions were precise and included pictures to help.

INITIAL THOUGHTS
The first thing I did was to print out a test page, as advised in the quick setup guide. I was a little disappointed by the quality of the text compared to the HP LaserJet 1100, as it was not solid and looked remarkably streaky. Luckily, my disappointment was short lived....

DRIVER INSTALLATION
I didn?t actually have to install from the provided setup CD, as Windows already had a driver for the printer. However, I installed the driver from the CD on top of it as without it no options were available (i.e. 1200DPI resolution, Toner Save etc.). The drivers themselves have given me little trouble. An optional small icon in the task tray gives handy access to all of the common printing options (which paper tray to load from, n-up printing options etc.). The only trouble with these drivers seem to be that they print all colours of text a solid black. If I ever want to print grey text I have to install the Windows` drivers aswell.
Also included on the CD is the manual, some VERY useful videos about how to perform maintenance tasks, automatic email printing software, and something called `Status Monitor Brownie` which doesnt seem to be very useful at all.

PRINT QUALITY
As I have mentioned, the print quality of the original test page was disappointing. Once installed, I did another test page and again, the text was streaky. So I loaded up the driver CD, and in the video se
ction there was a video about what to do when there is printout problems. The advice was to clean the corona wire, which the videos helped me to do.
Back in windows, I tried the printouts again. MUCH BETTER!
The print quality matched my LaserJet 1100 on text, and easily beat it on the graphics and gradients. Gradients had relatively smooth transitions, and graphics seemed to be very good aswell. It did seem to have a small problem with printing a picture from Paint Shop Pro, the image, for a reason I don?t know, was stretched vertically and compressed horizontally.
The only real, and to my knowledge, unsolvable problems that I had was that the output paper was curled (a generic problem with laser printers when using certain types of paper), and the inability to print grey text with the drivers provided by Brother.
Overall, print quality was very good, although the curls did detract from the general professional look of the output.

PRINT SPEED
The two things that I have done to benchmark the printer test speed was the printer manual and the MS Train Simulator manual. Firstly I did the 123 page PDF-format manual for the printer. The first page arrived in about 30 seconds, and after the first minute 11 pages had arrived. After 2 minutes, 23 pages were sitting in the 125-sheet-capacity output tray. That made a staggering 12 PPM in the second minute - meeting the quoted print speed (rare in printers).
After 609 seconds (10 minutes, 9 seconds) the whole 123 pages had emerged. I was amazed when I calculated the average speed - 12.12 pages per minute - this was above the quoted print speed!
I didnt time the Train Simulator manual but it was again very fast (atleast compared to my inkjet).

PROBLEMS
Here are the problems that I have had so far:
1. Bad initial image quality, which was rectified by cleaning the corona wire

2. Dots printing down right side of page, which seemed to fix itself after a while


3. Paper curling, this seems to be quite standard in laser printers. I have recently seen a HP LJ 2200 and the Brother is nowhere near as bad as that.

4. Grey text prints out black when using the Brother drivers. To fix this, I have the printer installed twice, once with the Brother drivers and once with the Windows ones, as the Windows ones print with the right colours but do not have all features of the Brother drivers.

5. The famous flickering light problem. Every product that is released today seems to have one problem that everyone dotes on. This is the HL1250 one; when the printer is turned on, it makes the lights dim for a second approximately every half-a-minute. This is a true problem, but it only happens when the printer is actually on (it goes into standby after a couple of minutes), and I barely notice it now.
I would in no way count this against the printer.

OTHER COMMENTS
The upgradability of this machine is good - an extra 250 page paper tray can be added, bringing total paper capacity up to 500 sheets. An ethernet card can also be added for network connectivity.
I had to choose between this and an HP LaserJet 1200. I chose this because of the slightly unprofessional look of the LJ1200, and the upgradability of this machine.
I don?t regret my choice.
I know its maybe not quite as fast or have as many features as the LJ1200, but the HP LJ1200 has an obtrusive paper tray, and I have read that it skews output.
Also, toner is very cheap at £50 for a 6000 page unit. I have replaced the toner once and it was extreamly easy.
Number of paper jams in 6 months: 2
All when I decided to use non-standard paper sizes and envelopes.

This printer has certainly impressed me so far.

Summary: