Brother HL4570CDW Color Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex..
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349 of 353 people found the following review helpful.
Great Quality + Fast Color Printing, but a "Toner Hog"
By John
The Brother HL4570cdw is a fantastic printer for everyday and office use. This is my first Brother purchase. I'm using it to print out full colored brochures (graphics, photos, and text). So far it's been more than adequate when using the appropriate paper i.e. glossy paper. When on regular paper, the colors are not as sharp and pictures are not as clear. For photos, the resolution quality is acceptable/good, but there is a noticeable difference in quality from a print shop and a heavy duty office printer (you know the 5 foot jumbo printers).
As for print speeds, from start to finish it prints at an above average pace. The spooling process is quick (less than 2 minutes) for a 80 mb print job. It printed a 60 page, full color (vivid mode), double sided booklet in about 8-10 minutes.
PROS
- Easy printer and wireless Setup (less than 5 minutes).
- Good print speeds (auto-duplex and straight printing).
- Excellent print quality for general graphics and text.
- Good photo quality when using the right paper.
- Acceptable noise level for a printer
- Toner replacements are cheaper than HPs, Lexmark, and Canon.
CONS
- Printer reads toner as empty when full. You must do the toner trick which involves covering the clear holes with black electric tape on the toner cartridges as a temporary solution. For a more permanent solution, you need to reset the computerized toner levels on the printer. You do this by 1) Opening the printer door 2) Holding Back and Cancel at the same time 3) A menu to reset the toners pops up 4) You hit Okay to reset.
- I printed approximately 900 full color pages with the "starter" cartridges it came and some cartridges are already visibly running low. While the prints were on the high color (vivid) settings, it is a shame that this printer appears to be another "toner hog" and did not print to the 3000/1500 page estimates the cartridges claim.
- Photo prints are poor when printing full sized photos on regular paper. For best printing results you need to use specialized glossy paper.
- Must use "multi-purpose" pullout feeder tray for specialized paper or else risk paper jams
- Very slight paper curl
- Noise level maybe too loud for a quiet office space.
I compared the Brother HL-4570cdw's print quality extensively with HPs and Canon color lasers in this price range, and the Brother printed out more impressive looking demo prints than its competitors. The print quality is enough to merit the purchase of this printer and because the toner replacements are relatively cheaper than other companies the Brother HL-4570cdw receives my recommendation.
Overall, I'm happy with this purchase and would recommend it if you get it for the right price. I would not pay more than $400-$425 for this machine which is the price I paid.
216 of 224 people found the following review helpful.
Best mid-range laser printer with curling paper problem
By Ronald Epstein
I hope the one message I can get out to everyone is that printers are one of the most undependable machines that anyone can look to purchase. I run a home business and I made the mistake of spending well over $1k a few years back for a Konica Minolta 5430DL. It was a beauty of a printer, but shortly after spending nearly $600 in replacement cartridges the printer started falling apart.
What I learned is that even the priciest printers break. This is more of a disposable technology than something you can hand down to your kids. When all the printer companies play the game of selling printers with limited ink cartridges and then charging you more than the printer itself for refills, you know that the only way to come out ahead is to buy the best bang-for-the-buck printer with the expectation that it's only going to last a few short years.
I believe the Brother HL4570 is that kind of printer.
For $400 I knew I was buying something mid-range. It would certainly be a step down from the $1k Konica Minolta but at least the value of the printer is close to the value of replacing cartridges. This means when I finally deplete the cartridges I have the choice of buying more cartridges or another printer -- whichever costs less.
I chose Brother because I wanted a wireless printer that played well with Mac. If read on counteless discussion forums that more than any other brand, the Brother is the easiest to install with a Macintosh computer.
Those discussion forums were correct. The wireless setup with my iMac took less than 10 minutes to complete.
...but I am getting ahead of myself.
Bought this printer when it dropped in price to $399 from $450. Had it shipped Amazon Prime 2-day and Fedex delivered it overnight. It's rather heavy, weighing in at about 65 lbs. The unit is well packaged. Be sure to read the quick-start manual for important unpacking instructions. There are a lot of doors and drawers that you need to access and remove small pieces of packaging.
Once unpacked and plugged in, the first step was to pair the printer to my WiFi. A small LCD display lets you navigate through a setup wizard that automatically detects your WiFi network. The next step is simply inputint the password which is a bit of a cumbersome process as you have to wade through rows of characters till you get to the numbers and letters you need. Frankly, that part of the setup seems very old-school. Brother could have really improved upon this process. Be aware that as you enter each number and letter of your password that character quickly turns to an asterick to hide it. Don't be confused by what the printer is doing.]
Once the password was entered the printer immediately paired to my network. No hiccups whatsoever.
The next step was even simpler. I put the install disc in my iMac, run it, and it automatically installs the drivers and detects my printer. Never have I ever been able to pair a printer to my Mac or PC this easily. It really is true -- this printer is Mac's best friend.
I decided to do a test page which is done simply by pressing the GO button on the printer. It didn't take long for the printer to whiz into motion and produce a page.
Two immediate problems: First, my room stunk of toner. This thing put out a stench that I could not believe. I had read another review from someone complaining about the smell this priter produces. Fortunately, it seems, the stench was only present at the initial print. I am hoping that the printer is just breaking itself in. I will keep you posted on future prints.
The second problem is page curling. Pages come out curled. I am using 30 weight paper which should be less prone to curling. I understand there are adjustments you can make in the computer to lessen the curl. I will certainly look into this and keep you posted.
Print speed and quality is very good. Black text looks very crisp but colors are not true to original. I had read in another review that this Brother printer produces darker versions of the original color. This is true. Oranges were deeper, light blues became dark blues. Potentially, I don't see this as a major problem -- but some who are more finicky about their printer producing true colors will not be happy.
I won't even talk about photos. Haven't tested photo printing because I already know it will look like garbage. You don't use these printers for photos and anyone buying it for that use is foolish.
Is the printer loud? Somewhat, yes. But realize that I am coming from a monstrous Konica Minolta machine that was even louder than this Brother. So, for me, the printer is quieter than the more industrial sized machines I have been used to.
Thus far, I am very impressed with the ease of setup and immediate pairing to my WiFi network and iMac. I mean, I had this running in less than 15 minutes after full unpack.
As for overall quality? It is what I expect from a $400 laser printer. It's speedy with highly acceptable print quality. However, it's not on par with business class machines. It suffers from subdued color reproduction, colors are slightly darker than they should be and pages curl.
The machine awakens from sleep and produces a page in less than 10 seconds. This is great. My Konica Minolta would wake from sleep and go through a minute of two of machine "whirring" until it decided to spit out a page.
For $400 this doesn't seem to be a significant step down from my $1k Konica Minolta business class computer and that's why I am not complaining.
You can read through countless reviews on Amazon hoping to get the right printer. Every single one of them has a handful of bad reviews and complaints about breakage and toner cost. I found the Brother, particularly this model, to be the better rated printer in its price range. Certainly toner replacement will be a little cheaper than going with HP.
UPDATE
The stench I was experiencing with print jobs has lessened, though there is still the slightest odor of print toner whenever I run the printer. I am hoping this subsides with age.
Went into PRINT SETTINGS on my Mac and selected REDUCE PAGE CURLING. It did very little to curb the problem. This printer still produces curled prints and that's the only annoying issue I still have with this printer.
In all, the Brother 4570 is probably the best color laser printer in the $400 range. Certainly a better option than purchasing an HP which comes with limited-filled toner cartridges and (from reviews I have read on Amazon) its own set of headaches.
146 of 153 people found the following review helpful.
Great Color Laser But VERY Expensive Toner
By jelarv
I purchased this in November 2010 and have had for 5 months. I wanted to give it 3.5 stars, but Amazon doesn't allow half stars. While the purchase price was a VERY good value, the price of the replacement toner and insistence of the system to force you to replace the cartridge even when they clearly still contain ink is very frustrating.
PROS:
1. Reasonably priced for a wireless color laser
2. Excellent color documents
3. Relatively fast
4. Prints double-sided
5. Wi-Fi
CONS:
1. VERY expensive refills. I don't print that much and all 4 cartridges have run out in 5 months. The replacement cost for the 4 cartridges is $200. Because it's a relatively new model, it doesn't appear there are options other than to buy genuine Brother Products.
2. The printer just stops working when it deems that the toner cartridges need to be replaced. The documents I printed the day before looked great and so I can't believe all 3 color cartridges are fully depleted of toner, but Brother insists they must be replaced to get the printer to run again.
3. The pages curl up at the ends.
4. It won't print B&W or gray-scale in PowerPoint 2010 even when selecting that option (Brother told me to call Microsoft and have them re-write PowerPoint software to fix this problem, which a complete blow off of a customer).
5. It works great with a PC, but won't print color photos from a Mac (they come out B&W and won't size correctly).
6. A little noisy but not too bad (don't plan to have a phone conversation via a speaker phone or headset if you're sitting within 10 feet of the printer while it's printing)
UPDATE as of 11-July-2012:
I just ordered 4 new high-capacity ink cartridges (the TN-315 model) yesterday (for $85/each x 4 = $340), which is the second time I've ordered high capacity cartridges in the ~20 months I've had the printer. This is after using the regular-capacity cartridges that came with the printer when I purchased it in November 2010. I can't say exactly how much printing I do, but it feels like I'm filling the paper tray about every 4-6 weeks and so it's not a lot. At this pace, I'm spending ~$350 per year on ink.
After searching the web I found a work-around to the problem I mentioned above, which allows me to manually reset the ink cartridge counter so that it will continue using the cartridges until the ink actually runs out (the only downside is that I need to look to see when the ink stops printing a specific color and then replace the cartridge). Overall, I really like the printer and would give it 4 starts at this point.
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