Verdict
The Brother HL - L3220CWE color optical maser printing machine is compact , quiet , and reasonably prompt – especially when impress in colour . It bring on enough prints , too . However , while home office user are unlikely to mind that it has no wired mesh porthole , its lack of duplex impression is more of a problem . bring in very usurious run costs , and this pressman is n’t an especially appealing software overall .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
Brother has recently refresh its range of home and small business sector optical maser printers , and the Brother HL - L3220CWE sit passably close to the bottom . It ’s a colour laser , able to print up to 18 dim , semblance or mixed page every bit . It ’s aimed at home and abode office users who need something a fiddling quicker than the distinctive small office inkjet , and in some ways it ’s well suitable to the job .
In others , not so much . pressman spotters might raise an eyebrow that the ‘ E ’ in this printer ’s example name does n’t denote wired Ethernet networking . That ’s not a show - plug given it does have wireless support , but it ’s also missing automatic duplex ( forked - sided ) printing – a must if you need to keep paper and farm more professional looking results .
Design and Features
The HL - L3220CWE is a compact printer , sitting almost perfectly square and take up about the same amount of space as a mid - sized inkjet . In smutty and livid plastic it looks every inch the power gimmick – there ’s no great design flair on show here . On its top control board you ’ll notice a low control panel represent a backlit , single - line display . There are a few clit to assist you navigate the menu and , although it can be a small fiddly , everything is quite easy to understand .
you’re able to campaign this printing machine quite far back against a wall or partition , and totally up against a wall on its left side . At the right wing there ’s a lover outlet , though Brother has cleverly mold spacers above and below it to prevent it being blocked off in a tight space .
Strictly speaking this is a optical maser - course of study pressman , rather than a laser . The light used to form an prototype during the printing process process issue forth from LEDs , but otherwise the two technologies are standardized . The HL - L3220CWE is quite keenly price for a colour laser , come in well below £ 200 , but even so it feel just a slight underspecified .
I ’m not bothered about its small 18 pageboy - per - minute ( ppm ) print fastness . Laser printer have a drug abuse of getting closer to their stated pep pill than inkjets , and 18ppm is plenty for temperate enjoyment among a handful of hoi polloi . The lack of connection porthole is n’t potential to be an issue either , at least not in rest home and micro offices where most devices will be connected wirelessly anyway .
This printer does palpate a bit special when it comes to report manipulation , though . Aside from the lack of duplexing , its 250 - sheet of paper cassette is supplemented only by a single - sheet multipurpose slot on the front instrument panel . While that ’s useful , it ’s less flexible than a tray , and condemns you to a piece of manual paper shuffling whenever you want to print on unlike media , such as head paper or card .
buddy ship the HL - L3220CWE with pitch-dark , cyan , Battle of Magenta and chicken toner value for only 500 pages – that ’s pretty measly for a laser . The standard surrogate cover only 1,000 pages , and even the high - yield alternatives are rated for only 3,000 contraband pages , or 2,300 for each colour . Using these , photographic print costs work out at a very sizable 14.2p per full color page – about as expensive as laser printers get to run . It ’s improbable that this printer ’s target area users would publish enough that they needed to replace its other consumables , but factoring them in lift the cost per page to 14.8p .
Like many other modern printers , the Brother HL - L3220CWE is compatible with a toner subscription serve : in this shell , Brother ’s EcoPro . This lets you select from four subscription layer covering 100 - 700 monthly page , and priced at £ 13 - 39 per calendar month . This equates to a cost per page pop from 13p , and decreasing to a skilful of 5.6p . However , as with all ink subscriptions , this is the unspoilt - case . In practice you ’ll give more unless you print all of the included pages .
Print Speed and Quality
We time printer performance from the moment we click Print , to when the net page drops into the output tray . That means we admit the prison term taken for the host personal computer to prepare and institutionalize the job . While that ’s a more naturalistic measure of the speeds you ’ll find , it does mean that printing machine struggle to equal their makers ’ claim – peculiarly on short job where the preparation time has quite an encroachment .
Despite this , the HL - L3220CWE performed quite strongly across our tests . It involve 21 second to deliver a first Thomas Nelson Page of black schoolbook , and went on to print five page at a pace of 8.8ppm . This increased to 14.8ppm over 20 varlet , and 17.2ppm over a 50 - Sir Frederick Handley Page papers .
We ’ve test fast inkjets that can rival the HL - L3220CWE ’s textbook speeds , but it leave all but the upright in the weeds when it comes to coloration . This printing machine hit 9.1ppm over five pages of mixed schoolbook and nontextual matter , and 14.6ppm over 20 . It even managed 14.4ppm on a much more heavyweight colour art job .
These are skillful f number at this price , but still this is n’t a very truehearted pressman by laser standards . That can be a good affair for a dwelling function , as debauched printers can often make much more of a racket . In fact , the HL - L3220CWE is exceptionally quiet – Brother says that was one of the design goals for its refreshed lineup .
I would n’t unremarkably expect arrant photographic print quality from an affordable color laser , but prints from the Brother HL - L3220CWE were amazingly good . Black text was predictably strong and sharp , while graphic prints were by and large quite punchy . I could spot a small amount of banding – distinct but subtle horizontal stripes – in some light colour fills . I also felt that the tone of some prints was a little too saturnine and desaturated . Generally , though , this printer is more than up to printing everyday office documents .
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Should you buy it?
This is one of the firm colour printer you ’ll find at this price . It ’s also clean quiet and heavyset , which could make it comfortable to exist with in a cramp small office
Unless you may make the most of Brother ’s EcoPro toner subscriptions , this printer will prove very expensive to run
Final Thoughts
There ’s quite a bit to like about the Brother HL - L3220CWE printing machine ’s quiet , speedy carrying into action , and the in general honest quality results it delivers . Unfortunately , though , I ca n’t strongly recommend it . While it ’s keenly priced , it ’s escape duplex printing , which we in the main advocate for office - focused twist . More significantly , if you ’re buying your own consumables it will examine very expensive to run , each ream ( 500 page ) of full - colour printing potentially costing a whopping £ 74/$79 .
If you desire an office color printer that ’s much cheap to own , considerCanon ’s MAXIFY GX5550 inkjet , which also has much more telling newspaper handling . And if that does n’t take your fancy , check out ourBest Printer Guideinstead .
Trusted Score
How we test
Every printing machine we go over goes through a serial publication of unvarying stoppage designed to guess key thing including print quality , hurrying and cost .
We ’ll also equate the features with other printer at the same price level to see if you ’re generate good value for your money .
FAQs
crony printers that commence ‘ HL ’ are all single - function lasers . The letters after the mannikin figure severalise you more about the feature : cytosine means colour , D means duplex ( double - sided ) printing , and W mean wireless networking . Brother ’s MFP model numbers commonly start with DCP , or MFC if they have facsimile capability .
Not amply . pressman within the same family will often use the same serial publication of consumables , so for example you may use toners bought for the MFC - L3760CDW with the HL - L3220CWE reexamine here . However , they would n’t necessarily be desirable for other Brother optical maser , and models near the bottom of the range may not admit the high electrical capacity option – it ’s always authoritative to agree . you may find which consumables to buy for a printer via the manufacturer ’s product web page , and it ’s often visible on a label next to the toners themselves .
Test Data
Full Specs
