Brother HL-L6200DW Review - Review 2022

The Brother HL-L6200DW ($249.99) delivers a balance of speed, paper handling, and running costs that brand information technology a solid pick for whatever home, micro, or small office that needs a monochrome laser printer for moderate to heavy-duty utilize. Its weakest point is text quality that'due south near the depression finish of the range for monochrome lasers. Simply even subpar text on a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation printer is easily adept enough for most business apply. More important is the overall balance of features that makes this printer worth considering.

What keeps the HL-L6200DW($199.99 at Amazon) from being our Editors' Selection for its category is not that it lacks something, merely that there are other printers that offer just a bit more. In particular, Blood brother'southward ain HL-6180DW and the Dell B2360dn—both summit picks for pocket-size-office monochrome lasers for up to heavy-duty utilise—match the HL-L6200DW or come close in most key areas, with the Brother HL-6180DW too offering notably ameliorate text quality in our tests, and the Dell printer offer faster speed.

Nuts and Beyond
That said, the HL-L6200DW's particular mix of features could still be the amend fit for your function. Its paper handling is easily suitable for up to heavy-duty use in a small office or workgroup, with a 520-sheet drawer, 50-canvas multipurpose tray, and duplexer standard. If that's not enough, y'all can add together upwardly to three optional 250-canvas drawers ($179.99 each) to boost capacity to as much equally i,320 sheets, or up to 2 520-canvas drawers ($209.99 each) for a maximum i,610 sheets, or one of each size drawer for 1,340 sheets.

Brother HL-L6200DW

As is typical for any printer with this high a paper capacity, the HL-L6200DW is big enough so you probably won't desire it sitting on your desk. With the standard chapters, it measures 11.3 by 14.7 by 15.3 inches (HWD), with the acme growing by 4.8 inches for each boosted 250-sheet drawer, or by six inches for each additional 520-sheet drawer. Even with just the standard tray, the pinnacle makes the printer imposing enough that you might not want to share a desk with it. However, the footprint ties up a smaller expanse than many inkjets, so y'all may want to keep it nigh your desk if non on it.

Connection choices include USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Directly. If you connect the printer to a network via either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, y'all can besides print to it through the cloud, too as connect to it through an access betoken on your network to impress from a mobile device. If yous connect it to a single PC via USB cablevision instead, you lot'll lose the ability to print through the cloud, just tin can still impress from a mobile device by connecting straight to the printer using Wi-Fi Direct.

Brother HL-L6200DW

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
At 26 pounds half-dozen ounces, the HL-L6200DW is lite enough for i person to movement into place. For my tests, I continued it to a network using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista organisation. Setup is standard for the breed.

The speed in our tests was a piffling ho-hum for the 48 pages-per-infinitesimal (ppm) rating, just acceptably fast for the price. I clocked the printer on our concern applications suite (timed with QualityLogic'south hardware and software), at 12.7ppm. That makes information technology faster than the Brother HL-6180DW, at 10.7ppm, just significantly slower than the Dell B2360dn, which came in at 15ppm in our tests despite its slower engine, rated at 40ppm.

Every bit some other point of reference, the HL-L6200DW was too slower in our tests than the Dell Smart Printer S2810dn($199.99 at Dell), which Dell rates at merely 35ppm, but we clocked at 13.4ppm when printing in simplex. Even in its default duplex mode, which adds time to turn over each page to impress on the second side, the Dell S2810dn was only slightly slower than the HL-L6200DW, at 11.8ppm.

Output quality for the HL-L6200DW is a mixed handbag. Text is subpar, with the quality falling at the lesser of the range for the category in our tests. Still, monochrome lasers handle text so well that even the lowest rung on the light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-quality ladder is good enough for virtually any business organisation use. As long as y'all don't have an unusual need for minor fonts, you shouldn't have any complaints.

Graphics quality in our tests was typical for a monochrome light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, which makes it proficient enough for whatever internal business demand. It's also proficient enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like, unless you have a critical eye. Photo quality is better than typical. The photograph output in our tests was basically a lucifer for the loftier end of newspaper photo quality.

Conclusion
Offices that need somewhat amend text quality than the Brother HL-L6200DW delivers should consider the Brother HL-6180DW, the Dell B2360dn, or the Dell S2810dn. All three are roughly matched for text quality, with the Brother HL-6180DW offering the highest paper capacity, and the Dell B2360 offering the fastest speed in our tests. For offices that don't need the step up in text quality, the HL-L6200DW offers the highest newspaper capacity in the group, the best photo quality, and faster speed in our tests than the Brother HL-6180DW.