Fantastic printer. Read the manual!

It's been almost two years since we bought our first HL-5250DN, and we're still trying to find something bad to say about it. We recently bought another one as a gift for a friend's new office.

One thing we do know: we paid less for this duplexing, networking printer than we did just for the print server for our HP Laserjet. Meanwhile the Brother has been more reliable (nothing has gone wrong with it, unlike our HP which required a service call and new pickup rollers after just 10 months), its high-yield (7000 page) toner cartridges last much longer and are less expensive, it can handle as wide a variety of paper stock (printing envelopes is not a problem on this printer, if one simply reads the manual -- see below for details), and in almost every other respect it has been superior to our HP.

Like any other machine, you'll get best results out of the HL-5250DN by reading the user manual. This is true even for in-house techs. :-) Among many other things, you can learn about the printer's roller adjustment levers, located inside its rear cover. These levers can be easily adjusted to accommodate thicker stock such as envelopes (this topic is covered on page 95). We followed the instructions and moved the levers from position "1" to "2", and envelope printing has been perfect ever since. No jams or wrinkles. According to Brother's customer support these levers can be left in the "2" position, even for normal letter stock, without causing any harm to the printer. This is probably the best option for those who routinely print envelopes or on very thick stock.

Some people have mentioned clicking and clacking noises on the HL-5250DN. We found these noises occur when guides in the paper tray are wedged too tightly against the paper stock. When reloading the tray, keep a small gap between the guides and stock, and the clicks or clacks should disappear.

Brother's drivers and administration software are comprehensive, very well designed and have been absolutely trouble-free on our network, which is another claim we can't make about HP.

To install the printer we plugged it into our router, made a note of the IP address the router assigned to it (we're using DHCP), then set up the new port in Windows using this new IP address (in Windows 2000 it's done via Start/Settings/Printers/File/Server Properties/Ports/Add port). We also reserved the printer's IP + MAC addresses in our router's DHCP table, so it's assigned the same address every time the network is restarted. And finally we inserted Brother's CD and installed updated versions of their driver and excellent BR-Admin software.

That's all there was to it. Less than 10 minutes start to finish, and it's been running without a single hiccup for almost two years.

We also love the printer's low-toner sensor which, unlike those from some other manufacturers, can be easily defeated (by taping a small piece of white paper over the sensor hole on Brother's toner cartridges, on the right side). We do this routinely now with new cartridges, and it has allowed us to use every last bit of toner in every cartridge -- and replace them when we want. (Just as an aside, we once had an Epson inkjet that eventually got me so frustrated I threw it against a wall, because of Epson's greed in this regard. Every time we turned around, the printer would decide at least 1 of its 8 color cartridges was out of ink (even though 95% of the time the "empty" cartridge was far from empty!), the printer would simply stop, and that was that. Your choices were either a) replace the "empty" cartridge with a "new" (half-filled) cartridge -- at $15 a pop, or b) enjoy your $500 doorstop. It was costing us a fortune to keep that stupid printer running. In our view what Epson is doing amounts to fraud, or theft, and it should be outlawed. On top of that, someone recently calculated Epson is charging over $25,000.00(!) per gallon for their color ink. Just outrageous. But that's a separate review.)

The one (and so far, only) nod to our Laserjet comes in the area of graphics quality. We can't distinguish any difference for text quality, but even at 1200 DPI the Brother doesn't quite match the HP for photos and other halftones.

So to sum up, we've been thrilled with the performance and cost savings of our HL-5250DN. About the only note of caution we can come up with is, if you're looking for a laser printer that can withstand a 3-foot drop test, this definitely ain't it. But at this low price point, what Brother has delivered is (in our opinion) nothing short of amazing.