Brother HL-5470DW review

Most of the printers we review are designed for reasonably light use in the home or a study, but Brother's HL-5470DW wireless network mono laser is aimed at small businesses or a small workgroup in a larger business. As such it's faster than an entry-level mono laser printer, with a claimed print speed of 38 pages per minute. It's also rugged; Brother claims it'll print up to 50,000 pages in a month if the need arises, although the recommended duty is a more pedestrian 3,500.

Other features help make the HL-5470DW a genuine option for business use. There's a backlit LCD display that's useful when setting the printer up, while network management features include a web admin interface, a network management tool and a program to help automate driver installations – perfect for rolling it out to a large group of users.

Network admins will like the web management interface

Like other Brother laser printers, consumables for the HL-5470DW comprise a separate toner and drum. The supplied drum is good for a full 30,000 pages, but the starter toner will cover only 3,000 or so. Fortunately there's a 12,000-page high-capacity replacement that should make replacements infrequent. It also helps to keep print costs down to just under 1.2p per page, which is competitive, if not class-leading.

This printer is small enough to be unpacked by one person. Setting it up is simple, but we found it a little tedious having to wait for the single-line display to scroll through multiple options. Once joined to our wireless network it produced a single network status sheet that would have been more useful had it included an IP address; while Brother's easy installer didn't need the IP address when setting up the printer, it would help troubleshoot when problems arise.