Brother HL-L2480DW Black and White Monochrome Printer Review

Brother HL-L2480DW Black and White Monochrome Printer Review

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Takeaway: Fast B&W prints & copies, best for sharp/crisp text as banding is visible across graphics.

This LED laser printer measures 16” wide, 10.5” tall, and 15.5” from back to front. With the scanner lid open, the total height is 23”. On the back of the machine you have the power port on the left, access door for the manual feed return tray and to help you clear paper jams, an Ethernet port for a wired network connection, and USB-B port for directly connecting to a computer with a cable. There are hand holds on both sides making it easy to lift and move this 22 lb printer.

At the front is a flip-open page stop for print outs with a 100-page capacity and below that is the manual feed slot with adjustable width paper guides for specialty paper like envelopes, labels, and card stock. At the bottom is the main paper tray that can hold up to 250 sheets of paper. Its page width guide can be adjusted by pressing the pressing the green tab on the right and adjusting it in and out. At the back of the tray is the page length guide which slides up for shorter paper and accommodates up to letter and A4 paper sizes. The tray can be extended to hold legal size paper by pressing in the button and sliding the back of the tray out. Note that when extended for legal size paper, the drawer will fully close at the front, but sticks out 2-1/4” at the back of the machine.

The toner cartridge comes pre-installed in the drum, but you’ll need to remove the protective orange holster. When you run out of ink, you can replace just the cartridge, which releases easily by pressing the green lever at the front left. Remember that only cartridges with the chip installed can be used with the printer, however, chips can sometimes be removed and re-used with new cartridges that don’t have them, for example, from a 3rd party vendor. Before you install it, be sure to gently shake the cartridge from side to side and front to back to evenly distribute the toner powder inside. The green slider at the back slides over the corona wire to clean it if you are having print quality issues. Always be careful not to touch the shiny roller on the underside of the drum as oils from your fingers can damage it. To install it, pull the front panel forward to open, then slide the drum and cartridge assembly in until it fully seats.

You can set the printer up using the onboard LCD or via the smart phone app by scanning the QR code on the lid to download the Brother Mobile Connect app. On the control panel, tap settings, Network, WLAN, Find Wi-Fi Network, select your home’s WiFi network name and enter its password. If you receive a connection Failed message, try unplugging the printer for a couple minutes and plugging it back in, as this allowed the printer to successfully connect to my network. You can also setup the printer by plugging it directly into your computer or laptop with a USB-B cable, though one is not included. You’ll need to download and install the setup software from Brother’s website and login to a Brother account. If you don’t want to share the printer on your LAN or connect it to the internet, you can use a direct WiFi connection, by choosing Wi-Fi Direct from the menu, then tapping manual to display its network name and password.

Sending print jobs wirelessly to the printer from my computer was fast, and printing started within a few seconds of hitting print. In terms of print quality, text-only documents are crisp, clear, and legible with speeds up to 36 pages per minute (ppm). The printer also prints 2-sided duplex by retracting sheets to print on the back, and the font size and line spacing are uniform across the entire document.

Large graphics and photos, however, printed with noticeable horizontal banding, both light and dark, across the entire page, which persist after multiple attempts at cleaning the toner cartridge and drum. Images also appeared much darker on paper than on screen with the default settings, resulting in a loss of contrast, texture, and fine detail. Similarly, photocopies of the printed image also appeared somewhat darker and grainier with a softer focus than the original. Since this is a monochrome printer, color images will also be converted to black and white grayscale, but by adjusting the density setting a bit lower, I was able to achieve a contrast closer to how the image appears onscreen.

For scanning, the can bed accommodates documents up to size A4. Note that the scanner is single-sided only, so you must manually flip double-sided pages over to scan or copy the second side. After tapping Scan, choose where and how to save the file from the menu, for example, to your computer as a PDF file. You can also send the output to the mobile app, and FTP server, or cloud service like an email, Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote, Box, and Evernote.

You can print directly from a mobile device using the smartphone app, which requires you to login or create an account to link your printer. Just make sure your phone and printer are connected to the same network. In the app you can print documents and photos or initiate a scan that gets saved directly to your phone. You can also manage or sign up for Brother’s Refresh EZ Print Subscription, an automatic toner refill program, and a free trial is included with this printer. Toner cartridges for this machine are the Brother TN830; the standard version yields up to 1200 pages while the high-yield XL prints up to 3000 pages for a lower cost per print. The starter cartridge included with the printer, however, will only last about 700 pages.

Overall, this printer is great if you don’t need color printing and mostly print text, as it prints quickly both single-sided and duplex. Graphics, however, won’t be photo or art quality and while it functions well as a scanner and copier with decent reproduction quality, it isn’t super fast for a large number of pages or when it’s set to the highest resolution. I do like that you can add shortcuts for functions that you use often to the control panel’s menu, like Scan to Mobile, and the printer was easy to setup on a network so you can use its Internet capabilities like linking to cloud storage and scan to email.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. #CommissionsEarned
Buy it at Amazon: Brother HL-L2480DW Black and White Monochrome Printer [Affiliate Link]