Brother HL-4040CN Review

Balance in print quality, speed and reasonable pricing is the secret of the color laser printer called the Brother HL-4040CN.

Unlike what other companies do, the HL-4040CN is not just a product coming out under a different brand. It was designed to deliver much better results and it succeeds in doing so. The magnificent speed and highly recommendable output it provides has a very economical price. Yet, the design is not as user-friendly as it should be.

Like most hardware in recent times, this printer does not have a hard copy of the manual. You can only find it on the CD which contains detailed and comprehensive setup process, plus dynamic videos, supplements the package. Be prepared and ask for a helping hand in carrying the printer because it weighs 63.7 pounds (as stated in the guide) since it’s a bit bulky compared to other printing equipment. You should find a good place to rest it first, as it will not be easy to move it around to different positions at a later time.

HL 4040CN has an adept default settings for printing. 19.3 pages can be printed out in plain black text when talking about speed and a 4.2 ppm for graphics is the other feature.  The text fonts are all proven to have high quality since they are textured. You got a feel of grainy texture on yellow images printed on glossy paper. It produces almost real photos when you used “Fine (2400 dpi class).”

This company should be highly acknowledged for creating complete software, well-explained user manual (in HTML and PDF), an interrelated help files and animated status monitor. A number of choices are also offered by the software when you do printing work.

Nevertheless the hardware really performs well. 90 degrees is the tilting extent of the LCD in the system which also have color variation depending on the context: green for normal and red for troubleshooting which is all explained in English. Though the menu buttons are sometimes confusing where in the down-arrow/minus used for scrolling forward, “Go” button is used for pausing and for backward scrolling used the up-arrow/plus button, you’ll get a hang of it eventually. Also, the 50-sheet multipurpose tray is difficult to manage.

Another strange problem is the misplacement of cartridge bays that gives trouble in inserting it. Though it won’t damage the printer don’t make unsure actions to avoid mistakes. Yet, the printer won’t detect its faults. You will be left wondering if the printer won’t printer because of an ink issue, paper jam or other problem that you can’t see. Plus the result is not that good in terms of color.

The price for cost per page is reasonable. Moreover, 5000 for black and 4000 for other colors are charged ranging from $93 and $130. If we are to compute it, a whole page will cost 4 cents worth of toner to print and a color page will cost 24 cents with a quite big amount of black and three other colors results. Also offered are standard-capacity cartridges with lesser page space and with higher cost as well.

To end it all, HL-4040CN is made to have reasonable price for the benefit of the buyers.  The HL-4070CDW is also off the market to be considered as other option to get more great features you are looking for a printer.