Brother HL-5350DN - DigitalVersus

Brother HL-5350DN


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Resolution	1200 x 1200 ppp ppp
Speed B&W / color	30 / ppm
Ink drop size	picolitres
Number of cartridges	1
Number of base colors	1
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Scanner / Copier / Fax	No / Yes / No
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Morgane Alzieu
Test date: July 03, 2009

First page in 8 seconds? Well, anywhere between 8 and 38 ...

For some users, being able to print immediately is essential. If you want to hand a customer a copy of their reservation, for instance, the time it takes to print the first page is a very important factor.

Brother claims that the 5350DN can produce this first page in 8.5 seconds, but this is only true if the printer has already been going. If it starts in standby mode, the first page takes 17 seconds, twice the time advertised by the manufacturer. And if you've only just switched it on, then you'll need to wait 38 seconds ... with delays like these, it's difficult to talk about 'immediately available' printing.

In normal mode, the printer uses 600 W, and 4.4 W on standby.

Build Quality

The HL-5350DN is monochrome, mono-functional, small and fast: it produces 30 pages per minute in normal mode of 13 ppm of double-sided documents. It also promises to produce its first page very quickly--in under nine seconds. We beg to differ on this point (see inset).

It can be used on a network, includes a paper tray capable of storing 250 sheets and a small internal memory of 32 MB. Its cartridges separate the toner--available in four sizes from 3000 to 8000 pages--and the drum, which is good for 25 000 pages. Drivers are available for Windows, Mac and Linux and it's every inch the professional printer.

The pre-installed toner is the smallest available size, 3000 pages.

Printing Speed: Office Use

Brother suggests that the HL-5350DN will reach 30 ppm with the first sheet arriving in 8.5 seconds. We can certainly confirm the former claim, and we even reached 31 ppm.

The latter, however, is only true when the printer has warmed-up and is ready because it's recently printed another document. Otherwise, it can take up to four times as long.

The 5350DN is only powerful once it gets going, and small teams that make good use of it will appreciate its fast speeds. If, however, you'll only need it occassionally and don't want to wait, then there are more appropriate printers.

Printing Quality: Office Use

The quality is reasonably high, with perfectly readable characters. Printing is neat, and, overall, different shades are converted accurately to black-and-white. On the other hand, some details could be better, with the gradients in our test documents disappearing into blocks of colour.

Although products like this aren't really suitable for photo printing, our tests showed some favourable results. Gradients were lost and the prints lacked precision. Overall, it seems that the printer prioritises speed over quality, but that isn't a bad thing for either text or graphics.

Cost per page

We looked at the smallest and biggest cartridges, and between the two, it's easy to see the larger offers more economic printing. Even when you add the drum, which needs to be replaced after 25 000 pages, the HL-5350DN remains a very economic printer.

Cartridge	Lifespan (pages)
TN-3230	3000
TN-3280	8000

Speed, double-sided printing

Very low cost per page using 8000 page toner

Network compatibility

Quite quick to print the first page if it's already warmed up

Excellent quality text documents

Gradients lack detail

The first page takes a while coming from standby mode

Just 32 MB

Black and white

The 5350DN gets its pages out quickly at a low cost, and is perfect for a small team that often needs to print out a short document. For more heavyweight work, it would need more memory. And for top quality printing, there are better quality printers ...