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space-time
FWIW, the drum alone is that much. if you have another printer that uses the same engine, get this for the spare drum.

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cbelt3
I own one. I recommend it. The only limitations are.. it is very poor when printing from the manual feed slot. There are no guides in the manual paper path. Alignment is pretty much not going to happen.

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GGD

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cbelt3
I own one. I recommend it. The only limitations are.. it is very poor when printing from the manual feed slot. There are no guides in the manual paper path. Alignment is pretty much not going to happen.

Are you sure about that, the diagram in the user manual shows a manual feed paper guide. (It's on the first page after the table of contents)

Bandwidth Warning large PDF
[www.brother-usa.com]

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The Wirecutter on their favorite cheap printer (2270DW being the former favorite and current runner up)

That said, even some of the positive user reviews point toward problems with the HL-2270DW. The main one is that setting it up on a wireless network without a USB connection or CD drive can be a nightmare, especially using a Mac. It’s an archaic process and the most common reason for owners to give it a one-star user review. It makes setting up the Samsung seem like a cakewalk.
To their credit, Brother does include a printed user manual with the 2270 and there are instructions for a few different setup methods, though they aren’t always clear. There’s tons of extra documentation on their website, and customer support was helpful when we called to ask for assistance. But it’s a convoluted process—nobody should have to jump through hoops like a circus animal to set up a damn printer.

Let’s walk through the best-case scenario. The easiest way to get the 2270 on the network without a cable or disk is through one-touch protected setup, where the router and printer communicate directly. Press the WPS setup button on your router, hit a different button on the printer, and wait for the devices to find each other. If it succeeds, the 2270 spits out a page letting you know that it worked. Voila. (Apple Airport base stations don’t have the one-touch button, but the First Attempt function in Airport Utility works the same way. The 2270’s instructions don’t mention this possibility.)

Seems simple, but it still took us three tries to connect. The printer’s instructions say to first press the button on the printer, then the router. We tried twice, and it didn’t work. The router’s instructions say to press the router button first, then the printer. That worked. When the first steps in the instruction manual are wrong, it doesn’t leave a great impression.

Once the printer and router are connected, Brother’s installation software (available for download) adds the drivers and tells the computer, “you can print with this now.” Then you’re done. Not so bad, even with the hitch in the protected setup instructions.

But! The installer is Windows-only, and Mac users need to manually add the 2270 to their printer list. The user guide doesn’t mention that little detail. There’s nothing more frustrating than following the directions to the letter and still not being able to get the thing to work.

We turned to Brother’s website to try to find help. Good news: They have instructions for this exact scenario. Bad news: It involves timed button presses, connecting to the printer through an ad-hoc wireless network, printing a series of status reports, manually entering an IP address into a web browser to connect to the printer’s semi-secret hidden control panel, entering a default username and password to gain admin status, and then messing around with some settings. (Good luck walking your parents through this process.)

And, oh yeah, then you need to manually add the printer to the system list anyway. It turned out that we didn’t have to go through all those steps. The printer and router connected successfully, but since there’s no screen, there’s also no menu, and therefore no obvious way to print out a status report—we had no easy way to know what was going on. The whole thing was an eye-opening experience.

The [support] call took about 40 minutes, give or take time spent on hold. But nobody should need to do anything like this to set up a printer. Not in 2014.
Look, plenty of people could follow these instructions if they put their minds to it, though it would be a challenge for those who don’t have the patience or technical knowledge to go through this themselves. On the bright side, Brother customer service will patiently talk anyone through the steps. We called for help with the HL-2280DW (see below) and pretended that we didn’t know anything. They walked us through a similar process to the one we just described. The call took about 40 minutes, give or take time spent on hold.
But nobody should need to do anything like this to set up a printer. Not in 2014. Other reviewers noted that networking the printer with the aid of an Ethernet or USB cable made things easier, but the 2270 doesn’t come with either one of those in the box. It’s a mess. F minus.

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wurm
We just started getting the Toner Low message, after only 365 pages on the starter cartridge. I'm keeping my eyes open for good deals on good aftermarket toner carts. Apparently it can be a crap shoot. As or right now, I'm leaning toward these folks, and I can't even give you a good reason why. ;)