Brother HL-6050DN review

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Verdict:

The HL-6050DN has great text quality, duplex printing and a balanced specification. It's not the fastest printer here, but if you won't often print graphically rich documents then its sensible running costs make it a great buy.

Review Date: 21 Nov 2005

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

Although Brother's HL-6050DN is one of the cheapest printers here, it's the only one with an automatic duplexer. This doesn't add noticeably to its size, though, and only Lexmark's E342n and Kyocera Mita's FS-1920 are significantly smaller.

Setting up the printer involves inserting its drum and toner, but this is simple. Brother is the only company here to supply a full-capacity toner with its printer, but its 7,500-page yield isn't a match for the huge starter supplies shipped by Tally and Dell. The HL-6050DN's running costs are the third lowest here, but with two consumables it isn't foolproof to service.

The HL-6050DN should be easy enough for the least technical network users in everyday use. Its main cassette takes an entire ream of paper, so it is easy to keep stocked. The multipurpose tray has a high 100-sheet capacity, but doesn't tell you how to orientate envelopes. The printer prompts you to use its 50-sheet rear output tray for envelopes - but they emerge crumpled.

Like the Oki B6200n, this printer's engine is rated at 24ppm. However, when printing with the PCL driver, it was faster than the Oki in all our tests, except when printing images at 1,200dpi. Graphics and photographs were far too dark at the default settings.

The PostScript driver made a big difference. The quality of photos was markedly better, although they took about 50 per cent longer to arrive. Our mixed-colour test took over 15 minutes to finish printing, though the quality was fine. Both drivers produce very good text, with clean, step-free outlines at 600 or 1,200dpi.

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