The Brother HL-L3280CDW ($299.99) is a relatively fast color laser-class printer that offers top-notch print quality at an attractive price. It’s a step-down model of the Brother HL-L3295CDW—our Editors’ Choice pick for budget color laser printers—with some similarities but also some key differences. In its favor, the HL-L3280CDW provides essentially the same print quality as the HL-L3295CDW at a lower cost. (It just performs a little slower when printing and has lower duty ratings.) You also get tighter paper input capacities. The biggest strike against the HL-L3280CDW, though, is print costs for color: They're steeper than the HL-L3295CDW's, as well as those for similar laser-class printers. By contrast, the machine's monochrome print costs are much more competitive—making it a better fit for workplaces that don't often print in color.

Design: Making Do With Less

At 10.8 by 15.7 by 15.7 inches (HWD), the HL-L3280CDW is fairly compact for its speed and paper capacity. It’s nearly the same size in all three dimensions as the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw, and smaller than the Canon Color imageClass LBP674Cdw and the Ricoh C125 P. The Canon and Ricoh models, in fact, rise more than 4 inches taller.

(Credit: David English)

The HL-L3280CDW weighs in at 33.9 pounds, about average for the category; compare that with the 3201dw at 30.4 pounds and the LBP674Cdw at 35.5 pounds. (None of them comes close to the hefty outlier in the group, the 55.1-pound C125 P.)

Given the HL-L3280CDW's relatively low price, you have to expect some limited functionality. Consider the paper situation. The printer has a standard 250-sheet paper input tray, a single-sheet manual feed slot, and no provision for adding an optional tray. The pricier Brother HL-L3295CDW gives you the same 250-sheet tray, but you also get a 30-sheet multipurpose input tray and the option to add another 250-sheet tray. The 3201dw has the same paper input capacities (and lack of expansion options) as the HL-L3280CDW, while the C125 P not only matches those specs but offers an optional 500-sheet tray. And the LBP674Cdw beats them all in this regard with its standard 250-sheet tray, 50-sheet multipurpose input tray, and optional 550-sheet tray.

(Credit: David English)

The HL-L3280CDW fares better with its paper output bin, with a generous 150-sheet capacity that matches the Brother HL-L3295CDW. It's an especially important feature if you tend to leave the unit unattended when printing large projects. By comparison, the Ricoh has a 125-sheet output bin, while the 3201dw's can handle 100 sheets. The Canon LBP674Cdw trails the others with its barely adequate 75-sheet bin.

(Credit: David English)

The recommended monthly volume rating for the HL-L3280CDW—3,000 pages—suggests that it should be able to handle a moderately heavy workload. It's also good enough to beat the 2,500-page recommendation for the HP 3201dw and the 1,500-page recommendation for the Ricoh C125 P. However, it can’t match the 4,000-page rating for the pricier Brother HL-L3295CDW and Canon LBP674Cdw.

Brother also rates the HL-L3280CDW as having a 40,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle, the same as the HP 3201dw and better than the Ricoh C125 P's 30,000 pages. It also marks a decrease from the Brother HL-L3295CDW's 50,000-page rating. (Canon no longer releases maximum monthly duty cycle ratings for its printers.)

Setup and Software: Streamlined and Practical

Installation is a breeze. The toner cartridges are already in place, though you’ll have to temporarily unload them to remove the numerous plastic restraints. Once the printer is fully unpacked, you plug it in, load some paper, and wake up the control panel. If you plan to use the unit wirelessly, you can have it search for nearby Wi-Fi networks. For a USB or Ethernet connection, visit the URL in the printed guide to download associated drivers and software utilities.

(Credit: David English)

Rather than asking you up front which product you’re setting up, you’re directed to download a multi-model EasySetup application. When you run the app, you’ll be able to select your product and the configuration that fits your needs.

Following a full software installation, you’ll have three new apps on your computer’s desktop: Brother iPrint&Scan, Brother Utilities, and Brother Creative Center. Brother iPrint&Scan lets you directly print a document or photo, as well as tweak a wide range of printer settings, such as print parameters, color and brightness, administrator restrictions, security protocols, and maintenance routines. And the app has a nice graphics-based display of the toner levels for the individual cartridges.

(Credit: Brother)

The Brother Utilities app provides a status monitor, software update notifications, a machine settings mode, and convenient access to the User’s Guide and online FAQs. Finally, the Brother Creative Center app loads a web-based collection of templates. From there, you’ll be able to create and customize printable calendars, invitations, business cards, party decorations, brochures, pamphlets, and various paper crafts.

Despite its entry-level price, the HL-L3280CDW has a strong set of connectivity options. In addition to the usual USB and Ethernet options, you’ll find dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz), as well as Wi-Fi Direct. But, unlike on the HL-L3295CDW, this array lacks a dedicated port for printing from a USB thumb drive. Likewise, it doesn't have the HL-L3295CDW's integrated NFC card reader for badge authentication.

The 2.7-inch color touch screen on the HL-L3280CDW is essentially the same as on the HL-L3295CDW. While it isn’t as large as the 5-inch color touch screen on the Canon LBP674Cdw, it's bright and colorful, and easy to navigate: The HL-L3280CDW screen doesn’t try to squeeze too much into a limited space. For comparison, the HP 3201dw has a 2-inch color non-touch screen, and the Ricoh C125 P has a small monochrome non-touch screen.

(Credit: David English)

Glancing at the home screen on the control panel, you can easily check if the printer has an active Wi-Fi connection. A Wireless Status icon will illuminate when a Wi-Fi connection is active and also functions as a four-level wireless strength indicator—useful if you’re looking for the optimal spot to place the printer. A Functions icon leads to the built-in Cloud-based shortcuts, which include Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneNote, and SharePoint. You can also create your own web-directed shortcuts. A Settings icon lets you alter many of the printer’s internal settings, including tray and paper adjustments, toner color correction, and network variables.

With those areas covered, there isn’t much additional space on the screen for the occasional message. Just like the HL-L3295CDW, this model can only display Yoda-like text errors (such as “Jam Manual Feed”) or maintenance alerts (such as “Supplies Replace Belt”). While often cryptic and sometimes comical, it’s a far better system than with earlier generations of printers, where you had to rely on rhythmically flashing lights or number codes.

Testing the HL-L3280CDW: Relatively Fast, Especially for Text

Brother rates the HL-L3280CDW at 27 pages per minute (ppm), a moderately fast print speed for this level of color laser-class printer. Both the HP 3201dw and Ricoh C125 P are rated at a slightly slower 26ppm, and the Canon LBP674Cdw is rated at a significantly faster 35ppm. To see if the HL-L3280CDW could match its manufacturer’s rating, I tested it over an Ethernet connection with our standard Intel Core i5 desktop testbed running Windows 10 Pro.

The HL-L3280CDW comes out of the box configured to print two-sided (duplex) pages. In that scenario, we time and record both a printer's one-sided (simplex) and two-sided performance. When printing our standard 12-page Microsoft Word text document (excluding the first page), I clocked the unit at 13.9ppm in duplex and 28.8ppm in simplex mode—almost 2ppm faster than its rated speed.

It’s also 2.5ppm faster than the 26.3ppm test result for the Ricoh C125 P, and 1.8ppm faster than the 27ppm test result for the HP 3201dw. The higher-priced Canon LBP674Cdw beat them all, though, with a 35.1ppm test result—6.3ppm faster than the HL-L3280CDW. Looking more closely at the numbers, the HL-L3280CDW set a brisk pace with the time it took for its first page out. And it maintained that pace as the subsequent pages were being printed.

Next, I timed the HL-L3280CDW as it printed our business applications suite, including a collection of colorful and complex PDFs, Microsoft Excel charts and graphs, and PowerPoint handouts. When I combined those results with those from the 12-page Word document, I found it took 119 seconds to print the entire suite. That's around 12.6ppm. While that did beat the Ricoh’s sluggish 171-second result by a wide margin, it couldn’t keep up with the two other models. The HP had an impressive result of 96 seconds, and the Canon breezed through the entire suite in just 70 seconds.

Of course, no laser-class printer can match a dedicated photo printer for quality prints, but I did time the HL-L3280CDW at printing our 4-by-6-inch test snapshots. It averaged about 7 seconds per image, reasonably fast for a color laser-class printer.

Running Costs: Just Go Easy on the Color

If you find the HL-L3280CDW's price tag tempting compared with the HL-L3295CDW, bear in mind that the initial savings could disappear if you plan to print a lot of color pages. Both models are compatible with the same sets of standard-yield and high-yield toner cartridges, but only the higher-priced HL-L3295CDW works with Brother’s super-high-yield toner cartridges. That helps lower the print costs to about 2.5 cents for a monochrome page and about 12.9 cents for a color page.

Stuck with standard-yield cartridges, the HL-L3280CDW has to settle for a less-desirable 16.4 cents for a color page. Perhaps to soften the blow from the color costs, Brother does provide the option to purchase a cost-efficient bundle of two high-yield black toner cartridges, allowing the HL-L3280CDW to hit the same 2.5-cent cost for a black-and-white page that the HL-L3295CDW does. In order words, when comparing these two models, remember that the monochrome pages cost about the same, but the HL-L3280CDW would cost you an extra 3.5 cents for each color page.

(Credit: David English)

For comparison, the Canon LBP674Cdw runs about 2.4 cents for a monochrome page and 14.7 cents for a color page. With the HP 3201dw, you can expect to pay around 3.1 cents for a monochrome page and 17 cents for a color page. With the Ricoh C125 P, the total comes to about 3.8 cents for a monochrome page and 18.2 cents for a color page. The C125 P is the only printer in the group without an option to buy high-yield toner cartridges.

Print Quality: No Cutbacks Here

I found the print quality of the HL-L3280CDW to be essentially the same as the HL-L3295CDW. With any laser-class printer, you should be able to produce near-typesetter-quality text that’s suitable for most business text documents. The HL-L3280CDW easily passes that standard. I could read typical business fonts down to a 4-point size, and everything the model printed was clean and professional—no stray dots or faint vertical lines. Charts and graphs looked very good, with well-defined colors. The colors were always accurate, though with some documents, the contrast levels could be a little stronger.

Printed photos also had an attractive and well-balanced appearance, with true-to-life colors and a slightly subdued contrast. Saturation levels were appropriately matched to the content. As with any laser-class printer, you won’t be able to print borderless pages, as you can with an inkjet printer. That said, the HL-L3280CDW’s photo print quality is more than adequate for brochures, newsletters, real estate flyers, or similar business documents.