Brother HL-L3230CDW Drivers Download– The Brother HL-L3230CDW is an affordable color laser-class LED printer suitable for home-based offices, small offices, workgroups, or personal use. Priced at $249.99, it offers similar features and performance to the Brother HL-L3270CDW, which is our recent Editors’ Choice. While both printers have a high-duty cycle and paper capacity, they also share the drawback of high running costs typically found in entry-level printers. However, the HL-L3230CDW stands out with its unique features, including Wi-Fi Direct printing. Whether you choose the HL-L3230CDW or the HL-L3270CDW depends on your preference for specific functionalities, as both models are excellent companions for small offices.
Differentiating LED from Traditional Laser Printers
LED printers, like the Brother HL-L3230CDW, offer similar functionality to traditional laser printers, but they possess some advantages. LED arrays are smaller, more cost-effective to manufacture, and consume less power. These advantages enable Brother and other printer manufacturers to create compact, energy-efficient printers that produce output comparable to or even better than their laser counterparts at a lower cost.
Review of Specifications
The HL-L3270CDW is taller and deeper than the Canon Color imageClass LBP612Cdw, but lighter than the OKI C332dn, which is also an LED printer.
For paper input, the HL-L3230CDW features a 250-sheet drawer and a one-sheet override tray, allowing you to quickly print envelopes, labels, or checks without reconfiguring the main paper drawer. This input configuration is identical to that of the HL-L3270CDW. In comparison, the Canon LBP612Cdw supports 150 sheets and one in the override tray, while the OKI C332dn supports up to 350 sheets, with 250 in the main cassette and 100 in the multipurpose tray.
Connectivity Options
Apart from its smaller and lighter design, the HL-L3230CDW offers different connectivity options compared to the HL-L3270CDW. Both printers support Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB 2.0 for connecting to a single PC. However, the HL-L3270CDW additionally features near-field communication (NFC) for peer-to-peer mobile connections, while the HL-L3230CDW supports the more common Wi-Fi Direct protocol. With Wi-Fi Direct, you can print directly from your smartphone or tablet without connecting to a local area network or router. NFC, on the other hand, allows you to print by simply touching your mobile device to a hotspot on the printer.
Setup and Mobile Connection Features
The HL-L3230CDW comes with a one-line monochrome LCD and physical analog buttons for navigating menus. Alongside Wi-Fi Direct, it supports Apple AirPrint, Brother iPrint&Scan, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria for mobile printing. While iPrint&Scan enables printing from mobile versions of Microsoft Office and Google apps, as well as cloud sites, it lacks Brother’s Cloud apps found in the HL-L3270CDW.
These cloud apps provide shortcuts to specific cloud sites like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneDrive, and Microsoft’s online OneNote.
Performance and Print Speed
The HL-L3230CDW, like most models in Brother’s L3000-series, boasts a fast printing speed of 25 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color pages, making it impressive for a budget-friendly printer. In tests conducted over Ethernet, the HL-L3230CDW printed a 12-page Microsoft Word monochrome text document at an average rate of 25 ppm, aligning with its rated speed and matching the HL-L3270CDW’s performance.
In comparison, the Canon LBP612Cdw was about 7 ppm slower than the Brother printer. It’s worth noting that the OKI C332dn’s speed was tested with a different methodology, making it difficult to provide meaningful speed comparisons here. The HP PageWide Pro 452dw, a slightly more expensive competitor, achieved a faster speed of 32.4 ppm for the same text pages.
Print Quality
While speed is essential, high-quality output is equally important. The HL-L3230CDW excels in producing text, graphics, and photographs of exceptional quality. Brother laser-class printers have long been recognized for their near-typesetter-quality text, and this LED printer maintains that standard.
Its output features vivid and accurate colors, precise borders and frames, impressive detail, and mostly streak-free backgrounds, gradients, and fills in documents created with Excel and PowerPoint. Though not on par with inkjet printers, the HL-L3230CDW’s photo prints are suitable for most business applications. You can confidently use the printer’s output in various business scenarios.
Cost per Page
Brother’s highest-yield toner cartridges for the HL-L3230CDW (3,000 black pages or 1,400 color pages) result in running costs of approximately 2.6 cents per monochrome page and 15.6 cents per color print. Additionally, the drum unit needs replacement after every 18,000 pages, adding 0.7 cent to the cost per page. Consequently, the running costs amount to 3.3 cents for black pages and 16.3 cents for color pages.
If you print thousands of pages monthly, these costs can quickly accumulate. However, the Canon LBP612Cdw has slightly higher running costs for both black and color pages, while the OKI C332dn’s costs are even higher. It is important to consider that the more you print, the more a higher-priced, higher-volume printer becomes a reasonable choice.
The PageWide Pro 452dw’s highest-yield ink cartridges result in running costs of 1.3 cents for black pages and 7.3 cents for color pages. Furthermore, inkjet printers do not require warm-up periods, conserving power.
Conclusion
In summary, the Brother HL-L3230CDW and HL-L3270CDW offer different functionalities catering to distinct user needs. The HL-L3270CDW focuses on providing extensive mobile access, while the HL-L3230CDW is better suited for traditional office environments where print jobs primarily originate from computing devices on the local network. Both printers are ideal for low-volume printing and can efficiently serve small offices and individual users.
Support for:
- Windows
- Os X
- Mac Os X
- Linux
- Mobile
Brother HL-L3230CDW Drivers Download Windows
Description | Link | Support |
---|---|---|
Brother HL-L3230CDW Full Driver & Software Package | HERE | Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11 |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Printer Driver | HERE | |
Brother HL-L3230CDW XML Paper Specification Printer Driver | HERE |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Drivers Download OS X
Description | Link | Support |
---|---|---|
Brother HL-L3230CDW Full Driver & Software Package | HERE | OS X 10.11, OS X 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, macOS 10.12 |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Printer Driver | HERE | |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Firmware Update Tool | HERE |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Drivers Download Linux rpm
Description | Link | Support |
---|---|---|
Brother HL-L3230CDW Driver Install Tool | HERE | Linux x32 Linux x64 |
Brother HL-L3230CDW LPR printer driver (rpm package) | HERE | |
Brother HL-L3230CDW CUPSwrapper printer driver (rpm package) | HERE |
Brother HL-L3230CDW Drivers Download Linux deb
Description | Link | Support |
---|---|---|
Brother HL-L3230CDW Driver Install Tool | HERE | Linux x32 Linux x64 |
Brother HL-L3230CDW LPR printer driver (deb package) | HERE | |
Brother HL-L3230CDW CUPSwrapper printer driver (deb package) | HERE |
Source File: Support Brother Drivers