Brother HL-L9310CDW
A good value colour printing factory with great output quality, low running costs and easily managed security
SCORE
PRICE £432 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk
Looking for a printer that will slot into a diverse working environment? Brother’s flagship A4 colour laser has you covered. There’s both Ethernet and 802.11n wireless (although you can’t run both at the same time), plus Wi-Fi Direct and AirPrint services – and NFC for secure tap-to-print operations.
Outwardly, it looks very similar to Brother’s cheaper HL-L8360CDW, and offers the same 31ppm colour and mono print speeds. Inside, though, it’s more of a workhorse, with twice the memory and a 6,000-page monthly duty cycle (a full third higher than its cheaper sibling). The price difference is also mitigated by a set of huge 6,500-page starter toner cartridges – over three times as capacious as the ones you get with the HL-L8360CDW.
Real-world print speeds are bang on the money when it comes to everyday business fare. Our 31-page Word document emerged in precisely 60 seconds at the driver’s standard 600dpi mode, and switching to the interpolated 2,400 x 600dpi Fine mode didn’t slow it down a jot. Printing the same document doublesided halved the speed to an easy-tolive-with 15.5ppm, and the time to first page from ready status was never more than 12 seconds.
When we tried printing our challenging 24-page colour DTP document, speeds did drop a little, to 27ppm in regular mode and 25ppm in Fine. If you want the maximum print rate, you can download Brother’s GDI driver, which does the rasterising on your PC rather than on the printer. This boosted print speeds to 32ppm at both resolutions, and aside from making your PC work slightly harder, has no real downside: print quality remained excellent, with razor-sharp text down to sizes as small as 6pt.
One thing we did note was that mono photos looked best at the Fine driver setting, with more detail visible in darker areas. Colour photos are impressive in any mode, with good contrast and bright colours translating to punchy marketing reports with almost no banding in large colour areas such as skies.
Since this printer is aimed at high-volume printing environments, there’s no messing around with different toner sizes: your only option is Brother’s 9,000-page ultra-high
“For the maximum print rate, you can download the GDI driver, which does the rasterising on your PC rather than on the printer”
yield toner cartridges. Other consumables comprise the image drum tray, transfer belt and toner waste box, which represent overall running costs of 1.1p and 7.8p for mono and colour pages – which isn’t bad at all.
The high-volume approach is also reflected in the paper-handling provision: while the base unit only comes with a single 250-sheet drawer, you can add a further three 250-sheet trays or two 500-sheet trays – or go for the high-capacity base unit with four 520-sheet cassettes for an enormous total capacity of 2,330 sheets – plus a 50-sheet fold-out multipurpose tray.
As for security, the drivers let you assign a username and PIN to documents, which must then be entered at the printer to release the job. Access and usage can be precisely controlled with Brother’s Secure Function Lock 3, which lets you limit public access, create lists of local users and assign privileges: among other things, you can allow or deny access to colour printing and limit the number of pages that can be printed. Up to 200 accounts are supported, using the logged-in username at each connected PC to enforce security.
For mobile users, we had no problems using AirPrint on our iPad, and Brother’s iPrint&Scan iOS app discovered the printer and allowed us to access it directly. We could also log into our iCloud, Google Drive, Evernote, OneDrive and Dropbox accounts and print selected files.
In all, Brother’s versatile HL-L9310CDW is ideal for hectic businesses; it combines a respectable duty cycle with a wide range of connection options, reasonable running costs and great output quality.
SPECIFICATIONS 600dpi A4 colour laser 31ppm colour/mono
800MHz CPU 1GB RAM 6.8cm colour touchscreen Gigabit Ethernet 802.11n wireless NFC 2 x USB 2 duplex 250-sheet drawer 50-sheet MPT rec monthly duty cycle, 6,000 pages 441 x 486 x 313mm (WDH) 22.2kg 1yr limited warranty. Options: 2yr warranty extension, £302 4 x 520-sheet input tray, £523 (all exc VAT) RUNNING COSTS Ultra-high-yield: K toner (9K), £73 C, M, Y toner (9K), £202 each drum unit, (50K), £90
transfer unit (130K), £39 waste cartridge (50K), £15. Overall cost per A4 page: mono, 1.1p; colour 7.8p