Brother MFC-L2710DW Review (2024)

The Brother MFC-L2710DW ($199.99) is an entry-level all-in-one (print, copy, scan, and fax) printer designed for small and/or home-based offices or workgroups with modest printing needs, or perhaps as a personal monochrome laser AIO. For an entry-level AIO, it has a relatively strong feature set, and it's fast. On the other hand, its running costs are a bit too high, and print quality (especially graphics and photos) leaves a little something to be desired. Even so, it's space-saver small, well-built, and prints well enough overall, making it a suitable choice for low-volume monochrome print and copy environments.

Small, Space-Saving Design

Measuring 12.5 by 15.7 by 12.5 inches (HWD) and weighing only 26 pounds, the Brother MFC-L2710DW is about average in size and weight for an entry-level AIO. At 10.7 by 15.7 by 10.7 inches and 22.7 pounds, Brother's own HL-L2390DW is smaller and lighter, but then it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending multipage documents to the scanner. Canon's imageClass MF249dw is a couple inches bigger all the way around and a few pounds heavier than the Brother MFC-L2710DW, and HP's LaserJet Pro MFP M130fw is a little smaller and about 9 pounds lighter.

Like several AIOs in this entry-level class, the Brother MFC-L2710DW's paper handling consists of a single 250-sheet tray and a one-off override slot for printing envelopes, labels, and other off-size media, and it ships with a 15,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle, with 2,000 pages recommended. That's the same paper input configuration and duty cycle as the Brother HL-L2390DW ($189.99 at Amazon) and the Canon MF249DW ($693.00 at Amazon) . HP's M130fw, on the other hand, comes with just one paper input source, a 150-sheet tray, and its duty cycle is 10,000 pages with a recommended volume of 1,500 pages.

Not only does the Brother MFC-L2710DW ($288.97 at Amazon) come with a handy ADF, but the feeder itself is big enough to hold up to 50 originals for scanning and archiving, or copying, documents, graphics, and photos. You handle this and most other types of walkup tasks, such as scanning to and printing from the cloud or setting security options, from the MFC-L2710DW's old-fashioned-looking, button-laden control panel, which consists of a two-line monochrome LCD, buttons for setting up and initiating specific tasks, and a 10-key number pad for dialing fax numbers and such.

Connections and Software

While the Brother MFC-L2710DW doesn't support all connectivity types, it supports most, including the basics: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and connecting to a single PC via USB. Mobile connection types include Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Wi-Fi Direct, and Brother's iPrint&Scan. That last one, iPrint&Scan, allows you to print from emails and connect to specific cloud sites.

In addition to the printer and scanner drivers, the MFC-L2710DW's bundled software includes Nuance PaperPort 14SE, a pared-down iteration of the popular PaperPort document management and archiving program. In addition to its document management features, PaperPort comes with a reasonably capable optical character recognition (OCR) and PDF creation and editing utility, which not only allows you to save your scanned files and PDFs, but also some Microsoft Office and other useful file formats.

As with a few other Brother monochrome laser machines I've looked at recently, this one is low on security features. In addition to a few encryption protocols, you get Setting Lock, for locking down the availability of specific settings, so that they can't be changed at the user level.

Respectable Print Speeds

Brother rates the MFC-L2710DW at 36 pages per minute (ppm), which is the same rating as the MFC-L2750DW XL. When printing our 12-page Microsoft Word text document, the MFC-L2710DW churned at 34.7ppm, almost a page-and-a-half shy of its rating. The MFC-L2750DW XL, on the other hand, managed 36.1ppm. The MFC-L2710DW printed our text document almost 9ppm faster than the Canon MF249dw and the Canon ImageClass D570 ($149.99 at Amazon) , and almost twice as fast as HP's M130fw.

When I combined the results from the previous 12-page Microsoft Word document with the scores from printing our several colorful graphics- and photo-laden Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint files, the MFC-L2710DW's print speed dropped to 14ppm. That's 0.5ppm slower than the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, 3.4ppm faster than the Brother HL-L2390DW, 2.3ppm slower than the Canon MF249dw, and 3.5ppm behind the HP M103fw.

For our photo test, we print two highly detailed and vibrantly colored 4-by-6-inch snapshots several times, averaging the results. Here, the MFC-L2710DW averaged 11 seconds per image, about right for this class of laser printer. In fact, most laser printers, monochrome or otherwise, print snapshots in well under 30 seconds, and many about half that or less, which is only relevant if the photo output is usable. Suffice it to say, a monochrome laser printer should not be your first choice for photo printing.

In-House and Sales-Counter Output

Like its MFC-L2750DW XL sibling's output, the MFC-L2710DW's print quality is about average for a low-end monochrome laser AIO. Common fonts came out well-shaped and crisp, even at very low point sizes, making text output better than acceptable for most applications. Business graphics, such as charts, graphs, and clip art, printed well, too, except that in some instances—as the graphics got more complicated—I started to see flaws, including banding in gradients and dark fills and diminished delineation in grayscale tones. Simple graphics, such as lines and light fills, printed just fine, though, making output suitable for simple reports or other applications where fast data is more important than fancy data.

In other words, the graphics were clear enough for disseminating in-house documents among coworkers and perhaps certain student handouts, but not for marketing materials. Among the several test photos I printed, I saw some that looked quite good, with very smooth conversions from color to grayscale, and some others where content came out too dark, with fewer than enough grayscale shades to maintain overall detail.

Low-Volume Running Costs

Entry-level laser printers are typically expensive to use. The MFC-L2710DW, as well as the other low-end Brother models discussed here—the HL-L2390DW and the MFC-L2750DW XL—has running costs of about 3.5 cents per page, as does Canon's D570 and MF249dw; the HP M130fw runs about 3.9 cents per page. Printing, say, 10,000 pages on a printer with 3.5 cent-per-page running costs will amount to $350—or $150 more than the printer itself costs. Hence, the only way this printer makes sense is if your print volume is on the low side.

A Lot to Consider

Deciding to buy a printer based on its purchase price can be a slippery slope, especially if you plan to print more than just a couple hundred pages each month. With these low-volume entry-level AIOs, the more you print, the more it costs you. If, then, you need to print more than a couple hundred pages each month (and your application requires laser output), you should look at a higher-end laser, such as the Xerox VersaLink B400/DN ($1,199.00 at Amazon) (1.6 cents per page), or perhaps even our top pick, the Dell Smart Printer S5830dn (1 cent per page).

If, however, low-volume internal printing and copying is what you're looking for, and you don't see a lot of two-sided copying, scanning, or faxing in your future, at $200 (or less, if you shop around), you should consider Brother's MFC-L2710DW.