The Brother HL-1650 uses the Brother HL 1650 Toner and provides advanced features not found in many competitors to the small businessman at an affordable price. The HL-1650 provides printing speeds at up to 16 pages per minute of monochrome printing. An automatic duplexer allows pages to be printed on both sides automatically.
The HL-1650 is provided with both parallel and USB ports for connection to a computer or network. Direct connection to a single computer through the parallel port provides the fastest printing speeds. Connection through the USB port slows down the printing speed by approximately 30%. The utilization of the USB port coupled with the optional 10/100 Base TX Ethernet print server permits the HL1650 to be incorporated into an office network.
Memory upgrades are available for the HL-1650 from Brother. These memory upgrades increase the memory from the 8mb that is provided to memory chips that expand the memory to 136mb. The memory upgrade provides an uninterrupted output rate when the printer is in a networked workgroup environment.
Toner costs and drum life of this laser printer are among some of the lowest available. The T560 toner cartridge will print up to 6500 pages. The DR500 drum will provide for up to 20,000 pages of printing. The use of this toner cartridge and drum provide for a cost of approximately 2 cents per page printed.
Brother provides the Quick Print utility setup with the HL-1650. This utility can be placed either in a dedicated window or on the system tray of the computer. Initial setup of this utility provides for options that will be utilized in printing the documents. These options include dedicating which size paper goes in which tray, layouts for multiple pages and type of paper used. In the Driver Properties section, features such as watermark inclusion are available. Graphics are often light or dark when printed. To insure proper graphics quality, the density and contrast of the graphics can be controlled manually.
The highest print quality provided by the HL-1650 is 1200 dpi. While this high quality printing is desirable for final reports, it is not necessary for draft copies. When draft copies of reports or documents are desired, the print quality can be reduced to as low as 300 dpi. The 300 dpi quality, while not suitable for final documents is well suited for review and corrections. There are several factors that determine how quickly a document is to be printed. These factors include which port is utilized to input data, the quality of the print desired and the amount of graphics included in the report.
Brother has made duplex printing a simple task. Many users find alignment problems when attempting duplex printing. The HL-1650 is delivered with automatic duplex printing and six settings for alignment of documents. Should the user not choose to utilize the automatic duplex printing function, duplex printing can be completed by through a manual setting.