Brother HL-2070N review

We're impressed with the new styling of Brother's printers.

At only 166mm high, the HL-2070N is the shortest printer on test this month, the strange shape making it look unique, rather than stupid. We also like the simple, but effective, status lights for the toner, drum and paper, coupled with a simple 'Ready' button. When you hold this down for four seconds, it also acts as a job cancel button.

As well as USB 2 and parallel ports, the Brother also has an Ethernet 10/100 network port - ideal for a small offices.

When in use, the Brother is also fairly quiet, which reinforces our view that it's a decent piece of engineering. The only exception to its quietness is a low whine that accelerates just before printing.

Our text test appeared in 10 seconds with succeeding sheets following at a rate of 17ppm (just off the quoted 20ppm). As with everything this month, we found no flaws in text reproduction.

Our newsletter was acceptably printed, though some areas of photography suffered from banding instead of smooth transitions in shades. Pictures were also rather grainy, particularly up close. In lighter areas, a cross-hatched (tartan-like) pattern appeared instead of details, and definition was lost to blackness in a few darker areas.

The report printing test was average. While most diagrams were legible, the background to our 3D graph was very dark and difficult to read without squinting. Light uniform areas suffered a little banding, but only the former problem could prove significantif you're regularly printing low-contrast, dark graphics. The full-page photo print picked up our wooden spoon, with large areas of visibly grainy colour.

Finally, there are the running costs. At 1.9p per text page, it's one of the most expensive on test and could amount to a significant difference over the course of a year when compared with Oki's 1.3p per page. However, its design is far easier on the eye than the Oki's, and while it might be £60 more expensive, its network port makes it a smarter choice for many workgroups.