HL-1850 LASER PRINTER 19PPM 16MB HQ1200DPI 350-SHT INPUT review

Pricing it out
The HL-1850's cost per page is in line with that of its competition. According to Brother, a 6,500-page toner cartridge will cost you $90, or less than 1.5 cents per page at 5 percent coverage.

Brother provides a one-year warranty on parts and labor and a year of the company's express exchange policy. Live, toll-free technical support is available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET. The Brother Solutions Center Web site provides updated printer drivers in addition to more support information.

With its ease of use and fast print speeds, the Brother HL-1850 should do just fine in most small offices. While we wish it offered a larger standard paper capacity, we liked the integrated duplexer for reducing consumption. Still, if you have a small budget and can sacrifice some expandability, consider the $299 Lexmark E320.

Laser printer speed Pages per minute; longer bars indicate better performance Text    Text/graphics

Brother HL-1850 13.3  11.2  HP LaserJet 1200 10.5  8.3  Lexmark E320 12.1  11.4  Samsung ML-1450 10.3  9.5  Xerox Phaser 3400 13.5  7.8

 

Laser printer quality • Poor   •• Fair   ••• Good   •••• Excellent

Printer Text Graphics  Brother HL-1850 •••• •••  HP LaserJet 1200 •••• ••••  Lexmark E320 ••• •••  Samsung ML-1450 •••• •••  Xerox Phaser 3400 ••• •••

 

In speed tests, the Brother HL-1850 fell just short of the Xerox Phaser 3400 when printing text. However, when it came to mixed text and graphics, the HL-1850 outpaced the Phaser 3400 by a significant margin, giving it overall faster print speeds.