Wi-Fi setup was also painless, but it helped that there were relatively few options on the onscreen menu
Wi-Fi setup was also painless, but it helped that there were relatively few options on the onscreen menu The small color touchscreen was responsive enough that I was able to tap in my Wi-Fi password on the first attempt. A bigger time sink was setting up to print via Google Cloud Print, a system I’ve always found to be inscrutable. Simply adding a networked local printer via Windows 10 or MacOS is also not the one-button task it should be, but I got that sorted out after a few minutes as well. AirPrint, Google Cloud Print and more In my hands-on testing, printing 10 pages from a MacBook took 27 seconds, including about 5 seconds for the data to stream over the network from my laptop to the printer. Printing a seven-page webpage from the Edge browser on a Windows laptop took 36 seconds. Making a “photocopy” of a single sheet of paper took 9 seconds. But much more importantly than that, once I had the printer set up and the Wi-Fi connections made, it just worked and kicked out a perfectly legible document every time. I tried different laptops, I tried my phone (19 seconds for a one-page email via AirPrint), I tried Google Docs, PDF files and emails. It just worked, and for me as a decades-long inkjet user, it was a refreshing change of pace. One thing to watch out for if you buy from Amazon: It uses “Amazon Dash Auto Replenishment,” which means it’ll automatically order new toner for you when it’s running low, but that’s a feature you can turn off via your Amazon account. The color option The HL-L2395DW has a flatbed scanner and copier, but isn’t a color printer. I find that most of my printing is shipping labels, pages of notes for TV appearances, and user manuals for laptops to read while testing. But, I also get that color is important to a lot of people, and a monochrome printer can be a dealbreaker. That’s why I followed the printer rabbit hole just a little deeper to find the Brother’s big, uh, brother basic color version. I tried the least expensive color cousin to the so-far excellent HL-L2395DW, which is called the HL-3170CDW. […]