I can thoroughly recommend this duplex printer – it is quiet, fast and has an automatic power saving device that allows it to sit, apparently unpowered, until you send a print command. It then bursts into life and hey prestoquality is good and it has a reasonable size footprint.

I can thoroughly recommend this duplex printer – it is quiet, fast and has an automatic power saving device that allows it to sit, apparently unpowered, until you send a print command. It then bursts into life and hey prestoquality is good and it has a reasonable size footprint.

Plug it in and it prints without any problems under windows or dos and in duplex, straight out of the box. Here are the specifications for the Brother HL5250DN Automatic Duplex Network Printer:

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• Printing speed – 30ppm
• Network ready – 10/100 Base-TX
• Up to 1200 x 1200dpi
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and IEEE1284 Parallel
• Memory – 16 MB
• Windows, Mac, DOS and Linux compatible
• Standard input capacity – 250 sheets
• Standard toner yield – 3500 pages

After five months this has proven to be reliable – including the duplex option (which i’ve used plenty of times and had no misfeeds). However the collection tray for printed pages can’t cope with paper curl (caused by the heating unit) so after about a dozen pages it pushes everything on the floor. This is a real problem if you’re printing multi-page documents that you want to stay collated.Some papers are worse than others – but different brands of `cheapo’ 80 gsm white have proven to be consistently problematical. Higher-price papers curl less so are usually ok. Apart from that only one grumble and that is the printers are shipped with a ‘sample size’ toner cartridge which is rated at 2000 copies (but packed up after 1500 for me). Worse still the printer decides when the toner pack is dead and then refuses to print – not like the good old days when you could give the toner pack a shake and get a few hundred extra copies out. Unless you only intend to use this occasionally (and who buys a laser unless they want to produce lots of copies??) make sure you also buy the larger (‘7000 copies’) toner pack (ref tn-3170) straight away otherwise you will find yourself out of toner and with a (temporarily) ‘dead’ printer much sooner than you would reasonably expect.

After five months this has proven to be reliable – including the duplex option (which i’ve used plenty of times and had no misfeeds). However the collection tray for printed pages can’t cope with paper curl (caused by the heating unit) so after about a dozen pages it pushes everything on the floor. This is a real problem if you’re printing multi-page documents that you want to stay collated.Some papers are worse than others – but different brands of `cheapo’ 80 gsm white have proven to be consistently problematical. Higher-price papers curl less so are usually ok. Apart from that only one grumble and that is the printers are shipped with a ‘sample size’ toner cartridge which is rated at 2000 copies (but packed up after 1500 for me). Worse still the printer decides when the toner pack is dead and then refuses to print – not like the good old days when you could give the toner pack a shake and get a few hundred extra copies out. Unless you only intend to use this occasionally (and who buys a laser unless they want to produce lots of copies??) make sure you also buy the larger (‘7000 copies’) toner pack (ref tn-3170) straight away otherwise you will find yourself out of toner and with a (temporarily) ‘dead’ printer much sooner than you would reasonably expect.

Reviews from purchasers :

• Generally OK (but )
• Great laser printer
• A great printer – ideal for the Small/Home Office and far easier to network than the instructions suggest!

A great printer – ideal for the small/home office and far easier to network than the instructions suggest. I bought the brother to replace a disappointing hp laserjet that died after only 2 years in action. Pc pro rate the hl-5250 and its siblings very highly as they produce high quality printouts at a lower cost per page and i agree with their reviews. The duplex function is great and works flawlessly – ideal for those long documents. When i first installed the printer, i connected it directly to one of the pcs in my home network. I did look at the networking instructions but they seemed far too complex. I bought a new modem router and decided to connect it via the ethernet port and not bother looking at the instructions. My modem just recognised it as another device in the network and all of the pcs instantly recognised it as a network printer. This is particularly useful when mixing xp and vista machines in a network. I can recommend this printer to anyone with a home network.

Duplex is worth it shipped from france. 5 star product:: less a star because not uk productthis is an excellent printer. Our offices use it and an earlier model (hl-5150d). Quick and great print quality. What you’re paying for over above most laser printers is the duplex unit (prints on both sides of each page). It is wort the extra:: saves paper and takes all the work out of producing small numbers of booklets (using either brother’s interface or documents produced using publisher). I haven’t had to test their turnaround if a fault develops but it will mean return to base rather than on site :(.