Brother HL2270 Review (and Linux Compatibility)

Despite my commitment to try and be as paperless as possible recently, I decided that it was time for me to buy a new printer. I have to print papers from time to time, and my previous method of digging the printer out of my closet and having to hook it up every time I wanted to print something just wasn't working for me. Not only that, but the $30 HP inkjet had been having problems as of late, and was too expensive to maintain.

The Brother HL2270DW caught my eye. It has wireless networking, good Linux support, and (after the initial cost) is actually really inexpensive to maintain. So, I did what any good student would: I did some math.My old printer used HP 61 ink. It costs $18 for a black-and-white cartridge (and another $20 for color ink, though I will leave that out of these calculations). It’s rated for 190 pages, and in real world usage, I’m lucky if I get ~60-80. But let’s say I get the full 190 pages per cartridge that the manufacturer rates it at: $18 / 190 pages = .094736842, or roughly 10 cents per page of ink.My new printer uses the Brother TN450 High Yield Toner Cartridge The current price on Amazon.com is $48.99. It is rated for 2600 pages. Using the same formula, $48.99 / 2600 pages = .018842308, or slightly less than 2 cents per page. That’s an 80% savings.But, more than that, I really just wanted a great wireless printer, and I am tired and jadded from poor experiences with cheap ink-jets.<h3>Set-up and Configuration</h3>Set-up is dead simple. If your router has WPS (WiFi Protected Setup), all you have to do is press the buttons. If not, and you’re on Linux, you can hard-wire it via Ethernet to configure the wireless networking, and then you’ll never have to hard-wire again. And, if you’re on Windows or Mac, you can also use the setup software if you prefer. Really, it couldn’t be any easier or more platform-independent. Installing the printer on our three machines at home was a piece of cake. They saw the network printer automatically, picked a driver, and it was working within like 10 seconds. Installation on Linux was a breeze. In the three weeks that I’ve owned it, I’ve not come across any connection or printing issues. And, because it is wireless, I’m able to just stash it in a cabinet and forget about it until I need to use it. When I do, though, I just print to it and am able to confidently assume that it printed successfully and is waiting on me.I am really happy with my purchase. The Brother HL-2270DW is a fantastic deal, a remarkable printer, and works great out of the box with Linux. So far the experience has been great.