Brother began its business making sewing machines. But, it has since grown into a leading manufacturer of printers. Brother printers can be a great choice for anyone looking to make a name for themselves in the printer marketplace. They are affordable and easy-to-use, making them a good option if they need to produce quality output at a low price.

Read our shopping guide for our take on Brother printers – the features you should look for, the specifications that matter, and the “gotchas” to avoid – and you’ll be all set to find the model that’s perfect for you.

Brother offers a wide array of printers, each with a different set of helpful features, but some are better than others. Here are the features we consider essential.

Wireless printing is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Wireless printing from Brother printers allows you to print documents or photos right away using your Android or iOS smartphone. Wireless printing is an essential convenience for anyone who spends more time using their phone than they do on their desktop computers.

Double-sided printing: We love saving trees, and double-sided printing is one of the best ways to do it. Double-sided printing also helps you save money on paper, especially if your plan is to print many large documents.

The Brother All-In-One printers print, scan and fax. Other models can only do scanning and printing, without an integrated fax. It can be very useful to have a scanner, especially when you need it for work that involves the signing of many documents. A batch scanner is much more efficient than scanning multiple pages one at a time.

Brother’s printers offer great value and are priced competitively with more popular brands. Brother printers are priced between $50-50 depending on the features.

It’s affordable: Brother’s black-andwhite printers range in price from $50-99. Sometimes called “monochrome”, Models in this price range don’t sacrifice much besides color, so it’s definitely possible to find a Brother laser printer with things like wireless printing for less than $100.

Brother has models in the mid-range that cost $100 to $199. These machines have features that are not available from other brands. You’ll find robust multifunction machines in this price range: Brother’s scanner/fax/printer/scanner/fax machines have Wi, laser printing and duplex printing. Fi. This range includes many Brother printers that produce excellent prints, and include nearly all the bells and whistles.

Expensive: Between $200 and $350, you’ll encounter Brother’s printers for small businesses. The printers at this price point are rugged and designed to work with many different devices in large network environments. Brother’s most pricey options are ideal if you require a printer capable of printing 50+ pages per day.

For each model, find out what the price of replacement ink/toner is. The majority of printer companies are not in the printer industry. Printer manufacturers are in the ink industry. If you find a printer with an unbelievably low price, look up the cost of ink or toner for that specific model and you may find that some “amazing” deals will cost more over the course of ownership than models that require a higher upfront investment.

Check that your Brother printer requires any driver or software prior to installing it. Many operating systems are able to treat Brother printers “plug and play”. For years, computer owners have wrestled with installing printer drivers – the software that enables your computer to interact with the printer – on their computers. Software and manufacturers drivers may be beneficial, but most modern operating systems, such as Windows and Mac OS X (and Linux), include drivers that allow you to use a large number of printers. Before you start fussing with third-party software, test to see what your operating system can do on its own.

Do not buy more than one cartridge of ink and toner. Both ink and toner dry out, so if you buy too much ahead of time and you don’t need it for a while, your spare ink could end up useless. If you print fewer than 50 pages per month, don’t keep more than one spare ink or toner cartridge.

You can find the Brother printer that is best for you by taking the cost of one cartridge of ink/toner and dividing it by the amount of pages it project to print. You will get an estimate of the cost per page. You can then compare the long-term cost of ownership by understanding how each model costs per page.

Q. Q. Does a Brother Printer work with my Mac?

A. Yes. All Brother printers are compatible with Mac OS X, either through Brother’s included software or OS X’s built-in plug-and-play printer functionality.

Q. Which looks better: paper printed from an inkjet printer or paper printed from a laserjet?

A. The exact printer used will vary, but generally laser printers print clearer pages and can withstand the inkjet smears. Inkjet printers are measured in dots per inches (dpi). This means that if two printers are being compared, it is more likely that the laser model will be sharper.

Q. Q. Will my photos print well with a laser printer or will they look bad?

A. Yes. While color laser printers can be expensive, they are capable of producing excellent prints for printing photos. Just be careful when you’re looking at laser printers. In order for photographs to look good, the printer needs to have a high dpi rating. We recommend that you have a printer with at least 2400 dots per inch for color photos.

Monochrome laser printers are fundamentally identical machines. We used the same criteria to determine our color laser pick, but we reduced the price limit to $200 since mono laser printers can be more expensive. After researching the category, we considered machines such as the HP Laser. Jet Pro M118dw HP Laser. Jet Pro M203dw . The Brother HL-L2350DW is our favorite choice for individuals with frequent printing needs. We reviewed the product and consulted professionals to make a decision.

Brother HL-2450DW Laser printer, affordable for basic tasks. With its low operating cost, speedy operation and many useful features the HL-2450DW can be a great choice for anyone who is looking for a laser printer under $100.

Amazon, $194 *Newegg

The Brother L2350DW Monochrome Laser Printer is simple and inexpensive. People with simple printing requirements such as taxes, recipes, boarding passes etc. will find it a perfect choice.

This machine is easy to set up. Simply remove the packing tape and place the toner cart. Adjust the paper-tray guide guides and load your paper. The HL-L2350DW printer has a more traditional user interface. It is composed of a simple monochrome LED screen and a series of rubber buttons. There’s no way to type in a Wi-Fi passkey on the machine itself, so you have to complete the process with the help of a PC. The printer was able connect to our network quickly and reliably during testing. It also maintained the connection even when it was several stories away from our router. Some owners have reported issues with this printer’s predecessor, the HL-L2340DW, refusing to wake up from Deep Sleep mode, so we were happy to find that the new model didn’t give us any problems of the sort during our testing. The HL-L2350DW can be operated over USB, however you will need to provide your cable. An Ethernet port can be added to your HL2370DW upgrade. While the HL2350DW model has a monochrome monochrome display, it is still a standard feature for cheap monochrome laser printers. Rozette Roga The HL-2450DW supports Windows and Mac computers, as well Linux. Additionally, the HL-L2350DW can be used with every major mobile printing system, including Google Cloud Print. Chromebook owners will love it. However, you may have problems getting the printer to complete Cloud Print registration; we certainly did. Access the printer’s Web Control Panel, go to Networking, then disable IPv6. After that, the printer could immediately access Cloud Print and continued to work flawlessly during our tests. It is a little strange that Brother sends the HL-2450DW with this setting, as it is known that Cloud Print can’t be used with IPv6. At least it’s an easy fix.

There is no need for additional software to run the HL-L2350DW. It has both native Windows and Mac drivers. Air is also compatible. Print on i. OS is also possible. You can even add the Brother Print Service to Android. Brother’s i. Print&Scan application is compatible with all platforms. It’s perfectly functional, if not as well-designed as HP’s software. Regardless of what quality setting was selected, it produced horrible quality prints in our tests. Brother did not respond to our request for clarification. We recommend you to avoid using the app. Instead, print directly from your OS’s native print dialog. It works great!

In our testing, we found that the HL-2450DW printed good looking text right from the box. It was easy to read small fonts like tax forms or other documents (all the way down below 2 points) and it produced clear edges and darkened centers for larger headers. The printer should print text-heavy papers well. At default settings, test graphics and photos looked only average. In solid-color areas there was light banding and the graphics felt a little grainy. It is sufficient for personal use and internal business documents. You can also adjust the resolution and toner density settings, but this may affect toner longevity.

Although it is less expensive than our color laser choice, the HL-2450DW has the same paper capacity as the original model and a large 250-sheet tray. Photo: Rozette Rago Brother claims that the HL-2450DW can produce up to 32 pages per time, 5 times faster than the old machine. Although it wasn’t as fast as we expected, the HL-L2350DW was still speedy enough to be used for any type of home-office or home-office usage. In both cases, it printed at 25 pages/minute while producing single-sided PDFs, while also printing 12 pages/minute while using duplexing. It was faster than our top choice for color, the HPM255dw. Test print jobs reliably started up within a couple of seconds, too, so you won’t be left waiting long in any case.

There are many options when it comes to choosing the right Brother printer.

A combination Brother copier, scanner, and copier can give you more options without having to buy multiple machines. An all-in-one Brother inkjet printing machine is ideal for printing multipurpose documents in small offices or homes. It can print black-andwhite documents as well color charts and brochures. Basic photo printing is also possible. Brother’s color laser printers are capable of producing high-quality pages and faster prints for larger volumes.

A Brother INKvestment Tank printer is a great option if you don’t want to waste time ink-fussing. They use cartridges but have an increased capacity. The printers also come with an ink storage system that allows for uninterrupted printing for months. INKvestment Tank XL models have twice the amount of ink in their boxes.