Brother HL 5240

...opinion the best looking printer Brother have ever done. Most of Brother's lasers as well as many others on the market are just a neutral cream colour but this is black and grey which may not sound very appealing but when you see it, it looks great. It is a good size, simple printer that will fit into any office, school or home. It does not take up too much desk space and will fit easily on something such as a filing cabinet or similar.

...the toner and drum in, Brother have done this well by combining both parts in one piece. All you do is open the main cover, push in the toner/drum then close the cover, couldn't be simpler. The printer is now ready to print, that’s after it has paper in. Paper can be put in two parts; the bottom paper tray which pulls out and conceals the paper, or the pull open tray. This is the bit with the blue brother logo on the front. This opens up then inside ... more

General & price:
WOW, what a brilliant printer this is. Another great laser from Brother. I have had this printer for quite a few months now. I bought it for around £150 but the prices come anywhere between £140 and £220 from verious online retailers or some high street stores.

There is so much i could say about this printer but it would take me ages to write it all and i'm not sure if i can handle it all. But i will right all the important parts.

Design:
The design of the HL5250dn is brilliant. In my opinion the best looking printer Brother have ever done. Most of Brother's lasers as well as many others on the market are just a neutral cream colour but this is black and grey which may not sound very appealing but when you see it, it looks great. It is a good size, simple printer that will fit into any office, school or home. It does not take up too much desk space and will fit easily on something such as a filing cabinet or similar.

Connections:
It is extremely simple to use as well. Anyone could use this printer. On the back there are ports for USB and Parallel. Whether it is connected by USB or parallel the printer comes with a full step by step guide for each one so anyone should be able to install this printer.

Installing toner unit and paper:
Once the printer is installed its time to print. This is just as simple as installing, if not easier. First you have to put the toner and drum in, Brother have done this well by combining both parts in one piece. All you do is open the main cover, push in the toner/drum then close the cover, couldn't be simpler. The printer is now ready to print, that’s after it has paper in. Paper can be put in two parts; the bottom paper tray which pulls out and conceals the paper, or the pull open tray. This is the bit with the blue brother logo on the front. This opens up then inside there is a slot which pulls out to hold the paper. The printer detects whether there is paper in this part and if there is, unless selected otherwise in the menu, will print from this area. If there in no paper in this part the printer will print from the bottom tray.

Speed and noise:
Speed of this printer is excellent. 28 pages per minute which extremely quick and is quick enough for any office or school. This speed is partly due to the printer only printing in mono (black) so the paper only needs to go through one toner and drum.
The noise of the printer is fine as well. When the printer goes into standby mode the printer makes not noise what so ever, and during printing it makes little noise, you can hear the paper being taken up etc but it’s not annoying or distracting. Straight after the print the printer goes quiet as well so it is not there whering away even when not in use like so older printer do.

Printer menu:
The printers menu on the computer is nice and simple as well. There are three tabs; Basic, Advanced, and support.
The basic tab is things like paper size, paper orientation (portrait or landscape) where you want the paper to be taken from (paper tray or cover) and media type (card, thick paper, thin paper etc). The advanced tab contains five sub-tabs. These are Print Quality, Duplex, Watermark, Page setup and Device options. Print quality is just as it says, you can select quality from as low as 300dpi to as high as 1200dpi with the two other options being 600dpi and HQ 1200 (1200 by 600 dpi). The duplex tab is where the printer prints on both sides of the paper but this printer is not capable of printing on both sides automatically. You must turn the paper yourself but it gives full on screen instructions of how to do it correctly. You can also select booklet duplex. The Watermark tab is to add a watermark to each document you print. This is a faint word printed on the background. This can be a set word such as COPY or DRAFT or you can write your own word. the Page settings is such things as reducing the printing size or increasing it from as low as 50% to as high as 400%. You can also mirror the print. The Device options actually have a lot involved but a lot of it you will not need to use. On this tab are such things as sleep time, print date and time etc but very little of it is very important. Back to the top tabs. the final tab, Support, which is where you can print a test page with all the printers details, you can check the setting of the printer, and visit the Brother website.

Control panel and paper tray:
OK, that’s enough about the menu, back to the printer itself. The printer has a small control panel on the top left. This features two buttons and four lights. The two buttons are Go and Cancel Job buttons. The go button is for such things as to print when you have replaced paper when it runs out or you can hold it for a few seconds to print the last document printed. The job cancel button cancels the current job. The four lights are the status, toner, paper and drum. The status light is a 3 colour LED, Green, orange and red. The light is green when the printer in ready and flashing green when it is warming up, the light is orange when the printer is printing a job, and the light is red when there is some error with the printer or when the toner cover is open. The paper light is a smaller one colour orange LED. This lights when there is no paper in the paper tray or draw. The toner light is the same light as the paper but this shows when the toner is running low or is empty and needs replacing. The drum light is the same again but shows the when drum life is near end is has ended.
Also on the top of the printer is the output tray. This holds up to 250 sheets of A4 paper and at the front of this tray is a mini tray that pulls up to hold the paper better to stop any falling off.

Conclusion:
Well thats about it. This is a fantastic printer and i don't think i can find any problems with it. I would definitely recommend this printer to anyone looking for a mono laser printer for a school, office or even a home. It is a fantastic printer which prints great quality with fast speeds and hold a lot of paper and if 250 sheet draw is not enough you can buy an extra 250 sheet draw to add to the paper capacity. 

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