Brother HL-5240 High-Speed Desktop Office Laser Printer Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Just unpacked and set up the printer. Initial results on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets are great. Excellent quality, good speed, setup went without a hitch.
Unfortunately, no matter what I do it mangles #10 envelopes fed through the manual feeder. I believe I've tried all the pertinent thickness settings in the driver, including envelopes, envelope thin, envelope thick, etc. Every envelope comes out badly wrinkled. The envelopes are ordinary Staples #10s, which I've used without much trouble in a Laserjet5 for years (the heat in that printer does glue the flap a bit, but just lightly. I'm debating returning the Brother HL-5240. The online FAQs from Brother seem completely useless, as they mostly repeat the manual's instructions for inserting the envelopes.
Anyone have ideas on getting around this? Are there special envelopes that will work?
If you don't need envelopes, I'd give this **** or maybe even ***** based on just a few hours use. For envelopes, it doesn't even rate one star, and that makes me nervous about the overall quality.
**UPDATE***: I've managed to get at least some envelopes to print cleanly. Thanks to the comments posted by John Bissel on the HL-5250, as those led me in the right direction. Anyway, what's worked for me is:
* Office Depot sells some #10 envelopes under their own brand name that are specifically listed as working with laser and inkjet printers.
I found those wrinkle a lot less than the many other #10s I tried.
* Use the com-10 size and envelope-thin media.
* Here's the tricky part. Those two fixes get you close, but there's still a bit of a wrinkle on the trailing edge. Thanks to Mr. Bissel, I found the secret pressure release flippers in the back of the printer. Yes they are documented. No, they are not mentioned under envelopes, or in the general guides to the printers features. No they're not in the printed documentation. You have to go into the PDF user guide that gets installed along with the printer (use the Windows Start/Programs to find it). Then you have to look in the troubleshooting section under crinkled pages or some such. Then you find the flippers. It warns you to fip them up only for envelopes, then down, which would be a huge hassel. Like Mr. Bissel, I've had fine luck leaving them up all the time. Perhaps my output on regular pages is a tad less dark.
So, now I'm happy. Printer is great. I should say that I sent a query to Brother's email-based support service. They promise response in 1 business day. It's been 4 days, and so far I've heard nothing.


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The HL-5240 is a monochrome laser printer with a fast print speed of up to 30ppm. Ideal for busy offices, it is an excellent desktop printer.

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