Brother HL-L2405W vs Brother MFC-L3720CDW

The Brother HL-L2405W is the print-only answer to the thread's advice: buy a Brother, skip everything else. It is a monochrome laser printer with no scanner or copier attached, built for anyone whose printing needs stop at black-and-white pages.

It prints at up to 30 pages per minute and holds 250 sheets, so it goes a long stretch between refills. Dual-band wireless (2.4GHz and 5GHz) connects it to multiple devices, and a USB 2.0 port covers a direct connection. At 15.1 pounds and a 14.2 by 14 by 7.2 inch footprint, it fits a desktop corner instead of taking one over.

The tradeoffs are the features it left out. There is no auto-duplex, so two-sided printing means flipping the page by hand. There is no scanner or copier, so anything beyond printing needs a separate device. And it is monochrome only, with no path to color if a future job needs it.

The Brother MFC-L3720CDW is the step the thread's Brother-only consensus does not usually take: color. It is a full all-in-one, adding a color laser engine, fax, and a touchscreen to everything the DCP-L2640DW already does, for anyone whose job actually needs color pages.

The 3.5 inch touchscreen handles up to 48 shortcuts and connects directly to Google Drive, Dropbox and OneNote, so scanning to the cloud does not require a computer. It prints at up to 19 pages per minute, scans up to 29/22 images per minute (black/color), and automatic duplex plus a 50-sheet auto document feeder carry over from the cheaper picks. It is ENERGY STAR compliant and EPEAT Silver rated.

Color is the expense here, in the printer's price and in toner going forward: color laser cartridges cost more than mono ones, and there are four of them, black, cyan, magenta and yellow, instead of one. Print speed drops to 19 ppm from 36 on the value pick, since color passes take longer than mono. And at 44 pounds, this is a printer you place once and do not move.