Brother HL-2170w 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless & Wired Network Interfaces | 
| Brand: Brother
List Price: $299.99
Buy New: $99.99
You Save: $200.00 (67%)
New (49) Used (1) Refurbished (1) from $89.85
Rating:  202 reviews
Color: GRAY
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
System Memory: 32
Modem: None
Shipping Weight (lbs): 21
Dimensions (in): 17.9 x 18.7 x 14.2
nv:Print Method: Laser
First Page Output Time: Less than 10 Seconds
Resolution: Up to 600 x 2400 dpi
Maximum Duty Cycle: 10,000 Pages Per Month
Print Speed: Up to 23 PPM
Special Features: Network-Ready (Standard)
Dimensions: 14.5"W x 14.2"D x 6.7"H
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity: 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet
Connectivity: 802.11b/g Wireless
Standard Paper Input: 250 Sheets
Standard Paper Output: 100 Sheets
Paper Sizes Supported: Custom
Paper Sizes Supported: Letter
Paper Sizes Supported: Legal
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: HL-2170w
Model: HL-2170w
UPC: 012502619468
EAN: 0012502619468
ASIN: B0010Z3LGO
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Monochrome laser printer prints up to 23 ppm, perfect for home or office use | | • | High-quality 2400 x 600 dpi resolution | | • | Features network connectivity via wireless/wired interfaces | | • | 250-sheet capacity tray, Starter Toner Cartridge | | • | One-year limited manufacturer's warranty |
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Product Description
The HL-2170W is ideal for home or home office printer sharing. The HL-2170W offers wireless 802.11b/g and wired (Ethernet) network interfaces for connecting to your wired or wireless router. In addition, it includes 32MB of standard memory for faster processing, and PCL6 emulation for greater compatibility. 32MB of memory enables the HL-2170W to quickly process your print jobs and handle more complex documents. Perfect for family or home office print sharing, the HL-2170W provides flexible connectivity with USB, wireless, and wired network interfaces. With a print speed of up to 23ppm, you can quickly produce all of your letters, reports, spreadsheets and other documents. A 250-sheet capacity paper tray means you will spend less time refilling the tray, and a manual by-pass slot is available for printing envelopes and letterheads. With HQ1200 print resolution (up to 2400 x 600 dpi), your documents will have crisp text and graphics. Users with wireless access points that support SecureEasySetup, Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or AOSS, can automatically configure wireless settings by simply pressing a button on the router. Standard Interfaces - Wireless 802.11b/g, 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet, and USB One-Push Wireless Configurations - SecureEasySetup, AOSS or Wi-Fi Protected Setup capable routers CPU (Processor) Speed - 181 MHz Resident Fonts - 49 scalable fonts, 12 bitmap fonts, and 11 bar codes Paper Tray - 16-28 pounds (bond) Letter, Legal, Executive, A4, A5, A6, B5, and B6 Multi-purpose Tray - 16-43 pounds (bond) Letter, Legal, Executive, A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Envelopes, and Custom Sizes (2.75-8.5 (w), 4.57-14 (l)) Output Paper Capacity - 100 sheets Dimensions - Width 14.5x Depth 14.2 x Height 6.7 Weight - 15.0 pounds Manufacturer's One year limited warranty
Amazon.com Product Description
Ideal for both home and office use, the affordable Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer features network connectivity via wireless/wired interfaces, and prints up to 23 pages per minute at a high-quality resolution, giving your work and personal documents a polished finish colleagues and friends are sure to envy.  | The Brother HL-2170W Personal Laser Printer offers: - Built-in wired and wireless networking for printer sharing.
- Fast, 23 pages-per-minute performance.
- High-quality (2400 x 600 resolution) prints.
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With built-in wireless networking, everyone on your network can easily share the printer. | 
The manual by-pass slot lets you print envelopes and letterhead. | Versatile and Professional
This monochrome laser printer not only warms up in less than 10 seconds and prints up to 23 pages per minute to give you near-instant access to important reports, documents, and annual family letters when you need them, it also includes a manual bypass feeder for professional printing on envelopes and letterhead. The high-quality resolution (up to 2400 x 600 dpi) of this personal black-and-white laser printer reflects the time and care that you put into each document, while giving you the benefits of low cost per page laser output. The printer also includes 32 MB memory, and a 250-sheet capacity tray that can conveniently accommodate standard, legal, and custom-sized paper. Built-In Wired and Wireless Networking
Perfect for family or home offices, the HL-2170W gives you the option to connect the printer via USB, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g wireless networking. Brother makes wireless setup a snap; for users with wireless access points that support SecureEasySetup, Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or AOSS, you can automatically configure your wireless settings by simply pressing a button on your router. Ergonomic and Energy Efficient
The Brother HL-2140 17.9-by-18.7-by-14.2-inch efficient design features a toner save mode for extended toner life as well as sleep mode. Easy to set up and a breeze to use, this printer is compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems, and includes an animated user-friendly tutorial to help answer common support and maintenance questions. Environmentally Friendly Design
For added peace of mind, this machine is Energy Star compliant, which means it helps save the environment while saving you money. (Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy promoting energy efficiency). This personal laser printer is backed by a one-year limited manufacturer's warranty. What's in the Box
HL-2170W laser printer, starter toner cartridge and instruction kit.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 197 more reviews...
 Great Printer, Just follow directions on setup. February 23, 2008
D. Dell (USA)
99 out of 106 found this review helpful
Recently I bought a Brother All-In-One Inkjet and have been very happy with it. Since it had all the controls on the printer itself, I was able to set up the wireless connection quickly and without any problem. Plus, all the other features worked well. I needed a laser printer to replace my very old NEC. Based on my experience with the Brother Inkjet I decided to buy this Brother 2170W.
The Brother laser printer is very small, yet holds 250 pages which is far more than my old one. It wakes up in less than 10 seconds then prints pages lightening fast. The print quality is sharp and clear. I have the printer in my office and connected it directly to my PC with the USB cable. However, I also have a laptop about 10 feet away that I wanted to setup wireless to the laser printer. Well, that is where the problems began.
I tried for several hours to connect the laser printer to my laptop and never could get it right. I was able to connect wirelessly directly between the printer and laptop without going through the router. However, doing it this way I could not be on the internet and printer at the same time. Also, the connection would keep dropping. Try as I may, I could not connect the printer through the router like my other Brother Inkjet. I am convinced that I am simply doing some little something wrong. Therefore, I can not blame the printer for something that is my fault. Since I do have the printer wired to the other printer in the office and that printer is connected to the router, then I can still access the laser printer through the other computer.
I am still giving the Brother 2170W printer high marks because, except for the connection problems, it is an excellent printer.
UPDATE: I was trying to setup the printer wirelessly, without plugging the cable in. Bad idea! I finally decided to wire the printer to the router as recommended in the manual. After setting it up I unplugged the wired connection and now the printer works wirelessly from both of my computers. The whole thing took less than 3 minutes. Lesson for today: Read the manual and do what it Recommends.
It would benefit most people to have a laser printer in addition to their inkjet printer. And this is why. Keep track of just how many documents and letters you print that do not require color. If you print more than ten percent in black and white then you can save a lot of money on ink by using a laser printer. Here are some figures to consider. The cost of toner (ink) for a laser printer is higher than inkjet, but a laser can print many more pages. The cost per page on a laser printer can be as low as 3 cents. Whereas, the cost of ink for an inkjet can be 11 cents or more per page, and that cost can be ten times more for photos. Therefore, if you only print a few things that do not require color then you may only save ten to twenty percent on ink. However, if you do a lot of black and white printing then you could save fifty to seventy percent on ink using a laser printer. And if you decide to buy a laser, then this Brother is one of the best because of the speed and print quality.
ANOTHER UPDATE: After using this printer for several months I must give it 5 stars. It has worked all this time with no problems at all and I love it. However, I still give the overall rating 4 stars because of the install problem. I even contacted Brother several times and followed their directions on how to set up the printer without using a cable. Both Brother and myself finally gave up because it just would not work unless I used a cable, even though Brother said it would. Brother never did figure out why it wouldn't work that way. But, it doesn't matter. When I want to change my WiFi key, I just use a cable.
Brother HL-2170W -- The Bleeding Edge of Printers January 7, 2008
S. Massey (San Diego, CA USA)
62 out of 80 found this review helpful
3 September 2008 Update: From "The Bleeding Edge of Printers" to "The Economical Cutting Edge of Printers".
This printer has exceeded my expectations since the January 2008 purchase. 100% up-time with no operational (e.g., jams) or print quality problems. Replaced first tonor cartridge a couple of months ago. That was easy.
This printer has already paid for itself twice over vs. what we would have spent printing to our HP color inkjet in the "economy" mode. We no longer go to The Copy Store to make lots of copies to cut cost. It's cool to just print as many copies as we need.
I would estimate our print cost to be in ballpark of 2 cents per page. We have numerous high-end laser printers at work that are more expensive, but none of them is any quieter or prints higher quality than this cheap little Brother 2170W. On one project I printed to these pre-cut silver metallic label sheets at 600dpi and these labels look incredible. Sharp black text on silver metallic labels with absolutely no smears or ink drying issues--great right off the printer.
The Brother HL-2170W printer has become the best selling laser printer on Amazon. For those of you who are considering this printer, have read my install scenario in the original post, and all the other customer install scenarios--regardless of our reported install experience--JUST STICK WITH IT. You will find a way to make it work, wired or wirelessly, and any minor inconvenience you might encounter will be quickly forgotten. ***END OF 3 September 2008 UPDATE***
Original Post: 6 January 2008. I decided to buy the new Brother HL-2170W wireless monochrome laser jet the first week it became available to the public in late December, 2007. It arrived mid-week. Yesterday I tried to install it and I failed miserably. Went to the Brother website, and noticed only one FAQ was posted. I intepreted the single question as, What if I do NOT want to use the supplied HL-2170W install CD, and elect go through the process manually? The lengthy Brother response included a statement in the first paragraph that said "Check your CD version and call the Brother toll free number if you have the earlier version ... If you have a CD that is version X, you do not need to call Brother, and follow the detailed steps listed below and install the printer and driver without the CD". Then I noticed Step 13 in the response was cut-off in mid sentence. My Takaway was this: the CD that came with my HL-2170W might be flawed.
So I called the Seller on Saturday afternoon, said I want to return the product, and they scheduled a pickup this Wednesday. But tomorrow I will cancel the HL-2170W return because I figured out how to get the HL-2170W hooked up and now it's running fine. Now every computer in the house--two wired desktops and two wireless notebooks--can print to it. We can move it anywhere. It prints fast with excellent print quality, and there is very little lag until printing. I look forward to reviewing future posts on this product. In this post I'll summarize my lessons learned and recommendations for those of you bold enough to be on the bleeding edge until Brother gets their act together on the HL-2170W installation materials.
First of all, my home network features a Linksys WRT54g router (offers wired/wireless combo), Motorola cable modem, 2 Cat-5 wired Desktop computers running Windows XP Pro, and two new windows notebook computers with built-in wireless g connectivity running Windows Vista Home Basic. The Linksys WRT54g router features the trademarked Secure Easy SetUp CD and installed in a snap, which included setting up the security features. My XP desktop computer functions as the host computer. Prior to installing the HL-2170W the purchase everyone in our household was using USB drives to plug into my desktop computer so they could print to an old HP color ink jet that was connected with a USB cable to my computer. The HL-2170W is our first network printer.
Here's how my HL-2170W install process got sidetracked and left me kicking myself. I looked at the HL-2170W manual and the cover said set up involves only two steps. So I was thinking Wow this is AWESOME, just like the Linksys router. So I proceeded to install the CD on my host computer and started breezing through the set-up screens and along the way made some big mistakes. When I got to the Setting Up Wireless window I selected the default Step-by-Step Install (Recommended) and clicked Next without any hesitation. This mistake was compounded in the Window pertaining to Authentication Method and Encryption Mode, where the HL-2170W default Encryption Mode is WEP (later found out my Linksys used the more advanced WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). Got to the end and noticed the HL-2170W was mapped on my network but not assigned an IP address. The HL-2170W emphasizes the trademarked Secure Easy Set-up in the HL-2170 product description and manual. But the install CD process alternatively recommends a process that makes it easy for you to commit an error and resort to more complicated procedures.
So this morning I thought about how I may have screwed up and decided to give it another try. I printed out instructions for resetting the internal HL-2170W internal print server, which is what you do to start over on Step 1. I uninstalled the printer driver from my computer. I made sure the standard Windows XP Firewall was turned off. I re-insatalled the HL-2170W set-up CD and got to the window to select the non-default Automatic Install (Advanced) to capitalize on the Linksys Secure Easy Setup approach. This is Page 26 of the manual, entitled Configuration Using the automatic wireless (one-push) method. Except this is actually a two-push method (push HL-2170W button in Step 9 for 1 second, then on Step 12 you'll need to push the Linksys Router for a second). Note: The Linksys WRT54g router push button is actually the Cisco Systems logo on the router. Don't be fooled into thinking your router does not have a push button.
Unfortunately, going through this process knocked the two notebooks off the previously configured wireless network (I do not know the cause), so I had to go through the process for re-adding them to the network.
Finally, I went to each computer to with the HL-2170W CD to install the printer driver only. At this point I was extremely patient and reading every detail to make sure I was selecting the right option and entering the correct information. Windows Vista seemed more tedious than Windows XP.
My recommendation for anyone considering purchasing the Brother HL-2170W printer is simple. Don't buy the HL-2170W at this time unless you have a Linksys Router with Secure Easy Setup equipped with the push button, or have computer networking expertise and many hours of spare time to figure it out. In my opinion, the key decision error made by Brother is providing an install CD that, by default, takes you down a path with land mines that require you know router settings and information that are not the listed defaults. Unbelievably, the simpler push button approach that worked for me is listed as the "Advanced" option in the setup process that is NOT RECOMMENDED by Brother. They steer you away from simplicity and into complexity. Brother will discover this over next few months and likely clarify their install manual and CD. In the interim, they may get hammered by many frustrated customers who are not saavy computer users, will make mistakes during setup, will not want to hassle with re-setting the server, and will return the product. Good luck. Right now I'm very satisfied and awarding four stars because my HL-2170W is working great.
 Low price, easy setup, good performance! January 16, 2008
R. Lemieux (California, USA)
57 out of 57 found this review helpful
I've been buying Brother laser printers for several years now - first the HL-1240, and then the HL-1440. Both were used in my home network via the Windows printer sharing function, which means that the computer to which the printer is attached must be up and running in order to print. The 1440 recently started malfunctioning, and rather than deal with its problems I decided to get something new that I could connect directly to the network.
I went looking for the HL-2070n, but these are no longer stocked in local stores, and I wanted a printer quick. Instead I found this model and the larger, more expensive HL-5250dn. After playing with both of them for a few minutes, I felt that the 5250 was too noisy and clunky sounding, and kind of big. It's probably a good printer, but I went instead for the quieter and less obtrusive HL-2170w.
The wireless capability is a nice feature, but not really important to me right now, since the printer sits only three feet from my Linksys WRT54G router and I don't need to move it around the house. So even though I'm able to use the easy wireless setup, I went with a wired network connection instead. Setup on my three computers was a breeze. I followed the easy instructions and everything worked as expected. If I try the wireless installation later, I fully expect it to go just as well.
Now that it's in place, the printer seems to be doing what it should. Output is fast, paper is not badly curled, and quality looks fine. The printer driver also has the advanced features I've been accustomed to with my earlier printers. My only minor gripe is that I don't like the minimalist control panel that consists of just three LEDs and one big button. Since my earlier printers had the same kind of thing, I know I'll have to keep referring to the user manual in order to perform routine control panel functions and interpret any unusual alerts.
It'll take a while to know whether or not the printer has any serious shortcomings, but I'm more than satisifed so far. Considering the low price, the hassle-free installation, and the results I'm seeing, I'll give it five stars.
Great Performance, Wireless easy to setup January 19, 2008
R. Siegel (San Francisco, CA)
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
This printer was the best value in small desktop lasers, when I conducted a recent search. I was somewhat hesitant by some other comments on wireless setup, but found that reading the directions carefully, it was very easy to setup, and working within about 10 minutes. No problems whatsoever. My network is NOT a "one button" setup network - we have a hidden SSID, use WPA2 with AES encryption, so I went with the "network cable" initial setup, then once configured, use it wireless. Installing the print drivers on the various machines in our house went great - each machine was printing within 3 minutes of putting in the installation CD.
So far, this is one of the easiest wireless products to add to the network, and print quality is great. I am impressed with Brother's documentation and software. Nice work.
I had ordered an extra toner cartridge with the printer - in hindsight, I would probably order the TN-360 cartridge (large capacity) instead of the TN-330 cartridge, but it's just a cost-saving - no functional difference.
 Troublesome install under Vista August 23, 2008
Lee Abraham (Cheyenne, WY)
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
After about 3 hours of troubleshooting, I finally got it to work. After searching the net, I found that it isn't necessarily a Brother problem, but a network printer problem with Vista (XP doesn't have this problem). Still I wasn't the first to have these problems (lots of people seem to have the same problem), and Brothers support site makes no mention of it. I called tech support but they were closed for the weekend.
I was setting it up as a network printer using the easy setup button on my router. Basically you press a button on the back of the printer, press the easy setup button on your router (if your router supports it, otherwise you have to use a cable just for setup), and the network configuration is sent to the printer. You don't have to do anything else, just click through the dialogs to install the drivers. Very easy, and it seemed to work. The printer was showing up, it had an IP address assigned to it and the included Brother software was showing it's status.
Except it wouldn't print. Vista showed the printer as offline, and there aren't any settings or buttons to put it online. Reinstalled the driver and set up the network on it multiple times, trying different methods. It wouldn't even print using a USB cable, still showing offline.
The printer was showing up on the network, so I figured I would try it with my MacBook Pro. A slight drawback is the first thing you see when you open the box is a piece of paper saying the included CD doesn't provide full support for OSX Leopard (10.5). I went to their website, downloaded the newest drivers there and set up the printer quickly and easily with no problems at all. Printed fine, so I knew the printer was working.
If anyone has the "offline" problem on Vista, the fix was very easy once I figured it out. The secret is to let Vista set up the printer, not the Brother software. Although the included software is nice for guiding you through the network setup. Once it was installed using the included software I removed the printer in the printer control panel. I then clicked add printer from the same control panel instead of using Brother's install software as I did every time before. It found the printer and installed it and now it works fine.
Print quality is good, but not great. I am pleased with it for what I will use it for. For the price though, it's the perfect home printer. Cheap, relatively small footprint, good print quality, speedy (for the price range) and a tray that holds a large amount of paper.
The only thing I don't like about it, besides the difficult install, is it's power draw. When I turn on the printer or when it starts to print, my UPS (Uninterpretable power supply) turns on due to noise on the line, and the lights flicker. Granted I have a lot of stuff plugged into the circuit, but this seems a bit extreme for a printer.
I only gave it 3 stars for a few reasons. Brother's website at the very least should have a work around for set up. Obviously a lot of people don't have the problems I had, but there are quite a few reports of this problem if you do a Google search. The power draw is another factor, a printer shouldn't be making my lights flicker. And lastly as others have noted, the manual feed "tray" is very flimsy and you can't really call it a tray since it won't support any paper without you holding on to it.
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