I focus on printer and scanner technology and reviews. I have been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. I have authored or co-authored 20 books—including titles in the popular Bible, Secrets, and For Dummies series—on digital design and desktop publishing software applications. My published expertise in those areas includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, as well as prepress imaging technology. (Over my long career, though, I have covered many aspects of IT.)
Brother's HL-L3210CW is a capable, if basic, color laser-class LED printer for small offices where tight budgets require some corner-cutting.
The Brother HL-L3210CW ($199.99) is a step down from its sibling, the Editors' Choice HL-L3270CDW. Designed for small offices, both single-function color laser-class printers have the same paper capacity, volume ratings, running costs, and several other like features. What you give up for the $50 price difference, though, is significant, including an easy-to-use touch-screen control panel, plentiful connectivity options, and high-quality graphics output. In other words, it's worth weighing feature set versus price when considering the HL-L3210CW over its more expensive sibling.
Rather than being a true laser printer, the HL-L3210CW is an LED-based (light-emitting diode) machine. In other words, instead of using a laser mechanism to tell the printer where to place toner on the page, the HL-L3210CW performs this task with an array of LEDs. From the user's perspective, LED-based printers perform the same as their laser counterparts.
The HL-L3210CW measures 9.9 by 16.1 by 18.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 37.8 pounds, which is the same size as its HL-L3230CDW sibling and a bit smaller and lighter than the HL-L3270CDW. It's a bit larger and heavier than Canon's Color imageClass LBP612Cdw and Lexmark's C2325dw, both entry-level true lasers.
Paper capacity on the HL-L3210CW is 250 sheets, with a one-sheet override tray, which is on par with or higher than the competitors mentioned here. It has a 30,000-page maximum monthly duty duty cycle, with recommended monthly print volumes of 1,500 pages, which is again in line with or better than its competitors. However, it lacks an auto-duplexing print engine for churning out two-sided pages without your having to flip them manually.
The HL-L3210CW is one of the few color laser-class models I've seen without Ethernet support. Its connectivity consists of Wi-Fi and connecting to a single PC via USB. Mobile device compatibility comprises Apple AirPrint, Brother's iPrint&Scan app, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, and peer-to-peer networking through Wi-Fi Direct.
Unlike most of Brother's printers, though, the HL-L3210CW lacks support for Brother's cloud apps, a collection of workflow profiles that reside on the company's graphical touch-screen control panels and connect to specific cloud sites. To get this feature (and the touch-screen control panel), you'll need to step up to the HL-L3270CDW. As you can see in the image below, the HL-L3210CW comes with an antiquated control panel that consists of a one-line monochrome LCD display and buttons for Power, Wi-Fi, Back, OK, Secure printing, Cancel, and Go, along with up and down directional keys.
Brother rates the HL-L3210CW at 19 pages per minute (ppm), which is on the slow side for laser and laser-class machines. The HL-L3210CW printed our standard 12-page Microsoft Word text document at the rate of 19.4ppm. That's 5.6ppm slower than the HL-L3230CDW and the HL-L3270CDW, 4.5ppm behind the Lexmark C2325dw, and 1.6ppm faster than the Canon LBP612Cdw ($1,050.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) .
See How We Test Printers
Next, I printed several complex and colorful graphics- and photo-laden Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint docs, and then combined those scores with the results from the previous 12-page test to come up with an average time for printing our entire suite of test documents. Here, the HL-L3210CW turned in the slowest score among our comparison models at 8.2ppm, which is about 2ppm slower than the other two Brother models, 3.7ppm behind the Lexmark, and 2.6ppm slower than the Canon.
Brother laser and laser-class printers consistently churn out excellent, well-shaped, and highly legible text, and this one is no exception. It also printed our set of highly detailed color photos as well as most other laser and laser-class machines.
However, the HL-L3210CW struggled some in reproducing the dark fills and gradient backgrounds in several of our full-page PowerPoint handouts and Excel charts and graphs. I saw noticeable streaks in some deep black, green, and blue fills, and many of the gradients displayed obvious stepping from one color or tint to the next, instead of the gradual flow most printers achieve while printing these graphics.
These flaws weren't garish enough to render the output unusable for most business scenarios, though they are probably more suitable for in-house presentations than for important clients. If you're in the market for a laser-class machine for printing good-looking business graphics, all of the other laser-class models discussed here are better choices than this Brother.
Today's low purchase prices have made these little laser and laser-class machines affordable for nearly all small and home-based businesses. However, the day-to-day cost of using them, despite their relatively high duty cycles and recommended volumes, renders them low-volume machines suitable for printing only a few hundred pages each month.
When you use Brother's highest-yield toner cartridges (3,000 monochrome pages and 1,400 color) for this printer, using the HL-L3210CW (as well as the other Brother models mentioned throughout this review) will cost about 2.6 cents for black prints and 15.6 cents per color page. After the first 18,000 pages (and every 18,000 pages thereafter), you'll have to replace the imaging drum, which adds yet another 0.7 cent to the running costs, increasing the cost per page to 3.3 cents for black and 16.3 cents for color.
These numbers are on par with this printer's budget-laser-class competitors. The Canon LBP612Cdw's running costs, for example, are the same as the HL-L3210CW's, and the Lexmark C2325dw's per-page costs are, for both black pages and color, just a fraction of a cent lower.
All the major printer makers offer similar machines with slightly varying feature sets and price points. However, few scenarios demonstrate this as clearly as the HL-L3210CW, the HL-L3230CDW, and the HL-L3270CDW. However, taking a close look reveals a clear difference in this line. If budget is top of mind and you only print a few hundred pages a month, the HL-L3210CW will serve you well. Otherwise, it's worth shelling out the extra $50 for the more robust feature set and higher print quality of the Editors' Choice HL-L3270CDW.
Brother's HL-L3210CW is a capable, if basic, color laser-class LED printer for small offices where tight budgets require some corner-cutting.
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I focus on printer and scanner technology and reviews. I have been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. I have authored or co-authored 20 books—including titles in the popular Bible, Secrets, and For Dummies series—on digital design and desktop publishing software applications. My published expertise in those areas includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, as well as prepress imaging technology. (Over my long career, though, I have covered many aspects of IT.)
In addition to writing hundreds of articles for PCMag, over the years I have also written for many other computer and business publications, among them Computer Shopper, Digital Trends, MacUser, PC World, The Wirecutter, and Windows Magazine. I also served as the Printers and Scanners Expert at About.com (now Lifewire).
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