The Brother MFC-L2750DW provides excellent value for money. The XL model, which costs INR 32,999, was tested. Although this is the most expensive of the home/small-office monochrome laser printers we’ve tested, the XL model includes two toner cartridges with a total page yield of 7,500. The Brother MFC-L2750DW XL includes a fast automatic document feeder, duplex printing or copying, colour scanning, faxing, as well as integration with cloud apps like OneNote.
The MFC-L2750DW XL is designed for heavier use than the Canon ImageClass MF217w, that is rated for up to 8,000 pages per month (also known as its “duty cycle”). Overall, our Brother MFC-L2750DW XL review demonstrates that it is one of the best all-in-one printers we’ve tested, as well as the best laser printer.
Design
The 2.7-inch colour touch screen isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done. You can’t swipe like on a smartphone screen, however tapping the virtual up/down on-screen menu buttons will get you there fairly quickly. To reveal the scanner plate, you lift the 50-sheet ADF on top of the printer. Since the lid is held at about 45 degrees, you don’t have to balance it while loading a document to scan. To prevent pages from sliding off the unit, there is a foldout catch where they land beneath the ADF. The output tray is a recessed cavity in the body with a hinged catch at the front, located beneath the scanner glass. A 10-key pad for entering fax numbers makes faxing simple.
The paper drawer at the unit’s base can hold up to 250 sheets of paper. A second input slot for specialty media is located above that drawer, behind a fold-down cover; it can hold up to ten envelopes, for example. When you open the paper drawer for the first time, a message appears on the screen asking if you want to change the paper size. If you say “No,” the printer asks if you want it to ask the same question again. Entering “No” disables this notification, which is a good thing because the message can become annoying if you never intend to change the paper size.
The body is 16.1 x 15.7 x 12.5 inches in size and weighs 26.5 pounds. It has the same footprint as a typical home multifunction printer, but it’s roughly twice as tall. You should have enough vertical clearance to lift the scanner lid.
Printing Speed
The MFC-L2750DW prints quickly, with the fastest speed among small office all-in-one laser printers we’ve tested to date. It printed a five-page text document in 16.2 seconds at a rate of 18.5 pages per minute. This is significantly faster than the 14.4 ppm category average. The Canon ImageClass MF217w was almost as quick, printing the document in 18.9 seconds.
On our mixed text and graphics document, the laser all-in-one also achieved the fastest speed in the small office category to date. The Brother printer nearly doubled the average speed. The Brother outperformed the average of 36.7 seconds, or 9.8 ppm, by printing six pages in 20.3 seconds, or 17.8 ppm. In comparison, the Canon ImageClass MF217w printed the document at a rate of 12.2 pages per minute.
The MFC-L2750DW printed a grayscale letter-size photo on plain paper slower than the average printer. The printer completed the task in 17.2 seconds, compared to the average of 16.4 seconds. The Canon MF217w was much faster, clocking in at 11.1 seconds, the fastest time to date.
Copy and Scan Speed
The MFC-L2750DW also outperformed the Canon model when it came to copying, taking nearly 2 seconds less than the average of 10.3 seconds. This printer copied a text page in 8.4 seconds, edging out the Canon’s 8.7 second time. The Brother used the automatic document feeder to copy our five-page text document in 19.3 seconds, or 15.5 ppm, while the Canon took 22.3 seconds, or 13.4 ppm.
The MFC-L2750DW copies two-sided sheets quickly, thanks in part to its fast ADF and the fact that both sides of two-sided sheets are scanned in one pass. (Because the Canon MF217w lacks a duplexer, it cannot print two-sided documents and does not automatically make two-sided copies of documents loaded into its document feeder.) A 10-page text document (five sheets) was copied in 57.1 seconds, or 10.5 ppm by Brother.
Print Quality
The MFC-L2750DW produced text documents with dark and crisp letterforms around the edges. Graphics were also appealing, though they printed a little dark overall. As a result, they lost some details in the shadows, but the midtones retained subtle transitions. This was most noticeable in reproductions of photographs of faces: these were appealing because the transitions gave them a 3D appearance. Document scans appeared sharp, with crisp reproductions of text forms in PDF format. Photographs looked good when scanned to JPEG format at 600 dpi, with accurate colours and fine details reproduced even in shadow areas.
Toner Cost and Yield
The Brother MFC-L2750DW has below-average printing costs. In comparison to the average of 4.1 cents per page for the laser printers with multiple functions we’ve tested, this Brother prints for 3.75 cents per page with a standard toner cartridge that is rated to last 1,200 pages. However, with the 6.5k high-capacity cartridge (rated at 3,000 pages) or the 10k super-high-capacity cartridge (rated at 4,500 pages), you can reduce that cost to 2.7 cents per page. The toner drum is rated to last 12,000 pages and costs INR 8,999, which adds about 0.9 cents to the per-page cost.
Verdict
The Brother MFC-L2750DW XL multifunction printer is fast and has useful features such as a quick ADF, fast duplex printing and copying, fax capability, as well as a second paper tray. The MFC-L2750DW XL produced the fastest text and mixed text/graphics file speeds to date, and it produced two-sided prints faster than some models produce one-sided prints. It also provides consistently high image quality. Although the initial price for this category is high, consider that it includes two toner cartridges with a total print capacity of 7,500 pages.
