Both the Xerox Phaser 2135 and Brother HL-4200 are LED printers which means that they produce all of their prints in a single pass, but the printers differ on color and image production as well as memory and processors. The HL-4200 from Brother utilizes a 400 MHz processor while Xerox 2135 uses a 500 MHz processor. The Xerox wins out in processor speeds, which pushes its color reproduction over the HL-4200. The Brother HL-4200 has acceptable image production but shows colors in a dark and almost muddy composition; any user needing great color documents will be more interested in the Xerox.

The Brother excels at line art graphics and grayscale images are good for most office applications. The Xerox also beats the Brother in color printing speed at close to 20 pages per minute while the Brother chugged at around 15 pages per minute. This does solely depend upon the complexity of the document and images. Both fare well in print speeds for black and white documents at 26 pages per minute, and each has duplex printing standard. Memory on the Brother HL-4200 maxes out at 320 MB while the Xerox Phaser 2135 has a maximum of 256 MB but only on the dx model. Lower end models fall slightly.

The display interfaces on each of the printer series are similar, but the Xerox Phaser 2135 seems to be a little easier to use if only by a small margin. The printer monitoring software is more user friendly on the Xerox but comparable to that on the Brother HL-4200. Printer hard drives can be added to each of these series of color laser printers; however, it is less expensive to add the hard drive to the Brother HL-4200 than the Xerox Phaser 2135. Higher end models of both series have the hard drive as standard equipment. Paper capacity on the Brother HL-4200 beats the Xerox Phaser 2135 by 400 sheets making it a better choice for higher volume printing needs.