Brother HL-2140 / HL-2142 Reviews

Pros: Printing quality and high toner capacity

Cons: Quality of plastic and cover opening mechanism

Overall: The printer is a laser jet so it prints flawlessly with minimal problems. It is also very fast and has a massive toner yield capacity of well over 1000 pages. Brother always make reliable and trustworthy printers so its no surprise to me that they've earned a good reputation.

In terms of noise, it is moderate. While turning on, it warms up and can be irritating, but while on standby, it is completely silent and while printing, it emits the same amount of noise as any other printer.

The advantage of having a laser jet is that it gives flawless results, the paper is smooth with no smudges like ink jets, and it has a very fast printing rate. The toner capacity is above average so I wont be replacing it for a while. If it ever runs out, buying a new one would actually cost a lot more than the printer itself. However if you buy online, it is substantially cheaper costing around 20 bucks on ebay/amazon.

When opening the printer from the front, the cover feels like its about the break in half because the plastic is so thin, the opening/closing mechanism could do with some adjustments because it is very difficult to close.

Overall its an excellent printer and it would only cost around 30-40 bucks now. note, a wireless version of this printer has come out which means that there is one less cable

Purchased at: Harvey Norman

Brother HL-2140 / HL-2142 is recommended by Ben088

Pros: Easy set up, low noise when printing, no noise in sleep mode, paper tray enclosed in printer and printout sits on the top of printer with no need to fold anything out. Good quality printing. Interesting information about the printer provided when you print out the printer settings.

Cons: Warranty is for only 12 months. Replacement Original toner is more than new printer. I hope when the time comes to having to get toner I can get it cheaper somewhere else.

Overall: I purchased the HL-2140 from Joyce Mayne for $84 this month (March 2011). I have only printed out 61 pages, so I am no expert, but it still reports 100% toner left, no jams so far, (just keep your paper dry).

Pros: Very well priced, cheap cartridges (ebay $25 ea delivered), reliable, compact, hidden paper tray, loads heaps of paper.

Overall: I love this product, have purchased 2 for work (and am getting another one for our other branch) and have one at home, good, solid, reliable, no problems, no error messages, sets up on my network without any problems. Love it!

Pros: Easy to use and cheap to buy. Very helpful at the service centre and offered to send me one free toner cartrigde to replace the two I have gone through in 5 months (and I do not print more than 100 pages per month)! Hopefully I can get a few more prints out of the next one.

Cons: I purchased my HL2142 in May because my old printer died (it was the model before this one and I was very happy with it). After two months I had to reprace the toner cartridge @$80.00. Then just today the toner light came on again 3 months after replacing the old one. I would have printed much less than half of one packet of paper( less than 200 sheets). If this continues we will not be keeping this printer as we got it because laser printers were supposed to be more cost effective.

Overall: Cheap and easy to use. Printer cartridges are not cheap - almost as cheap to replace the whole printer. In my experience toner cartridge needs changing too frequently.

Pros: Small, light, economical, easy to use, reliable and if it does have paper jam, which is very infrequent, easy to deal with.

Overall: Compact, light, economical, easy to use, reliable, and fast. Good quality prints. Great for student & home use.
Accepts low cost generic cartridges, no problem. If you need to replace drum, just buy another printer, its cheaper than the replacement drum & comes with a new full size cartridge as well for under $100 if you shop wisely.
If it does have paper jam, which is very infrequent, very easy to clear. Would buy again.

Pros: Lower cost toner than opposition models. Paper tray is fully enclosed.

Cons: Flimsy build, ugly design, cost of consumables.

Overall: I decided not to buy the Brother while looking for a replacement for a solid little Samsung ML2010 which will NOT work with a Mac OSX upgrade, whatever I do (Sam. don't upgrade his drivers too often!).
I rejected the brother because I thought the build was a bit flimsy but mainly because of the split toner cartridge and drum arrangement. This reduces the cost of carts, though not by that much ($75 against $100-125). After 10K to 20K copies you are looking at replacing the drum. Officeworks had the printer for $139 (compared to around $120 for a Xerox or HP) but the replacement drum was $209. Given that the printer has a drum in it already and a cartridge and a lot more besides, how can they justify such a disgraceful price for a replacement part? Almost 150% of the new product! When the time came, you'd simply throw out the printer and buy a new model, right? I hope they're not claiming any environmental credentials anywhere.
I found this simply outrageous, regardless of the quality of the printer.