Top positive review
26 people found this helpful
Very impressive
By Arizona Doug on Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2018
Printer arrived today, and I was able to set it up and install the software without a single glitch. I'm running Windows 8.1 and using a local USB interface. The reason for the purchase is my Canon inkjet died, and I needed a business-capable laser printer. I've had three Canon inkjet printers but I used at least two Brother laser printers previous to the Canon inkjets. There is a considerable difference between this DCP-L2550DW MFC printer, and the previous Brother laser printers besides the glitch-free install. The Windows print driver is far improved with more feature control and ease of use. Brother has a separate printer utility, iPrint & Scan, that provides a print and scan UI for document and image printing and scanning, it is very easy to use, and it is a vast improvement over the Canon print/scan utility. There is a third software, Nuance PaperPort, that is an impressive document management tool and includes a fast PDF reader. The install CD gave me the option to bypass the Nuance Paperport install and install it later. If you don't have a CD player in your machine, you can download the installer from the Brother support web page. During the install, the installer utility also installed printer firmware updates without a glitch. I have printed a text document, and graphic document, and the print quality is impressive. BTW, the printer woke up from a sleep and printed those documents without a glitch. The printer is quiet and the print speed is amazing. Being brand new, I cannot speak to the long term reliability of this printer but here are a few things I learned in my research: the older version of this printer, a Brother 2540 model, is the source of the vast majority of negative reviews for this printer--whether the 2540 or 2550 model. On the first dozen pages of negative reviews, only four pertained to the 2550 model, and three of those four reviews were wireless problems. Wireless printer problems are not unique to Brother printers; they are ubiquitous. If you think about it, the wireless challenge is to make a device in deep sleep mode respond to an interrupt signal--something humans don't like to do--and the majority of the negative reviews are expressing frustration with this challenge. I have returned a Kodak printer due to wireless problems. For these reasons, I stay with tech that works: local USB. The competitor printer nearest in features to this Brother printer is the Dell E514dw, and I noticed the Dell uses the same printer chassis as the Brother 2540 model but the Dell comes with a 10,000 monthly page duty cycle, and this Brother DCP-L2550DW comes with a 15,000 monthly duty cycle. Maybe the duty cycle difference is significant, maybe not (remember: "your MPG may vary") but I went with the higher duty cycle number. I didn't think I would have any install problems for a local USB connection but Brother has a support web site that is easier to use than Dell, and Brother comes with free telephone support if you need it. Bottom line: the 2550 model--including the bundled software--is impressive so far.
Top critical review
609 people found this helpful
ARGH!!!!!
By Paul P on Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2018
I have used Brother printers for many years... like 35 years. I have always loved Brother printers. But this one is frustrating, and I find the situation with Brother support (which is unfailingly friendly and eager to help) frustrating. 1. This has no power button. You can't turn it off. Yes, there's a button, but holding it down doesn't get the printer to shut off. You need to UNPLUG this thing to get it to reset. 2. And you need it to reset because it comes set up with IP6 which breaks Cloud Print, and once you disable the IP6, you still need to reset the printer. And you cannot do that without UNPLUGGING IT. Also, it hangs when I'm scanning something, and the only fix for that it unplugging. And I tried double-sided copies and got into some kind of state where it scanned forever and never printed anything for the copies -- again, UNPLUG IT. If you're going to make a printer with crappy firmware, make it easy to power-cycle. 3. Brother has a download for a firmware installer for this printer. But you can update the firmware from it's internal webserver. Why are they spending time and effort on a Mac configurer and a PC configurer when the thing has a web interface? And then when I update the firmware in the web interface, it doesn't update saying the version on the printer is the most modern. When the PC download says there's a more modern one. 4. Drivers are all x86. The raspberry PI is the 3rd most popular computer in the world, and COMPLETELY unsupported by Brother. Brother techs kept telling me to use the x86 drivers for debian/ubuntu on the little ARM Raspberry PI. 5. The documentation is ABSURD. The manual for this covers all these printers (I am not making this up) "DCP‑L2510D / DCP‑L2530DW / DCP‑L2537DW / DCP‑L2550DN / MFC‑L2710DN / MFC‑L2710DW / MFC‑L2730DW / MFC‑L2750DW" -- these have different feature sets and different DISPLAYS. It's a nightmare. BROTHER: Get new management for your human-factors team. Do human-interface studies to see what doesn't make sense. You'll find a LOT of this stuff could be easily made intuitive and is the OPPOSITE. Stop multiplexing your documentation with 8 models on one sheet. Move to a pure web interface for setup so it's portable and easier to support. Compile the same CUPS driver you make available in TWO (and sometimes more) x86 formats for the Raspberry PI. It's a huge part of the education market -- (14 MILLION sold). This is a no-brainer. Better yet, release a bare-bones open-source driver which could easily be updated to support each new printer. We really do NOT WANT your complex drivers or to go to your support site. We just want to push postscript to your printer. How hard is that!?!? The entire Linux community would prefer that, x86 included. Why can't there be one generic postscript driver for all Brother printers which support Postscript? And on all your printers (this one doesn't do it) when I hit scan, I want a serialized scan sent to a set to a share or an FTP site. If I want to archive some checks, I should be able to put them on the scanner, hit scan, and be done. You have forced me on this model to set up a windows box running your receiver software. ABSURD. The MFC-1440N was cumbersome, but this is unusable. Please fix this in a new firmware revision. I absolutely cannot recommend this printer, and at this point I can no longer recommend Brother.
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