Home > Consumer Reviews > Brother HL-2070N Network Monochrome Laser Printer (Black)

I looked for a home laser printer to co-exist with my hp ink jet. The brother HL2070 had more ram than an HP 1022 I was considering and was lower priced. The toner / drum cartridges are also lower cost. When the printer arrived I noticed the quality of assembly was better than the HP 1022 I saw in the local stores. The driver set up was extremely easy. The print speed is quick. Small or full sized text is extremely good. I really like the multiple operating system support. I run Mac OSX and some Mac OS 9 software.

This is a great printer for the price. I have bought a number of HP printers through the years, always because I enjoyed their reliability.

However in recent years HP has become obnoxious with the cost of toner and really sticking it too their customers charging for every little thing.

This printer provides everything you need at a very reasonable price. Ethernet a great deal easily $100 with HP, 20 ppm, 10 second start up, and a 250 page enclosed tray(HP has started charging extra for this option how stupid is that) and in a very small case.

Brother has done an exceptional job the printer is as fast as promised, works flawlessly, installed very easily, and with the ethernet I can hide it in a desk in the kitchen without needing a computer nearby.

Highly recommended.

Pros:
Ethernet
20ppm
10 second startup
250 sheet tray
very small
great print quality

Cons:
Color

This is my first review on anything I've purchased, like most, I do a fair amount of research before buying anything, for this particular product, it is fairly new so there are not too many reviews out there, but most of the reviews seemed positive and the price was right. (There is a great rebate right now) Anyway, I was looking for an affordable B&W laser printer for my small business and I wanted to be able to network the printer to a PC as well as a Macintosh Powerbook, both are setup on a Dlink Wireless Router, PC is hooked up using a cat5 cable while the Mac Powerbook is wirelessly connected. I wasnt sure if the Brother 2070n would be compatible with both the PC and Mac at the same time since I have little know-how on setting up printer networks, but I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.
I connected all the cables to the printer (power cable, network cable). Then, I set up the Mac Powerbook first, just followed the instructions, installed the driver and added the printer to my computer, it took less then 5 minutes and I was able to print wirelessly from my laptop via my wireless router! I was pretty impressed with the ease of setup. Next I went over to my PC to install the driver and prayed that it would print as well. Yes my prayers were answered, the setup again took less then 5 minutes. Popped in the CDROM, setup the driver and the software found the printer on the network. My PC is running XP and there was no need to reset the computer, printed an email and it came out perfect!

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the Brother 2070n, I've only printed out a few things so I cant comment on the life of the cartridge or drum, but as far as ease of setup, this printer was a cinch to setup on a network. Other PROS: very affordable, small footprint, looks sleek in black. Cons: none yet, will have to report that after some more use.

I purchased this laser printer because it has Network capabilities at low cost. It is very fast. I have an older much more expensive HP laser and the start up time to print is much slower than this model. Of course that probably has something to do with age (3 yrs old).

I liked the 250paper capacity, since I only print about 10 pgs a week. I just loaded it an forgot about it. The footprint of the printer is quite small. The color matches the filing cabinet that it sits on, but that is neither here nor there. I have a desktop PC and Powerbook, it works well with both. I liked the USB 2.0 though if you don't have the cable already, you'll have to purchase one. My powerbook came with a printer and it happened to supply that printer cable. I haven't tried the watermark function but that sounds great.

The best part though is the cost of operation. With the normal toner cartridge they estimate 2.5 cents per page which is much cheaper than HP's 3.5 but having said that. HP 1022 is a beautiful machine (obviously that is highly speculative, what looks good to me may look ugly to you) but more expensive. The HP 1022n is much more expensive. So go the local store and check them out before purchasing online. CNET has great reviews and this printer was rated 7.1 compared to 6.3 for the HP. Samsung ML-2010 had great reviews, but the ML-2571n which has networking capabilities was over $200.

Neg - It does bend the paper when printing. It isn't a problem for me but some might find it annoying. Some would consider it loud. Which it is at startup, but it is a little less noisy while printing and silent on standby. It comes with a starter toner ~ 1500 pages which is fine but when the standard replacement is 2500 you feel a little ...

Overall - I really like this product and would purchase another for the kids but I don't need to because the network capabilities.

This printer is a fairly basic laser printer. Fast, functional, good for basic office work. The big noticeable difference is that it is extremely easy to setup and get running under Linux and FreeBSD. It listens to port 631 on it's network interface and presents as a postscript level 2 printer as far as your print spooler is concerned.

Using Ubuntu Linux I had it set up in less than 15 Minutes, just clicking on menus. Using FreeBSD and configuring cups by hand took me about half an hour (mostly wrestling with cups and copying the .ppd file from the linux box).