Printer Review: Brother MFC L2710dw

Brother MFC L2710dw is an entry-level monochrome laser printer that can print copy scan, and fax. The all-in-one (AIO) copier delivers high print quality with excellent wireless networking connectivity from a mobile device. It's a very hot selling model across North America. The features of automatic duplex printing and a print speed of up to 32 pages per minute make it a nice workhorse meeting moderate printing needs. If you are a small business owner, this reliable model will be a good option for your daily work in-home or small office.

Brother MFC L2710dw Design

Brother L2710dw looks like a dark box for files with a black, old-fashioned design. The printer's shape is tight with a measurement of 16.1 inches by 15.7 inches by 12.5 inches WDH. It is easy to find a space for the machine in a home or small office. Just make sure to get enough clearance to lift the cover for scanning. And most of the desks can take its weight of 26 pounds.

There are several similar AIOs in the market. Compared to it, Brother HL L2390DW is lighter and tighter but lacks an automatic document feeder. Canon ImageClass MF249dw is a little bigger and heavier, and HP's LaserJet Pro MFP M130fw is a bit smaller and about 9 pounds lighter.

The structure of this printer is excellent. Cartridges are easily accessible from the front, and you can remove paper jams after opening a single panel from the back of the printer. Scanning books or other thick documents are available because of the adjustable scanner lid. What's more, you can raise the scanner bed to access better to the output paper tray. Everything is good except the non-removable power cord, which is hard to replace if damaged.

Above all, Brother gives the MFCL2710dw printer a robust and sturdy construction design under the humble outlook.

Versatile connection and print options in WI FI

The printer supports most wired and wireless connections. Wireless networking makes printing convenient with your mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
The printer offers multiple connection options to let you work your way. You can choose interfaces built-in wi fi and Ethernet network to share with your workmates on your network, or just use a USB cable to connect to a single computer locally. The standard interfaces are compatible with Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Wi-Fi Direct, Mopria, Cortado Workplace, and Brother iPrint&Scan. With the App of Brother iPrint&Scan, you can access most of the functionality, including print, scan, copy, and maintenance tasks. Also, you can print from emails and connect to specific cloud sites.

Functionality

Like other multifunctional machines, the Brother MFCL2710dw printer offers basic features, including print copy scan and fax.

The first page of black comes out in a little long time of 11.7s, but it produces pages at a quick pace afterward. With a class-leading black print speed of up to 32 pages per minute, the machine is specially designed to improve productivity. The text print speed is the same as its sibling Brother MFC-L2750DW, 25% faster than Canon MF249dw and almost twice as fast as HP M130fw. Please be noted, the performance drops to 14ppm when handling colorful graphics and photo-laden files. The Maximum Monthly Duty Cycle is 15,000 pages, while Brother recommends the print volume is 2,000 pages per month. In addition, the printer also offers automatic duplex printing, which is an excellent feature to save paper and time.

This model has a 250 sheet capacity input paper tray, which will reduce refilling needs and help improve efficiency. And, dynamic features can meet your changing demand. That is to say. The users can access flexible paper handling for various papers and legal sizes from the manual feed slot. The printing stuff includes A4, A5, A6, card stock, envelopes. But large sized papers like A3 are not supported. As a result, you can create professional-looking documents from the most suitable printing materials. With the automatic document feeder with up to 50 pages capacity, you do not need to do manual feed often. It helps save time to fax, scan and copy multi page documents. What's more, you do not have to make much handle with a 50 sheet output paper tray.

Well, this low-end AIO has some excellent features, but disappointedly, the printer lacks double sided scanning. It will take a lot of time to scan duplicate documents with this model. That means two sided copying is unavailable either, as it depends on the printer scanner feature. And as a monochrome printer, the machine is unable to print color graphics and photos. The inability brings extreme limits in daily work.

Print Quality

Among monochrome laser printers, Brother MFC L2710dw delivers average print output. It produces well-shaped and crisp black text prints even at very low point sizes. Also, typical business graphics come out well too. Simple graphics such as lines and light fills are just fine, but some more complicated ones bring flaws. The performance makes it suitable with simple reports or other applications of in-house documents among coworkers, but indeed not good enough for your marketing materials.

Monochrome printers are bad choices for photo printing, and Brother L2710dw is not an exception. The printer can't print on glossy photo paper, and it has awful printing results on photos, wherein a lot of grain and banding appears. If you want to produce your photos from your journey or daily life, color InkJet printers are recommended.

Above all, this machine is good at black text prints but not suitable for color graphics and photos.

The consumables

Ink and toner are the most common daily used consumables for printers. InkJet printers print with ink cartridges, and LaserJet ones use toner cartridges. Sometimes there is a drum with the toner cartridge to make the complete print functionality. A Toner cartridge is a container with toner powder in it. HP usually incorporates it with a drum unit, which fuses the toner powder into the paper to produce text and images. Many brands, including Brother, Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, have separated toner cartridges and drums.

Brother MFC L2710dw printer is a monochrome laser printer, and the original Brother toner cartridges are TN760 and TN730; the drum unit is DR730. The only difference between TN760 and TN730 is the page yield. Brother TN760 produces 3,000 pages, much more than TN730 with 1,200 pages. Page yield is defined under the ISO standards, shows how many pages of 5% printed coverage you can get from the Brother products. Original Brother TN760 has a name of high yield cartridge because of up to 3,000 pages standard yield, which lasts a long time for a small business. The standard yield of drum DR730 is up to 12,000 pages, making it a not frequently replaced part.

The cost

Prices may vary from different channels. Brother L2710dw is $220 on Brother's official website, a moderate price among the counterparts. But more importantly, the actual printing cost is both the parts of a machine and the consumables, including ink and toner. The definition COST PER PAGE is more suitable to reflect how much you spend on printing with a Brother MFC-L2710DW toner. The formula is simple: COST PER PAGE=toner cartridge price/page yield. For example, Brother TN760 with 3,000 pages is $77 on Amazon, while Brother TN730 with 1,200 pages costs $43. So the cost per page is $0.026(77/3000=0.026) and $0.036 for TN730. Apparently, high yield cartridge TN760 is a more economical option than TN730. In addition, the DR730 drum costs $80. When your print volume reaches 12,000 pages, you should add the drum cost per page $0.007.

The number of 12,000 pages means about four high yield cartridges toner TN760 or 10 TN730 is needed when you use up one drum DR730. So all consumables cost at least $388($80+4*$77=$388), which will amount to $168 more than the printer itself.

Choose True Image compatible Brother MFC L2710dw toner replacements to save money.

When you buy this printer, there comes with 700 pages toner cartridge. 700 pages is not a big page yield, and you should prepare supplements for the machine earlier. Besides pricy Brother genuine toner cartridges, the users also have the right to choose compatible Brother MFC L2710dw toner replacements to get better cost-efficiency. A compatible toner cartridge is a product not produced by the printer manufacturer but may work as Brother genuine toner cartridges would. Prices may vary from different toner cartridge suppliers. Compared to $77 for the original Brother TN 760, the True Image compatible TN760 toner cartridge is $19.99, which means three times the pages you can get with the same money. If you choose a compatible Brother TN760 toner replacement, much money can be saved.

The family of the MFC L2710DW printer

Usually, you can find specific toner cartridges from the manual, available at the Brother official site if lost. The US manual shows a list of 10 printer models, including DCP L2550DW, HL L2390DW, HL L2395DW, MFC L2710DW, MFC L2750DW, MFC L2750DWXL, MFC L2730DW, MFC L2690DW, MFC L2690DWXL, MFC L2717DW. They are the families using the same consumables of TN 730 TN 760, and DR730. Interestingly, MFC L2750DW, MFC L2750DWXL have another SUPER high yield toner cartridge, TN770, with an approximately 4,500 pages life. Moreover, these three monochrome laser printers, HL L2350DW, HL L2370DW, and HL L2370DWXL, are listed in the Brother store on Amazon but disappear in the manual. That is to say, MFC L2690DW, MFC L2690DWXL, MFC L2717DW are updated replacements for the delisted ones.

Make sure you download the correct manual for your areas because the same Brother products have different model names. For instance, in East Europe, TN760 and TN730 are called TN2421 and TN2411, which are compatible with  DCP L2512D, DCP L2532DW, DCP L2552DN, MFC L2712DN, MFC L2712DW, MFC L2732DW, MFC L2752DW.

In the USA list, Brother MFC-L2730DW and MFC-L2750DW are variants of the Brother MFC-L2710dw printer. Both of them have a larger touchscreen, and L2750DW can make double sided scanning. Incidentally, the models with xl are the variants for pure marketing purposes without any moderation on the machines, like L2750DW to L2750DWXL. Incidentally You can pay $100 more to get two toner cartridges with a 7,500-page yield summing up. The official prices are $77 and $116 for both toner cartridges. So it is a chance to get a nearly 50% discount on the original consumables. You can consider taking advantage of it if your print volume is more than 300 pages per month.

Note: Please do not mix up the Brother MFC-L2710DW toner and Brother MFC-L3710CW toner. They are completely different series of toner cartridges.

Our suggestions

As a multifunctional copier, Brother L2710dw can meet most of the basic print, fax, scan and copy needs. It can not offer double sided copying and scanning. But with the excellent output of black text prints, it is an OK choice for students or small businesses when you do not have many multi page docs to scan. L2710dw is not a good printer for home use because it delivers terrible photo quality and can't print in color.

If you need a printer scanner with duplex scanning, the sibling MFC L2750DW is an option, just $50 more than MFC- L2710dw. Moreover, you can pay $100 more to get MFC L2750DWXL with 7,500 extra pages, of which the value is double for original brother toners. The high yield TN760 Brother toner cartridge lasts a long time without replacement. After that, if you want to save more, do try our premium quality compatible toner cartridge.