Brother Launches Fall Laser Lines
By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 10/10/2005
Bridgewater, N.J. — Brother this month will revamp its mono, color and multifunction laser printer lines with the release of six new models.
The flagship product is the color laser-based MFC-9420CN and will ship this month with a $799 suggested retail price. The MFC-9420CN has a mono page print speed of 31 pages per minute (ppm) and a color rate of 8 ppm. Its toner cartridges can print 10,000 pages in black and 6,600 of color before needing replacement and the unit has a 250-sheet paper tray and 64MB of memory.
Andy Schaeffer, Brother's imaging and document products senior product manager, said the acceptance of monochrome multifunction devices has been huge, and he expects the same results with the color version.
This month Brother also will replace its long-running HL-5100 monochrome laser line with the HL-5200 Series, except for the entry-level HL-5140 which will remain in stores until early next year.
For the 5200 Series, the company developed a new print engine capable of generating pages about 33 percent faster, said Jeff Sandler, Brother's printers marketing director. The series consists of the HL-5240, HL-5250DN, HL-5250DNT and the HL-5280DW. The units range in price from $229 to $349.
All four models have the same basic features with the middle two units adding automatic duplexing, built-in Ethernet support and memory upgrades. The top end incorporates 802.11g networking and has a three-color LCD control panel. The first three models ship with month with the fourth coming out in January.
The final new entry is the inkjet based MFC-640CW. This multifunction unit ships this month with a $199 suggested retail price. It is a printer, fax, copier, includes a handset, 16MB of memory and supports wired and wireless networking.
