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Although you wouldn't guess it from the model number, the Brother HL-6180DW is best understood as a heavier-duty version of the Editors' Choice Brother HL-5450DNSEE IT that I recently reviewed. It adds Wi-Fi and a few other features, but it's built around the same engine and offers essentially the same speed and output quality. The key differences are a larger paper capacity and a lower cost per page. That's enough to put the HL-6180DW in a different category than the Brother HL-5450DN, where it also qualifies as Editors' Choice.

Directly competitive with the more expensive Editors' Choice OKI B431dn, the HL-6180DW delivers a slightly slower speed but a higher paper capacity. Both printers are aimed primarily at micro and small offices, and both can serve as heavy-duty personal printers. However, the Brother printer's larger paper capacity and larger size make it a little harder to justify for personal, rather than shared, use.

Basics

The HL-6180DW's paper handling is more than adequate for most micro and small offices, with a duplexer (for printing on both sides of a page) and a 550-sheet capacity, divided into a 500-sheet drawer and 50-sheet multipurpose tray. For those offices that need more, an optional second 500-sheet drawer ($209.99 list) boosts the capacity to 1,050 sheets. If you need the higher capacity, however, you're better off getting the Brother HL-6180DWT ($400 street), which is the same printer with the second tray already included.

As you might expect from the high paper capacity, the HL-6180DW is big enough so you might not want it sitting on your desk. With the standard capacity, it measures 11.3 by 14.6 by 15.1 inches (HWD). That gives it a smaller footprint than many inkjets, but the height and boxy shape makes it feel more imposing. Add the second tray and the height goes up to 16.5 inches. Even with both trays, however, it's small enough to keep near your desk, if not on it.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality

Setting up the HL-6180DW for printing over a network is typical for the breed, although it's worth noting that the printer also offers support for a variety of mobile printing options, including AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Brother's own mobile app. For my tests, I connected the printer to a wired network and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.

Brother rates the HL-6180DW at 42 pages per minute (ppm), or 2 ppm faster than the HL-5450DN. However, on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software), the HL-6180DW was statistically tied with the HL-5450DN, at 10.7 ppm. Both were a tad slower than the B431dn, at 11.1 ppm.

Output quality for the printer is par overall, and a close match to both the HL-5450DN and the B431. Text quality is at the low end of the range where the vast majority of mono lasers fall, making it easily good enough for any business need short of serious desktop publishing applications.

Graphics output is at the high end of par for mono lasers, which also makes it good enough for any internal business need. Whether you consider it good enough for, say, PowerPoint handouts will depend largely on how critical an eye you have. Photos are also par, which makes them easily good enough for printing Web pages with photos. Here again, whether you consider them good enough for photos in a client or company newsletter or the like will depend on your level of perfectionism.

Other Issues

The HL-6180DW offers a low running cost. The claimed per page cost of 1.8 cents is the same that OKI claims for the B431dn, and 0.4 cents less than Brother claims for the HL-5450DN. Print 25,000 pages over the lifetime of the printer, in short, and you can make up the difference in initial price between the HL-5450DN and the HL-6180DW. Print more, and the HL-6180DW will be less expensive in the long run.

Clearly, if you need a smaller printer that will fit more comfortably on your desk, or your needs run more toward light- to medium-duty printing (so you won't benefit from a lower cost per page or higher paper capacity), you should be looking at the HL-5450DN. For heavier-duty printing, however, the Brother HL-6180DW easily beats the HL-5450DN on running cost and paper handling, while it matches or beats the B431dn on initial cost, running cost, and paper capacity. All of this makes it a runaway pick for Editors' Choice.

More Laser Printer Reviews:
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