February 10, 2009

Understated Assistant
By Billy Joe I. Allardo
Published in the December 2008-January 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

Brother HL-2140
P4,990
www.brother.com.ph

The Brother HL-2140 is a compact laser printer that should be ideal for small and home offices, where space is as valuable as the profit from each everyday transaction. This laser printer can only churn out monochrome prints, thus reducing its role to document printing and a graph or two. Compared with the printout of the Samsung ML-1640, the color tone and character size are bolder. A closer inspection revealed that the letters churned out by the Brother HL-2140 appeared to be more jagged compared to the smooth lines from the Samsung ML-1640. Still, this is a minor issue. The results were still very readable, thanks mainly to the thickness of each letter.

Since this is a monochrome printer, do not expect too much when it comes to graphics. Images printed on normal mode were better when compared to the ones produced on the highest setting, which came out saturated. Yet there were no signs of banding, a print head discrepancy wherein vertical or horizontal lines appear across the image. In addition, there were also no traces of bleeding with both text and images. The absence of bleeding and banding on the printed material is a plus factor to the efficiency of the Brother HL-2140 when it comes to toner use.

The design of the printer is simple and straightforward. Clad in differing hues of gray, it has a set of light emitting diodes (LED) that warn if there is an error (like a paper jam or opened latch) or if you already need to replace the drum and toner cartridges. A translucent button with a blue LED underneath is nearby and serves a multitask role of canceling and continuing a print job. However, you might mistake this as the power button. To boot up the printer, you need to press the switch located at the lower right side of the unit.

Bundled with the printer are the customary power cable and a USB 2.0 cable. The CD included has the printer drivers and a user guide, but you need to have an internet connection to utilize both.

Access to the toner cartridge is through a latch located in front. The cartridge bay is a bit cramped, but its okay since you only access it when it is time to replace the toner cartridge. The manual feeder tray feels somewhat flimsy and you might break it once you are trying to pull out the paper tray underneath it.

People who buy a monochrome printer nowadays intend to use it mainly as a cheap alternative for printing plain documents. Despite the issue on jagged letters, the Brother HL-2140 still fits the bill with its thickly printed characters. In addition, its compact design and uncomplicated use allows this printer to be at your side, no matter how big or large your office is.