PRINTING. The Brother HL-L8350CDW prints using laser technology, which picks up powdered 'toner' on a roller and fuses it to the paper with heat. It prints color photos with only Fair quality, which is not unusual for a laser printer. Photo printing was very quick, only 0.5 minute for a 4x6, costing 20 cents. Its text quality is Excellent, as we've come to expect from a laser printer. Text printing was very quick, 15.8 pages per minute, costing 2.1 cents per page. It prints color graphics well enough for most purposes, such as school reports, at 5 pages per minute, costing 16.9 cents per page. It has auto-duplex printing to print both on sides of the page, with no loss of quality. If any color ink runs out, it stops printing—it can't be set to just use the remaining black ink. If the black ink runs out, it stops printing—it can't be set to just use the remaining color ink. The capacity of the main paper tray is 250 sheets, a generous size. There's a second tray for full-size paper, allowing you to load letterhead paper, for instance.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has a medium-size 2.1-inch display screen.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router either wirelessly with WiFi or with an Ethernet cable. There's a WiFi Auto-connect feature that makes it easy to link to your wireless router. Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print are built-in, to print wirelessly from smartphones, tablets and PCs. You can also install Brother's app on your smart phone or tablet, as another option for printing over your WiFi network.
COST OF OWNERSHIP AND TONER. When this section was last updated, the printer's purchase price was about $400, very expensive for a color laser printer. Printing uses up toner. Over time, as you print, the costs add up. This printer uses 4 cartridges. The Brother toner cartridges used in testing were the TN-336BK, TN-336C, TN-336M, and TN-336Y. At the time, their prices were $78, $125, $125, and $125 respectively. We estimate the cartridges to last an extraordinarily long time: around 2.3 years. After 2 years of typical use, we estimate the total cost to be $585, typical for a color laser. The estimated yearly cost is $92, low for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are $677, $770 and $862 respectively.
NOTE. This printer was noisier than most while printing, so you might want to locate it away from sleeping areas.
PRINTER FIRMWARE. Firmware is software that exists inside the printer. All models are evaluated using the latest firmware version available at the time of testing. The firmware version of the Brother HL-L8350CDW was 1.06.
SOFTWARE. The collection of software accompanying the printer may include: the printer driver, printer applications, electronic user manual, (and for all-in-ones:) scanning, faxing, and OCR apps. These get installed on your personal computer. All models are evaluated with a Windows 10 PC using the latest version of printer driver and printer support apps available at the time of testing. The software version was 1.1.0.0.
