Top positive review
1,315 people found this helpful
After decades of Inkjet insanity, I had enough! The HL2395 is my laser savior!
By Arct1c0n on Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2018
Yep, after over two decades of both personal and professional usage of Inkjet printers a variety of work environments as both a personal geek an IT support specialist, I finally had enough of the Inkjet Insanity. After getting laid off from Christmas this year and starting to go job hunting and dealing with that fiasco only to find my 4th or 5th inkjet printer in around 8 years was clogged AGAIN from my very sporadic lack of use and I would have to shell out over $60 in ink and then spend God knows how much time troubleshooting, running test prints and wasting tons of ink and money trying to unclog the dried jet heads on my $120 Canon Pixma printer, I finally snapped, NO MORE!!!!!!! Being the IT guy for over 14 years, I have worked with many Brothers over the years and though I am sorta of biased to HP's Laserjets, Brothers laser printers have had a good record in my book for being mostly reliable, solid, easy to troubleshoot and fix and also pretty dang good up front cost e vs other brands, namely Canon and HP. I have worked on many MFC models over the past decade and the more basic HL printer only series pretty much falls in line with the MFC series. After doing my research like I always do, I decided to spend the extra money over the popular but older 2014-2015 HL- L2380DW https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HRG01A4/ as there were two major differences between that model and the newer HL-L2395DW 1. CPU speed increased from 266mhz on 2380 to 600mhz on new 2395 2. RAM from increased 64 Megabytes on 2380 to 128 Megabytes on new 2395 These two component upgrades are important for laser printing functions for many reasons but mostly due to: 1. Faster CPU results in less processing of more complex print jobs, especially using built in printer apps cloud storage apps 2. Larger RAM will result in less frequent communication between printer and computer and jobs will be cached and print faster as a result The new 2395DW model also has a slight edge in these areas as well vs the older 2380DW: 1. 2395 does 36ppm vs 32ppm of the 2380 for both prints and copies 2. Monthly max page usage amount increases from 10,000 on 2380 to 15,000 pages a month on 2395 3. Near Field communication for smartphones added on 2395DW 4. Decreased energy usage. 2395 in sleep is 1.2Watts vs 5.8Watts of 2380, Ready mode is 43.5W vs 60W and Printing is 450W vs 510W Visual changes: 1. New 2395 has more squarish appearance with larger side handles and thicker scanner lid. A personal preference here 2. New 2395 has removed the touch sensitive buttons and gone with traditonal push buttons on main control panel. Time will tell if this a good or bad thing And by far the biggest difference which may throw some people off is that the toner cartridges and drums are TOTALLY NEW & DIFFERENT for the new 2395DW model vs the older 2380DW model. New 2395DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN730 / High Yield Toner TN760 / Drum DR730 Old 2380DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN630 / High Yield Toner TN660 / Drum DR630 In short, if you have stocked up supplies of TN630 or TN660 Brother or refurbished/cheaper non brother toners, they WILL NOT WORK in this new 2395DW model! Brother has introduced a new 700 series of toners and drums for this new unit and you HAVE TO USE TN730 or TN770! With that clarification out of the way, I decided to unpack my black laser beauty and see if it was worth the extra price of admission being totally new and ditching Inkjets forever: 1. Setup is childs play. Seriously. Download newest Brother drivers from website, click and run and follow the directions for USB, wifi or ethernet install. Don't use the outdated CD, trust an IT guy on this. Also, don't download and install the iPrint@Scan software, its too bloated to be useful, ignore it. 2. The printer fired right up the first time and pulled its setting from the computer via my ethernet connection, didn't even need to set the time the hard way, thank God. 3. Printing via Ethernet is instant and fast but USB is also a good option if its right next to your computer. Wifi connections can be flakey at times, it will all depend on your Wifi setup and router quality on how good or bad this will be. 4. Printer touch LCD screen is responsive and clear to use and easy to read. 5. Brother thankfully kept the ability to switch Low Toner END to CONTINUAL which means it will let you drain your toner empty until it stops working entirely vs the printer telling you to replace it. But your print quality may suffer, so keep that in mind. 6. The printer is not quiet, most laser printers are not but its not an issues for my needs. There is a quiet print mode if you are really picky about noise but your printing speed is cut by at least half, so expect slow print outs 7. Even with Eco toner mode enabled, the prints I've done still come out pretty black and dark, so I recommend this mode to save on toner. 8. Default print and scan setting result in good quality prints to my eyes. You can increase DPI if you are picky but will result in slower prints and scans 9. What really sucks is that Brother got rid of the backlighting for the number pad and non LCD buttons, so if you are printing in the dark, your gonna have fun CONS: This printer sadly isn't perfect and Brother made some really stupid cost saving decisions for this upgraded model namely: 1. No built in .AC wireless, it maxes out at .N, same as the older 2380. Cmon, really Brother? Wifi is king nowadays for flexibility 2. Ethernet is still only 100megabit. What the hell? 1 gigabit NICS are pennies nowadays, there was no legit reason to cut back on this either 3. No USB 3.0? Absolutely no reason for printers to have old USB 2.0 nowadays. All in all, I was very very happy and shocked how fast this sucker shoots out prints from a dead power to ready mode, especially compared to my years of waiting and waiting for damn slow and noisy Inkjets to prime, test and get ready, its so freaking wonderful! I will miss the color of Inkjet but I sure as hell will not miss the horrid cost effectiveness, speed, noise, troubleshooting and the horrid horrid memories and blacked out hands from unclogged inkjet heads! All praise Brother and Laser!
Top critical review
UNABLE TO GET IT SETUP ---HOLD TIMES OVER 1.5 HRS
By Rad on Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2024
Quick set up guide doesn't work. Have repeatedly had to enter our network password. Cannot print from my laptop or phone . Scan function doesn't work either. It copies. Setup Instructions are totally inadequate for a WIFI setup. BROTHER IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE. Wait times are over an hour and a half. Have gone to their website, downloaded drivers. Have updated firmware, have reset router, printer, laptop over and over. SIMPLY CANNOT GET IT WORKING. And, it's stupid for them to still be shipping installation CDs .....my phone, tablet and laptop do not have CD drives. I went to their web site to download full driver and software package and the model wasn't even listed. I had to google to find the right drivers. I have manually set up SSID and network key over and over. I have gotten "connected " messages, found the printer and added it to laptop printers and still can't print. I get "the printer is in error status". The NFC connection doesn't work either. Can't scan. After 15 hours, 2 phone calls and an hour on the phone it is semi-functional. Not enough instructions to get it working come in the box. It is marketed as a WIFIprinter. And as such should work for a whole family, and come with instructions to set it up as such. But it is from an era when one printer was hard wired in some way to one computer. Each person using it has to download and install the drivers for it, and delve three levels down into the settings. You have to set up for each person where it is to scan to for example , so they come up as a choice in the menu. After doing all this, and it still not scanning, the rep on the phone remembered the scan button function on the printer will not work with anti-malware and VPNs - both which are common place. You can't walk up to it, put something on the glass, hit the scan button and have it scan. You can only originate a scan by doing it in their software on your device, then walking to the printer and putting the object to scan on the flatbed. We also cannot use double-sided printing and it required another phone call and diving deep into the print drivers - three or four levels down - to turn this off. NFC, the rep also announced won't work with malware and VPN, so you have to turn those off to use NFC. The quick setup instructions do not get much set up. They include the recommendation to change the default web based management password it comes with but no instruction on how to do it. This printer is sadly undocumented with what comes in the box and unless you plan to hardwire it to only one computer, you'll be calling the support line, googling, and searching Brothers site for hours. The marketing and box imply it is a true WIFIprinter. It took 15 hrs to get it printing and scanning with one laptop and phone. We still have to download and set up the settings for my husbands computer and phone to use it on WIFI. I still have to call again to change the default password and work on getting NFC working for our guests. Using it as a wired printer might be a different experience.
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