» Brother HL-2700CN Color Laser Printer

Brother HL-2700CN Color Laser Printer Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Big, loud, and pretty lousy
Comment: I purchased this printer at a local office supply store about 8 months ago. It was one of the best bargains I had come across in years. Now, I rue the day saw the sale tag on this sub-par color laser printer.

I work out of a home office and purchased the printer to do small quantity runs of color flyers and newsletters. I discovered from day one (and have verified over and over again) this printer cannot handle the most basic vector line art or graphics without spitting out a Postscript error.

You do get 1 year of service from Brother, and they will eventually answer the phone. However, the two "technicians" I reached both read to me from the same help desk manual and then "escalated" my call to the Mac technicians. After leaving a voicemail for them and receiving a voicemail in return ... twice ... I decided to give up.

Now, I have a big, loud, lousy Brother printer sitting across the office from my HP Laserjet 2100M, a workhorse for over five years.

If you are a Mac user, or you plan to use this printer for minimally complex line art or graphics, do not waste your money. Not only will the "limitcheck" errors send you over the edge, but you'll be left wondering how any small office machine could clunk as loud as this one.

I've gotten over my bitterness with this printer ... I think. Now, if I could just find a way to get rid of it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Colorful Guy
Comment: This product is a work horse it alwways prints in great color clarity and speed, only drawback is the noise when you firsts fire it up a little loud. I would reommend for the price

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for run-of-the-mill stuff
Comment: For passing 8.5x11 sheets in an office environment, this printer is fine.

It plugs in, defaults to using DHCP to say hi to the computers on your network. You can also config it to static IP. Supports a lot of nice admin stuff and FTP. Check manual before buying. I've been most impressed by the software end of this thing. Very thorough from my POV.

The mixed-tone color is pretty dotty. Would not recommend this if you were using it for release material (like CD art, pamphlets, etc) Solid colors are good and kind of glossy and the picture quality does not degrade to the point of being unreadable or anything like that. (usually - tiny text can sometimes grain up)

Works pretty well with good old fashioned 8.5x11. Paper jams occur but are rare enough.

It's not recommended, but I have been successful printing CD art (j-cards and booklets) with it. Sometimes it experiences a paper jam at A1 but nothing TOO messy*. On some days it jams up a lot with CD art, other days it will do 500 units without a hitch. Weather?

*cardboard stuck in the heating roller was a nightmare though.

It is not LOUD, but it is noisy. Sounds like a microwave making popcorn. Stuff it in the closet and save your sanity.

The toner lasts a long time if you are a causal home user of the printer. If you normally purchase new toner you'll want to get extra toner soon as these are not 100% full cartridges.

Important unpacking advice: If it arrives cold from the weather, take it out of the packaging and just let it sit for a day to warm up - do NOT plug it in. There is mechanical stuff which will squeal, snag, and scrape on the inside if cold and can damage some very expensive parts.

Also be careful when removing the securing tape, particularly from the inside-some of it gets secured in a manner which will rip off components if you're not cautious in peeling the tape. Peel, don't pull.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a graphic designer's opinion
Comment: i just got this printer. used it yesterday and today to find out that the photo quality in not just "not amazing" but quite poor. solid colors are fine, but, for example, when printing an area that's 100% yellow and 50% magenta, the dots are very noticeable. the registration of the colors is also quite bad, so it looks poor when, for example again, you print a size 12 font with serif that's white on blue. you can see the magenta around the white font. blacks are fine at 100%, but any gradient under that looks just not satisfactory. you can easily notice the dots, and type in gray becomes had to read due to the lack of continued lines -because of the dot size- and the inconsistency of the solid gray area.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Brother Color Laser Printer Trap
Comment: Our office purchased this printer 1 year ago (Feb 2005), and have had little trouble with it until two weeks ago. Suddenly, we received an "error EF 5 warning" message. The manual (had to down load that, first) instructs turning off the printer for a few minutes, and then re-starting. This solution worked for a time, until the machine would not warm up without hitting this message.

Brother tech support (email) was slow to respond, but recommended a new OCP belt, at $ 500 to $ 600! A local Brother authorized repair shop technician, in the meantime, suggested replacing the fuser. We could not find a price for a fuser at our office supply sources nor at Brother Mall.

Before going any further, we are going to have the machine diagnosed for $ 50. Even though we purchased a warranty extension, it appears this problem is not covered, as the supposed resolution is a consumable element.

Lesson: stay away from this machine!

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