You can manually print on both sides of a page with almost any printer, but the Brother HL-1850 does the work for you. All you need to do is choose whether to flip the paper on the top, left, right, or bottom edge; the printer will handle the rest.

Installation is easy, following the illustrated Quick Setup guide. You can connect the printer to a USB or parallel port, although you'll have to supply your own cables. An electronic user manual includes troubleshooting and maintenance tips, as well as information about the printer's features, but you don't need to consult the manual to start using the printer.

Printer settings are easy to access or change through buttons and a backlit three-color LCD display, all located on a panel on the top right side of the printer. The LCD window also displays the status of the current print job. You can easily pause or cancel a print job, as well as change paper or print quality settings.

Print quality is generally good, particularly on text. The quality of most images is good enough for business use, but wouldn't satisfy a graphics professional. Performance is above average, with a rated speed of up to 19 pages per minute (ppm). The Brother HL-1850 ships with 16MB of memory, which can be expanded to up to 144MB for faster printing.

The HL-1850 offers two paper trays, a relatively small (250-sheet) tray for letter-size paper, and a second tray (up to 100 sheets) for specialty papers, including envelopes, transparencies, labels, index card stock, and letterhead. A second 250-sheet paper tray is available as an add-on option, but at around $200, it's a pricey option.

Pro: A fast printer with good overall print quality. The duplex printing option is a plus if you need this capability. Expandable memory is also a plus for faster printing of graphics-heavy pages.

Con: Relatively small paper tray. Expensive, unless you need duplex printing capabilities.