The Brother HL-L3270CDW ($249.99) is the printer-only version of the MFC-L3770CDW, Brother's flagship laser-class LED all-in-one printer.
It's a fast entry-level printer with good-looking output, and it offers a respectable duty cycle and paper input capacity.
All that is more than enough to elevate the HL-L3270CDW to our latest top pick for a standalone color laser-class printer for light-duty use in home-based and small offices.
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Big and Beefy
The HL-L3270CDW is part of Brother's line of light-emitting diode (LED) printers.
Instead of deploying lasers to etch a page image on to the imaging drum prior to transferring it to the paper.
LED printers use an LED array to achieve the same results.
From the user's perspective, these two types of machines work identically and achieve the same results.
At 9.9 by 17.3 by 18.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 40.3 pounds, the HL-L3270CDW is somewhat brawnier than most entry-level printers, but not so much to render it too big to fit on the average desktop.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw, for example, is about 2 inches smaller in width and depth and about 13 pounds lighter; Canon's entry-level Color imageClass LBP612Cdw ($450.50 at Amazon) is a couple of inches shorter and about 6 pounds lighter.
The primary reason that the HL-L3270CDW is a bit taller than some of its competitors is that it has a 250-sheet paper capacity, compared with the Canon LBP612Cdw's and the HP M252dw's 151 sheets.
These Canon and HP machines also come with one-sheet multipurpose slots for overriding the main paper source, though, which can come in handy.
The HL-L3270CDW's maximum monthly duty cycle is 30,000 pages, with a 1,500-page suggested monthly volume, the same as both the Canon LBP612Cdw and the HP M252dw.
The HL-L3270CDW's control panel consists of a 2.7-inch touch screen and three buttons: Back, Home, and Cancel.
You can use it for changing settings, checking toner levels, printing to network drives, and some other functions.
Where it comes in most handy, though, is for printing from various cloud and social media sites using Brother's Web Connect feature.
This consists primarily of several preconfigured workflow profiles for connecting to and printing from both the business and consumer versions of Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive and OneNote, and you can create additional profiles for connecting to your own favorite sites.
Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and connecting to a single PC via USB, but keep in mind that you can't use Web Connect and other internet features from a USB connection.
You also get the two popular peer-to-peer protocols, Wi-Fi Direct and Near-Field Communication (NFC) for connecting directly to the printer with your smartphone or tablet, without the printer or the mobile device being connected to a network or router.
The hotspot on the printer for making NFC touch-to-print connections is on the top-left edge of the chassis, just in front of the control panel.
Other mobile connection options include AirPrint, Brother iPrint&Scan for printing remotely, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria.
Without question, you and your team shouldn't have a problem connecting all your computing devices to the HL-L3270CDW.
Fast for Entry-Level
Brother rates the HL-L3270CDW at 25 pages per minute (ppm), whereas both the HP M252dw and Canon LBP612Cdw are rated at 19ppm, and the higher-volume Brother HL-L8360CDW's ($568.99 at Amazon) rating is 33ppm.
I tested the HL-L3270CDW over Ethernet with Daxdi's standard Intel Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.
While printing my simply formatted 12-page Microsoft Word text document, I clocked it at exactly 25ppm.
Unfortunately, the M252dw and LBP612Cdw were both tested under a previous benchmarking regimen; comparing those results here wouldn't be appropriate.
However, from my experience with both machines, they both churn out documents very close to their 19ppm ratings.
The HL-L3270CDW's higher-volume HL-L8630CDW sibling, though, printed the same text pages at 33.2ppm.
For the next part of my tests, I printed several color Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing charts, graphs, and other business graphics, as well as photos, and then I combined the results from these tests with those from printing the 12-page text document.
Here, the HL-L3270CDW managed 10.4ppm, which may seem like a big performance hit, but most printers, due to the complexity of the documents in this part of our benchmarking regimen, usually take dives of up to 60 percent at this point.
The HL-L8630CDW, for example, plummeted from 33.2ppm to 11.4ppm.
With that in mind, the HL-L3270CDW's 10.4ppm score is respectable.
Terrific-Looking Output
Like its AIO sibling, the HL-L3270CDW churns out exceptional output across the board.
Text is crisp and well-shaped.
Common serif and sans-serif fonts are legible down to the smallest point size readable without magnification (in my case, about 6 points), thereby making its text rendering suitable for most types of business documents, including those that require tiny type.
The HL-L3270CDW's business graphics output looks good, too.
The charts and graphs embedded in my Excel and PowerPoint documents came out with solid fills and evenly flowing gradients, as well as well-delineated hairlines and rules.
Graphics output is more than good enough for distribution both in-house and for marketing material aimed at clients and would-be clients, or anybody else you're trying to impress.
Even though laser-class printers are not the machines of choice for printing photos, I printed Daxdi's group of 4-by-6-inch snapshots and 8-by-10-inch test photos, anyway.
The results were impressive, with brighter, more vibrant colors than some other laser printers.
Detail is a bit above average, too.
Granted, photos printed on laser printers seldom, if ever, rival those printed on photo-centric inkjets, but the HL-L3270CDW's photos are more than good enough for business documents, and perhaps even applications where images are critical, such as, say, real estate marketing material.
High Running Costs Limit Volume
A drawback to most inexpensive entry-level laser-class printers is that they cost a lot to use compared with their higher-end, higher-volume laser counterparts and laser-alternative inkjet printers.
However, compared with its entry-level competitors, the HL-L3270CDW's running costs of about 2.6 cents for black pages and 15.5 cents for color pages are a little better than average.
The Canon LBP612Cdw averages 3.2 cents per black page and 16.3 cents per color page, and the HP M252dw comes in at 3.2 cents for black pages and 16.3 cents for color.
By stepping up to Brother's HL-L8630CDW, you can save 0.7 cent per black page and 5.5 cents per color page compared with the HL-L3270CDW.
That's really only worth it, though, if you're going to print more than a few hundred pages a month, as the upgraded model will set you back an additional $150.
Entry-Level All the Way
As a fast entry-level $250 laser-class printer with above average output and competitive running costs, the HL-L3270CDW makes sense for small offices that don't print more than 200 to 300 pages each month.
If, however, you need higher volume and lower running costs, Brother's HL-8630CDW is a good choice, and you can get comparable quality and even lower CPPs with an inkjet alternative, such as the HP 452dw mentioned earlier.
Both of those options will cost you a couple hundred dollars more at the purchase point, however.
But if moderate-volume laser-quality output is what you're looking for, the HL-L3270CDW is our Editors' Choice for a personal or light-duty color laser-class printer for a micro office.
The Bottom Line
The Brother HL-L3270CDW color laser-class LED printer is fast for an entry-level, low-volume machine, and its text, graphics, and photo output is among the best.
