Brother DCP-L2500D Review

Verdict

Pros

• Single-sheet special media tray
• Two-part drum and toner cartridge
• Low noise levels

Cons

• No LCD backlight
• Poor greyscale copy quality
• Quick default sleep setting

What is the Brother DCP-L2500D?

The Brother DCP-L2500D is an entry-level mono laser all-in-one printer aimed at the small office and home office (SOHO) crowd, with a price that will be very attractive to anybody on a tight budget. And
it’s a very useful machine, with print, scan and copy facilities and the
ability to print duplex pages. This category of printers continues to drop in price as a response to the faster, more flexible inkjets being launched by all printer makers…including Brother.

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Brother DCP-L2500D – Design and Features

Decked out in dark grey and black, it has a small desktop footprint, but tapers out from bottom to top and is quite deep when you get to the scanner cover. This cover is for a Contact Image Scan (CIS) flatbed, which does a reasonable job on text and photos, but is not so good on greyscale originals.

In front of the scanner is a full-width control panel, based around a rather skimpy two-line, 16-character LCD display, without a back-light. Given the cost of an LED, it’s hard to see why all display panels can’t be fitted with one.

Below the control panel is a slot for paper output and this has a small, flip-over paper stop to catch printed pages. Below that is a flip-down cover which becomes a single-sheet paper feed for special media. At the bottom is a 250-sheet paper tray for A4 sheets.

Brother DCP-L2500D – Connection and Cartridge

The only data connection is a USB socket at the back – there’s no wireless or network connection, though these are available on other machines in the range. Software includes Brother’s own MFL-Pro suite and, surprisingly with such a low-cost machine, a copy of Nuance PaperPort 12SE, the document management and OCR software, which is a useful application to have.

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The two-part drum and toner cartridge slides in easily from the front, once you’ve folded down the front cover. It’s a bit fiddly to install the toner cartridge into the drum section, which acts as holder, without touching either the toner-coated feed roller or the photoconductor drum, so you need to take care.

Brother DCP-L2500D – Print Speed

Brother rates the DCP-L2500D at
26ppm, which would be pretty impressive if we could reproduce it.
However, measuring from clicking Print, in Word, to the final page
appearing in the output tray gives a maximum speed of 18.8ppm, on the
20-page document. The more typical 5-page test produced 11.1ppm, less
than half the rated speed.

Even so, in real terms, this is a good
turn of speed for a low-cost printer. In duplex mode the machine still
manages 10.6 sides per minute and a single-page copy comes through in an
impressive 10 seconds. A 15 x 10cm photo on A4 takes 13s.

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Brother
has set the sleep time on this machine quite low, so it’s only 40s
before it goes to sleep and a further 20s before slipping into deep
sleep. Having the printer asleep increases the time to first page out.
It’s possible to change the sleep times, but they seem a bit tight as
defaults.

The printer is unusually quiet, peaking at 61dBA, making it a very agreeable tool to have beside you on the desk.

Brother DCP-L2500D – Print Quality and Costs

The
600dpi default resolution ensures text print quality is good, with
sharp, precise characters and no sign of toner spatter. Greyscale fills
are a little banded, but nothing too noticeable. Even photo reproduction
is fair, though details in darker, shadowed areas have a tendency to
disappear. Photocopies of greyscale fills are pretty ropey, looking very
banded and monotone.

Using the high capacity toner cartridge,
which is good for 2,600 pages, gives a cost per page of 3.0p, including
0.7p for paper. This is good when compared with other laser printers at
similar price, and even with some inkjets.

Should I buy a Brother DCP-L2500D?

There
isn’t a lot of competition in the field at this price point. The
Samsung Xpress M2070 is perhaps the best match, at around £80 and it
offers a similar specification. It can’t print duplex, though, and has a
more makeshift paper feed system.

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Verdict

The
Brother DCP-L2500D is a very good, basic laser all-in-one, offering
fast printing, including duplex output, at relatively low cost. While it
doesn’t have many of the bells and whistles of more expensive machines,
including wireless connection, if all you need is a SOHO print, copy
and scan tool, you can’t go far wrong with this machine.