First Look: Brother’s 19ppm Laser Printers

Wayne N. Kawamoto
Managing Editor, www.smallbusinesscomputing.com

Brother International Corporation introduced its 19 page per minute HL-1850 and HL-1870N office laser printers, replacement models for the company’s HL-1600 series. The new models retain the line’s standard built-in automatic duplex printing, the 3-color LCD user control panels, and sleek form.

According to Brother, duplex printing is a cost-effective means for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. This may make the process of producing in-house manuals, booklets and multi-page documents simple, and significantly reduce paper consumption and operating costs.

Another distinguishing feature now standard on many Brother printers is the 3-color backlit LCD display. The LCD glows green, amber or red with a text message that indicates ready status, set-up status, or if user intervention is required.

The HL-1850 and HL-1870N each come with 16MB & 32MB memories respectively, up to 3 pages per minute faster print speed, and a 33% increase in monthly duty cycle over their predecessors. They also use Brother’s HQ1200 print technology (2400×600 dpi), which should allow them to produce high quality output at fast print speeds.

The HL-1850 and HL-1870N are designed to be fully compatible with PC and Mac environments. They come with parallel and USB connectivity standard and include the drivers for Windows 98/98Se/95/ME/NT 4.0/2000 and a USB driver for iMac iBook/G3/G4/. Postscript Level 3 compatibility (BR-Script3) is also standard for both PC and Mac platforms, and users now have the option of printing Postscript via USB for both platforms as well.

A number of additional features are also available for Brother’s new office laser printers including:

– 10/100 BaseT Ethernet Print Server (standard on HL-1870N).

– Additional 250-sheet paper capacity.

– IrDA interface for wireless printing.

– 136 Postscript 3 font upgrade package.

Availability and Pricing
The HL-1850 and the HL-1870N will have estimated street prices of $549 and $699 respectively. The products are currently shipping to customers.