Brother HL-5140 Laser Printer

Avoid this printer: feed is defective

Strengths: Prints quickly

Weaknesses: Clear design flaw on the feed.

Summary: I have never written a product review for anything, but I have had such a terrible experience with now FOUR of these printers that buyers should be warned.

Based on on-line reviews and price constraints, I bought this model for my home and for my office. In the past year I have had the home model replaced twice for a broken feed. I repeatedly asked the people at Brother to upgrade at my own cost, and they refused -- they would only replace this model. Well, when the third printer broke last month, I brought my office model home (I'm on sabbatical this year) and the office printer broke down today! Not only am I now missing a deadline -- I have spent days waiting for replacement printers and hours on the phone with very unhelpful people at Brother. I've decided just to give up and buy a better-designed (and more expensive)printer.

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Disposable printer

Strengths: none

Weaknesses: breaks down

Summary: This printer worked fine for one toner cartridge, then it died. The feed mechanism sounds like a garbage truck. It's a disposable printer, use for one toner cartridge then throw away.

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This Printer Rocks

Strengths: Fast, Cheap, Efficient

Weaknesses: Cost of replacement parts. The main drum (rated for 20,000 pages) costs almost as much as a new printer on sale---I bet they don't sell many drums.

Summary: (Edited February 04th by sdkid) This will be a short and sweet review, mostly because this is an awesome little printer. I purchased a 5040 (the previous model) for my home use almost 3 years ago.

Because of the excellent performance of that unit, I purchased 25 (yes--25) of the 5140 printers to use in classrooms at a middle school. That was almost 2 years ago now, and we have not had ONE single failure of any 5140 printer. That is pretty impressive considering the usage endured by these machines in some of these classes. Additionally, I NEVER have problems with drivers (unlike the HP inkjets these replaced) causing errors.

These printers JUST work, and I can say that not from the experience of ONE printer for several months, but from installing and maintaining 25 of these printers. I rarely even get reports of paper jams from teachers. Purchasing these is a no-brainer. Just Buy it!

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Strengths: Price, speed, size, total cost-of-ownership, print quality for text.

Weaknesses: No built-in networking. Envelopes occasionally jam. Manual only available in electronic format (unless you print it out).

Summary: This printer was a cinch to set up. Insert the CD, load the software and drivers and off you go. There is even a flash movie to walk you through things if you need it. While it does not have built-in networking, I was able to print through my network using Windows XP print sharing quite easily, even though my laptop is connected to the network wirelessly. The printer is quite fast, about 5 or 6 seconds to print the first page, and then the subsequent pages come out blindingly fast. I have not printed any complex graphics yet, but the quality of text is excellent. The manual is very detailed but is only available in electronic format as a PDF document. For the price (I paid $180 after rebates) you get a very reliable printer that does not take up much space on your desktop. The included paper tray holds 250 pages but the output will only hold 150. You can feed single sheets and envelopes through the manual feed. I printed 100+ letters and envelopes yesterday. The letters never jamed, the envelopes (which I hand fed) occasionally jammed when I fed them too close together. The jams were easy to remove and the print job restarted without a problem. I highly recommend the printer.

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Strengths: Fast, crisp laser printing. Perfect for school work (essays, reports, etc.) Does graphics decently well as well.

Weaknesses: Like other people, the manual feed feeds it slightly crooked so if you need to use that for envelopes, etc. then look at another printer. No color.

Summary: This has been a great laser printer for me mainly for school work. I really only need text printing but for the occasional graphic it does well. I would not get this if you are looking for photo printing or arts and crafts type of things. Get this strictly for text. For what it does, it does it extremely well minus the manual feed, of course.

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Great Price and Performance

Strengths: 20# light, quick printer, lots of memory, low cost toner and drums.

Weaknesses: No LED screen, a bit wider than my older printer, noisy when it prints.

Summary: My new computer has no Parallel port and when I used a Parallel/USB adapter my old Okidata 10p/m printer failed after 6 years of good use. This is a great replacement between the Brother 2040 and 5240. I have it set up as a network printer on the USB cable, so my Wife and I can use each others printers remotely. USB WIFI print servers are cheap if you want to print with your Notebook computers at Home. It has a Parallel port, if you are using DOS or are not into Plug and Play Technology.

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Strengths: Very fast, half-toning for gray-scale photos at 1200dpi is very good. Very crisp text.

Weaknesses: Electronic manual is a bit fuzzy in places, especially in paper orientation for special forms.

Summary: I replaced my old Lexmark 4029PS laser printer with this one. I was immediately impressed by the speed and the crisp quality of the output. The printer drivers installed on WinXP without a problem (USB). The real test for the printer was to try printing out a gray-scale photo on the printer in highest-quality. The old Lexmark did not have enough gray-scale at 300dpi, and at 600dpi turned most of the darker toning to black. The Brother printer (set at HQ1200) produced a printout which was very close to the original, with quite acceptable half-toning. I tried out printing an envelope and the orientation confused me. The instructions said to put the "front edge" of the envelope against the rollers. Since the envelope goes in narrow-edge first, I had no idea if they were talking about the left or right side of the envelope. I chose the stamp edge and it turned out to be the correct edge.

The wake-up time from sleep mode is very good, and the time-to-first page in seconds.

I am sure it must have some weaknesses, but as yet I have not found them.

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Strengths: Price, Speed, Quality, Electronic Manual

Weaknesses: Manual Feed

Summary: I wanted a general purpose printer that would provide crisp text quickly and at a good price. That's exactly what I got with the Brother HL-5140. It's the best value I could find in it's class and it hasn't disappointed. I consider the Electronic Manual a plus because I don't have to store another dead tree on my bookshelf. Truth be told, I didn't have to use the manual because setup was so simple. Highly recommend.

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Strengths: NA

Weaknesses: NA

Summary: I used to have an inkjet printer. I'm getting this laser one due to more printing volume. This laser printer is of course doing a much quicker job. And the setup is pretty easy which took me less than 5 minutes. So far so good.

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Strengths: Sharp test-faxt

Weaknesses: Manual Feed tray dose not work

Summary: This is a great printer if you just use the bottom tray

The manual feed tray dose not print straight on 8 1/2 x 11 single sheet

All my text printed slanted sometimes off more than 1/8 from side to side

I have returned 3 printers to Staples. All with the same problem

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Strengths: fast warm-up,fast printing,text looks good,graphics only so-so,low cost per copy ~3 cents.replacement toner cheap too.compact design. unit is heavy,good build quality.

Weaknesses: single feed tray is worthless,use this opening to remove paper jams.

Summary: perfect if your printing text only,using only the paper tray.

low cost per copy beats any ink jet made for text quality,no visible feathering on letters.

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Versatile even for Windows 98 & parallel port printing

Strengths: - Interfaces: both USB 2.0 & older IEEE parallel - Clear crisp printing of graphics & text - Fast

Weaknesses: - A bit noisy - Paper curls lengthwise

Summary: I really like this printer for both my older desktop Windows 98 system with an old parallel port AND my new laptop XP system with USB 2.0 port. I have both connected to the printer and can print from either PC. I looked at HP and Samsung but neither offered printers with backward compatibility to older systems.

Print quality is good: crisp, both text and graphics.

Only three things I noticed so far that I would change:

1. Envelopes are hit or miss whether they 'crumple' when being printed. Better quality envelopes do fine; cheap ones end up spindled-folded-or-mutilated [this last phrase for you oldtimers out there who remember the punch card era!]

2. Printer is noisier than my old Brother laser printer.

3. Paper does curl. I saw this in other reviews but didn't realize that the paper curls lengthwise. That is, upon exiting, the paper curls up vertically which I didn't expect. But the paper eventually lays flat.

So far, I'm happy and recommend this printer for anyone who needs the versatility of a model that can hook up to even older PCs without sacrificing print quality.

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