I’ve been noticing that when my printer (a Brother HL-2170W) starts up, it has an incredible power draw. The lights dim and flickr, like when you turn a vacuum on. It’s enough to overdraw the circuit breakers on my 500W CyberPower UPS. The APC unit I have would probably fare no better. I suppose that’s mostly a consequence of not being willing to spend the money on a hardcore 1500W unit, but on the other hand, it would be nice if my laser printer warmed up slowly, and used less power. Or, at least had such an option.

There’s a forum post titled Brother HL-2170W – Kill A Watt readings? which offers a bit more insight:

Yeah, the Brother lasers do tend to have a solid surge when the fuser first starts to warm up. Some other makes include a current limiter and/or thermistor in the fuser unit heater to keep the inrush current from being quite so bad, but those do slow down the heating up to operating temperature. I used to have access to a circuit monitor with more sensitivity than the Kill-A-Watt meters. The wake up current draw on my Brother HL1670N could exceed 9 A, but it lasted for only about 50-100 ms before dropping back to the listed max draw. Lesser spikes would occur as the heating element cycled on and off to maintain temperature. It is one downside to Brother lasers, they keep the design simple and basic, and tend to be more reliable without some of the bells and whistles of other designs. But they can be harder on the electrical supply.

I suppose if you buy a laser printer, you’re in for a ride depending on its mood! Keep it off if you don’t need it.