Yep, after over two decades of both personal and professional usage of Inkjet printers a variety of work environments as both a personal geek an IT support specialist, I finally had enough of the Inkjet Insanity.
After getting laid off from Christmas this year and starting to go job hunting and dealing with that fiasco only to find my 4th or 5th inkjet printer in around 8 years was clogged AGAIN from my very sporadic lack of use and I would have to shell out over $60 in ink and then spend God knows how much time troubleshooting, running test prints and wasting tons of ink and money trying to unclog the dried jet heads on my $120 Canon Pixma printer, I finally snapped, NO MORE!!!!!!!
Being the IT guy for over 14 years, I have worked with many Brothers over the years and though I am sorta of biased to HP's Laserjets, Brothers laser printers have had a good record in my book for being mostly reliable, solid, easy to troubleshoot and fix and also pretty dang good up front cost e vs other brands, namely Canon and HP.
I have worked on many MFC models over the past decade and the more basic HL printer only series pretty much falls in line with the MFC series. After doing my research like I always do, I decided to spend the extra money over the popular but older 2014-2015 HL- L2380DW https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HRG01A4/ as there were two major differences between that model and the newer HL-L2395DW
1. CPU speed increased from 266mhz on 2380 to 600mhz on new 2395
2. RAM from increased 64 Megabytes on 2380 to 128 Megabytes on new 2395
These two component upgrades are important for laser printing functions for many reasons but mostly due to:
1. Faster CPU results in less processing of more complex print jobs, especially using built in printer apps cloud storage apps
2. Larger RAM will result in less frequent communication between printer and computer and jobs will be cached and print faster as a result
The new 2395DW model also has a slight edge in these areas as well vs the older 2380DW:
1. 2395 does 36ppm vs 32ppm of the 2380 for both prints and copies
2. Monthly max page usage amount increases from 10,000 on 2380 to 15,000 pages a month on 2395
3. Near Field communication for smartphones added on 2395DW
4. Decreased energy usage. 2395 in sleep is 1.2Watts vs 5.8Watts of 2380, Ready mode is 43.5W vs 60W and Printing is 450W vs 510W
Visual changes:
1. New 2395 has more squarish appearance with larger side handles and thicker scanner lid. A personal preference here
2. New 2395 has removed the touch sensitive buttons and gone with traditonal push buttons on main control panel. Time will tell if this a good or bad thing
And by far the biggest difference which may throw some people off is that the toner cartridges and drums are TOTALLY NEW & DIFFERENT for the new 2395DW model vs the older 2380DW model.
New 2395DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN730 / High Yield Toner TN760 / Drum DR730
Old 2380DW model REQUIRES: Standard Toner TN630 / High Yield Toner TN660 / Drum DR630
In short, if you have stocked up supplies of TN630 or TN660 Brother or refurbished/cheaper non brother toners, they WILL NOT WORK in this new 2395DW model! Brother has introduced a new 700 series of toners and drums for this new unit and you HAVE TO USE TN730 or TN770!
With that clarification out of the way, I decided to unpack my black laser beauty and see if it was worth the extra price of admission being totally new and ditching Inkjets forever:
1. Setup is childs play. Seriously. Download newest Brother drivers from website, click and run and follow the directions for USB, wifi or ethernet install. Don't use the outdated CD, trust an IT guy on this. Also, don't download and install the iPrint@Scan software, its too bloated to be useful, ignore it.
2. The printer fired right up the first time and pulled its setting from the computer via my ethernet connection, didn't even need to set the time the hard way, thank God.
3. Printing via Ethernet is instant and fast but USB is also a good option if its right next to your computer. Wifi connections can be flakey at times, it will all depend on your Wifi setup and router quality on how good or bad this will be.
4. Printer touch LCD screen is responsive and clear to use and easy to read.
5. Brother thankfully kept the ability to switch Low Toner END to CONTINUAL which means it will let you drain your toner empty until it stops working entirely vs the printer telling you to replace it. But your print quality may suffer, so keep that in mind.
6. The printer is not quiet, most laser printers are not but its not an issues for my needs. There is a quiet print mode if you are really picky about noise but your printing speed is cut by at least half, so expect slow print outs
7. Even with Eco toner mode enabled, the prints I've done still come out pretty black and dark, so I recommend this mode to save on toner.
8. Default print and scan setting result in good quality prints to my eyes. You can increase DPI if you are picky but will result in slower prints and scans
9. What really sucks is that Brother got rid of the backlighting for the number pad and non LCD buttons, so if you are printing in the dark, your gonna have fun
CONS:
This printer sadly isn't perfect and Brother made some really stupid cost saving decisions for this upgraded model namely:
1. No built in .AC wireless, it maxes out at .N, same as the older 2380. Cmon, really Brother? Wifi is king nowadays for flexibility
2. Ethernet is still only 100megabit. What the hell? 1 gigabit NICS are pennies nowadays, there was no legit reason to cut back on this either
3. No USB 3.0? Absolutely no reason for printers to have old USB 2.0 nowadays.
All in all, I was very very happy and shocked how fast this sucker shoots out prints from a dead power to ready mode, especially compared to my years of waiting and waiting for damn slow and noisy Inkjets to prime, test and get ready, its so freaking wonderful!
I will miss the color of Inkjet but I sure as hell will not miss the horrid cost effectiveness, speed, noise, troubleshooting and the horrid horrid memories and blacked out hands from unclogged inkjet heads! All praise Brother and Laser!
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