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This overview first appeared in difficulty 353 of PC Pro.
It’s arduous to get excited a few laser printer, however Brother’s HL-L9430CDN would possibly simply put a hop in an workplace supervisor’s step. It’s an enormous beast, designed to be used in small businesses and workgroups, and it comes with an appropriate specification. Within the base there’s a totally enclosed 520-sheet paper cassette, whereas the massive flap on the entrance hides a 50-sheet multipurpose feed. Printed pages emerge right into a 250-sheet tray on the highest.
Thus far, so normal, however the HL-L9430CDN provides direct management by means of a big 8.8cm shade touchscreen. Whereas many enterprise printers run reasonably cryptic, unfriendly menus, Brother’s is straightforward, providing fast entry to capabilities and settings. It’s enhanced with internet options, permitting you to entry and print from cloud companies similar to Dropbox, Google Drive and SharePoint. Hidden close by on the left panel there’s a USB host port for walk-up printing.
The ultimate entrance panel characteristic is an NFC reader, used to regulate entry if you must lock down customers or options. Utilizing the printer’s internet interface you possibly can block folks from printing, utilizing the USB port or accessing internet capabilities, or you possibly can restrict the variety of pages a person can print.
It comes with USB and gigabit Ethernet ports. Curiously you possibly can’t purchase it off the shelf with a wi-fi interface, however Brother will promote you one as an possibility. There’s additionally a rear USB port for safe printing. Brother provides a spread of additional paper trays and a staple finisher, so this printer can develop to match your online business’ wants.
Load it up and also you’ll see the standard nag about setting the right paper kind. The HL-L9430CDN follows this by asking should you ever wish to see the query once more – an excellent timesaver if, like us, you not often change paper kind and it merely will get in your nerves. We have been additionally joyful to see clear orientation marks on the entrance of the principle tray and within the middle of the multipurpose feed. Too many lasers power you to unload the paper simply to see the way to orientate the stack; a ache should you’re re-using beforehand printed pages, or utilizing single-sided media.
Begin printing and it’s clear that it is a very fast system. Nonetheless, if it’s been idle for any size of time the warm-up interval may be toe-tappingly lengthy. After an hour of relaxation we timed a primary black textual content web page out in 25 seconds, however the first shade web page of the day took almost a minute and a half.
This pause apart, the HL-L9430CDN made mincemeat of our exams. It reached 30.6ppm when printing 25 textual content pages, and managed 34.9ppm on our 50-page doc. Each fall a method in need of the acknowledged 44ppm engine pace, however our exams embrace the time taken to spool and ship the job. Low cost this and it was nearly bang heading in the right direction.
Like all printers, the HL-L9430CDN was slower when printing our difficult shade graphics check. Right here it reached 21.8ppm, the quickest shade outcome on this check, and never far behind the 27.7ppm mono outcome recorded by Kyocera’s P2235dn. At the perfect Wonderful print high quality it delivered two 10 x 8in pictures on A4 paper in solely 22 seconds, and 6 10 x 15cm prints on three A4 sheets in 21 seconds. It duplexed ten sides onto 5 sheets at a charge of 14ipm.
So usually, a promising shade laser is torpedoed by excessive working prices, however fortunately that’s not the case right here. The HL-L9430CDN is advanced, requiring 4 toners, a drum, a waste bottle and switch belt, however even factoring in all these it prices 0.9p per black web page or 6.1p in shade. This printer arrives with beneficiant 9,000-page black and 6,500-page shade inbox toners. With the most important replacements good for 12,000 black or 9,000 shade pages, upkeep intervals shouldn’t be too frequent.
Whereas not providing good shade replica, the HL-L9430CDN nonetheless made a great job of our check pictures, and printed wonderful shade graphics with a delightful luster.
Black textual content was nearly as good as you’d anticipate, too. General we may hardly name this hulking laser thrilling, but it surely delivers all the pieces you want in a busy enterprise printer. And with Brother having gained our Finest Printer Producer award for ten years in a row, you possibly can anticipate nice reliability and help, too.