Brother HL-1112 Compact Mono Laser Printer

I had two high quality HP4L mono laser printers which were bought new (£600 each!) and used since 1993, yes, over 20 years. They were, understandably, developing issues which were not cost effective to address, just the replacement cartridges alone were often costing up to £70 (each).Not being able to afford the price of a modern equivalent, I recognised that my needs were really just straightforward black and white printing of letters one or two pages long, the odd .pdf document of up to about ten pages and the occasional print out of documents input to computer via a seperate scanner.It arrived, very well packaged, and I plugged it in to the mains and pressed the on button but nothing happened and I began to fret that I had (once again) had the one bad product of a batch.However, before panicking, I scoured the box for the users manual which was said to accompany it but none was found. Fortunately, I googled and downloaded the manual and was able to find that just pressing the on button would not actually turn the printer on but holding the button down for a few seconds was required. I tried that, and bingo, it was turned on.Lifted up the lid, removed the orange bit from the toner cartridge and pushed it in, no problems, simple.The next stage was to connect it to the computer, which required a cable with a usb at one end and a squarer connection on the other end. This cable was NOT provided, and I have read a lot of reviews which slate the company\product for that but listen up, the price of this product was less than fifty quid, which was a lesser amount than I used to pay for just one toner cartridge. I had already known in advance the cable would not be supplied and went out and got one for just a few pounds.Connected to the computer and inserted the accompanying CD. I did fumble around for a while trying to work out how to actually install the printer software as opposed to just the driver. This procedure was not automated in my experience, and that could be a minus for anyone not experienced with software installations.However, once done, I was off and printing.First results were disappointing, there were white streaks down the A4 paper and I thought here we go.Fortunately, after printing out around half a dozen sheets of paper, the streaks disappeared and I figured this was just a bedding in thing.Next up, quality of print. My first efforts were dreadful, the quality of print was less than that of the dot matrix printers I was using some forty years ago.However, after studying the software, I found a facility to change the type of print to "FINE".Once done, quality of print went up to the moon, and was easily comparable to my previous high quality laser printers.I have seen some reviews which slate the front loading paper feeder. I have worked with high end printers where the paper feeders are nightmares and frequently need to be withdrawn and reinserted to deal, for example, with paper jams and misalligned paper. Not so with this one, I found that criticism unjustified. There is a simple "handle" which you pull back to insert paper and then push back in to keep it in place, and off you go. Not one single problem, and I find the front end paper feeder absolutely excellent and holds a lot of sheets of paper.Okay, the body of the printer is not so much a rolls royce metal but more of a bucket type plastic but (a) that makes it very light to carry or move about and (b) does not in any way detract from the quality of output. Also, for the quality of output the size of the whole printer is very compact indeed.Is there anything to criticise about this product? Uh, yes there is one. And that is the paper OUTPUT system. Basically, for example, if you were printing 10 or more pages you would need to stand next to the printer and collect each sheet as it comes out in order to avoid a chaotic collection of page output all over the floor or the table or wherever you put it. Add to that the speed of output is so quick that the sheets shoot out like bullets. Personally, I would have preferred it if the output was slower, after all you are unlikely to buy this product to rapidly print out 150 pages of stuff in a flash.In conclusion though, other than (a) working out how to actually turn the printer on (b) fumbling about to discover how to actually install the software manager not just the driver and (c) needing to be in attendance to manually pick up and sort the paper output, this is a first class product for a phenomenally affordable price and one of the few laser printers for which a replacement toner cartridge is around £30 at the top end, as low as £18 from some sources, and can be refilled manually for arounda fiver.For the price, absolutely magnificent.Ah yes, but how long will it last? Well, you have a one year statutory guarantee which if it dies in a year has cost a quid a week (the supplied toner will likely last that long) and I read somewhere that the supplier gives a two year guarantee. What, all that for less than fifty quid? How much better could you do than that?p.s. the advantage of the on button not functioning without a few seconds of holding is now clear, it turns itself off! Marvelous. I have half a mind to order a second one just in case it goes out of production.Note: the specifications on the amazon product page suggest that mainly only windows server operating systems are compatible. That is not correct and I have found it works fine with all windows systems including vista and windows 10.

I purchased this printer on 9 Sep 2016, for £39.99. I don't think was in a sale, so I don't know why the same model is nearly double that now. It came with a 'small' toner cartridge, which is just starting to run out at the time of writing, (24 Feb 2020). The replacement cartridge (confirmed compatible) is costing me £6.80 on Amazon for 1000 pages.I don't need to print in colour, so mono is fine for me. The print quality is great, it's fast, (once it has warmed up for a few seconds), and most importantly to me, there are no wet ink cartridges to dry up - my persistent gripe with ink-jet. I don't print often, but when I do, I need a printer to be reliable and simple to use, and I DON'T need to find that my cartridges have dried up AGAIN, and to have to faff around cleaning the print heads to try to coax them to let out a little more juice. (One fancy model I've had in the past even refused to scan a document before I had replaced both black and white and colour ink cartridges!) I got fed up with being bullied by my tech, so I was more than happy, on the advice of a friend, to give up on ink-jet and go with laser.As other reviewers have said, the printer has no wifi connection, but I've had two all-in-one printers in the past which were supposed to operate over wifi, and neither would ever connect. Not even a very tech-capable friend, or the relevant customer services departments could help, so both were a waste of money. I have USB ports on my laptop, and I am more than happy to take it into the next room and connect with a cable. Its small footprint and lightness mean it can live on a shelf and be lifted down when I want it. It doesn't need to be left on to self-clean, so you can switch it off after use and save energy.I have had no problems, and this is the first time I am buying new toner, after the best part of 3 and a half years, for a fraction of what I would pay for even one ink-jet cartridge. One of the best tech decisions I've made, and definitely the best relationship I've had with a printer!

This little printer takes up about a third of my desk real estate previously taken up by its predecessor. As well as being compact it is also very light, not that I plan to move it around. The Mac set up was a breeze using the downloadable file and the monochrome output is pretty good quality for a low cost printer. I bought this for occasional use and it is a laser printer so I should have no problem with ink drying out before its next use. The only issue so far was when I tried too register it for warranty purposes on the Brother website and I couldn't - I emailed Brother customer support to learn that it couldn't be registered on their website first off as it had been supplied to the reseller more than 6 months ago. Post email it is registered.

Exactly what I was looking for, a simple good quality device that takes up as small amount of space as possible. I use the printer for e-tickets and very occasional use, purely text/bar code style stuff.Be aware that to leave paper loaded, you have to leave the front 'hatch' open. I tend to feed paper in as and when required, and as such, the printer remains unobtrusive and just about blends in to its surroundings as required. I picked it up for £40.99. You'll need a standard USB printer cable - I don't recall a printer ever coming with one of these (I don't know why) even as far back as the 90's.I will report back when the original toner runs out, to give an idea of how much use I got.

Dont bother with this for anything, you have to switch it on every time you want to print something, the blank ink is medium grey and difficult to see small print. I just wanted a printer for daily invoices at work. Waste of money and time consuming with not much print quality. Also for any modern pcs that dont have disc drive you have to faf around trying to download the software from the brother website.