Customer Reviews

Brother HL-4040cn Color Laser Printer with Built-in Network Interface

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Got this printer due to my 2 other very positive Brother Laser printers, HL5240 & MFC7840W, both excellent, fast and very reliable, the second reason is my old favorite, Konica Minolta 2300DL (Color Laser) is dying and hoping to combine the function with my still working Brother HL5240 to save space.
Involved with design and illustrations, I print 80% of my work & documents in full color or combination text & color images, in short, I'm very color sensitive.
Brother HL 4040CN is very easy to network even with Multi Window OS desktops, my home office got 2 Vista, 2 XP pro & a XP Media Center PC. Very fast and good text printing quality, actually the color is not even that bad, if I'm not that sensitive.

Pros:
Easy to install and network.
Flip up LCD minimized glare and makes it easy to read the text and ink monitoring.
Fast wake up from sleep or energy saver mode, I really like the light blinking when the machine it in progress or warming up.
Easy front access both for toner replacement, paper tray & bypass paper slot, kind of idiot proof.
Noise level when printing and warm up is comparable to my other laser printers, probably less.
Heavy and looks like it's very well built.
USB interface on the front is a plus.

Cons:
Color prints are warmer and slightly purple & green compared to the output from my Epson Inkjet & Magicolor prints.
On the Green side, I think Brother should redesign their packaging, the unit is almost the same size as HP but the box is 100% more, it's so big that I can't even fit it in regular NYC yellow cab, I probably need to rent a UHAL van the next time I buy one of this.

I was trying hard to love this printer and keep it even though the color prints are a little off, not until when my nephew drops by, look at the print and said to me, "nice terrazzo floor with beige field and gray border", with that comment, I realized it's time to return the printer, since the actually floor have white field and green borders.

In fairness, I replaced this with a HP CP1518ni, Hp is even worst, prints much darker than any of my color laser, slower than Brother, slightly prints more red & orange, not as sharp and very muddy. I end up getting another Konica Minolta, Magicolor 2550, it's the closes match of a laser print that you could get to a decent ink jet print. But if I have to pick between Brother and HP from this experience, I'll take Brother without hesitation. And finally.....Thank you Staples, you are the best.

I was a bit concerned by other's reviews regarding the edges curling but tried an in-store demo prior to purchasing it at the best price I could find- here at Amazon, and didn't find it to be a huge deal. I do find there is a slight curl but for me it seems go away as the pages sit on my desk and the color is far more superior to other demos I tested in the same price range so I'd definitely recommend this printer.

I picked this printer up at Øffice Ðepot yesterday and with some help because it weighs 64 pounds, got it home. Setup is very easy, even for someone without any experience with computer hardware. Just push a tab in, open the front, remove all the bright orange shipping things, pull out the drum unit, slide in the toner cartridges which match the letters (K into K, C into C, etc..), install the software, plug in the USB or Ethernet cable (which you supply yourself), and you are ready to print. Before you print, however, make sure you open the printer settings and configure it the way you want. Also access the printers menu and configure those. The DirectPrint option to print PDFs and JPG files from a USB drive directly is nice, but some USB drives will not work (Corsair Voyager will not). For the price it is an excellent printer, coupled with the fact that it comes with standard (not starter) toner cartriges, you can print hundreds of pages before you have to buy new toner.

This is a decent color laser printer at a good price. In terms of price, the printer with toner cartridges sells for little more than the toner cartridges alone. Maybe they are buying the toner refill business by giving away the printer itself. Another plus: it connects to my router so I can share it between my wireless Mac laptop and my PC desktop (even when the PC is asleep), which is great. Now the bad news. It's a lot bulker than it looks just by seeing the picture. Make sure it fits your room and you're comfortable with the weight before you buy. Second, the quality is no better than the Canon Ink jet printer I replaced. Part of this is because the default setting on the HL 4040 is 600 dpi. To get the higher resolution, you have to tweak the defaults. So if you really need a color laser, this may be a great choice. But if you're expecting it to be better than an ink jet in terms of print quality, you'll be disappointed.

Supplementary comment: the printer says all color toner cartridges are empty when they aren't even close to being empty. You should be able to use the cartridge until the color stops, but that's not how it works. This is a huge waste of money (it'll easily double your cost of cartridges). So you need to learn how to unscrew the end cover of the cartridge and reset the internal switch that is triggered after a certain number of cycles. Not a step for the average user to take nor should it be necessary. Seriously, this is a show stopper.

An excellent printer engine, industrial and massive. A bit of a company printer at a consumer entry point.

Found the documentation to be poor, the illustrations were from CAD and not very helpful at installing the cartridges for the first time.

But persistence paid off and now I can't help but love this printer. If you need to do some volume work and don't like fettering away monies on inadequate sized ink cartridges, this is a great way to go entry level with color laser.

After about 8 months, haven't experienced significant paper warp or any dark color banding issues. 1/3 paid for itself in inkjet cartridge refill costs.

Installation is very simple with the CD (all you need to do to set up the network is "install" the printer on each computer).

Prints very well: photos, text, anything works great (even with photo paper).

My only complaint is that printer is a little loud, but that's hardly an actual problem.

Also: the USB drive input does not accept Microsoft Word Documents or JPEGs (directly: with the network this is not really a problem)

Just got this a month ago and no problems. I didn't expect it to have as good a resolution as an inkjet, but then that's not why I went with a laser printer, I wanted to save money in the long run. This is a very solid printer, I was originally shopping for a B/W printer but found that color was within my price range. I've printed only 250 pages and still have full readout on all cartridges, though that's not terribly helpful it would have been about time to buy more ink for an inkjet . . . The network setup is very easy, the separate network drivers worked flawlessly. It's kind of big and heavy, but for a laser printer it's what I'd expect. I've never owned a Brother printer, but the manufacturing quality seems quite good, would highly recommend.

<Update, October 6, 2011>
I've replaced 2 of the 4 toner cartridges, at about $50 apiece they add up to the original cost of the printer. I knew this, and am OK with it but thought it worth mentioning. One annoyance: The ink readouts on the panel are worthless! They always read full. Oh, and I also noticed the "out of toner - " message comes up a little bit before you're actually "Out" of toner. I'm OK paying inflated prices on replacement parts, that's how printers work. I'm not OK with the printer telling me it's out when it's really not, there is a workaround to this you can google though to bypass the error and use the toner cartridge until it's truly empty.

Other than that no issues. It's still heavy :)

Good value. Printer was easy to install: Remove from the box; install toner cartridges; connect to my network. The installation CD made it easy to connect each of my computers to the printer (I run both Windows XP Pro and Vista Home). Print quality is very good. Printer goes to "sleep" mode when not being used and is fairly quick to change to print mode when a page is sent to it. Delivery was quicker than the estimated time. I'm guessing it was sent by truck because the well packed box was too large to come by FedEx or UPS.

I bought this printer less than a year ago. I thought it was a great printer with low cost per page. Boy was I wrong. It looks like Brother needs better quality control on their toner cartridges. Within a very short time after receiving this printer, my magenta toner started to leak toner like crazy. Tech support replaced the cartridge. Everything seemed fine and dandy. Now I do not print color at a large volume. I used to, but right now I mostly print monochrome. But when I need color I expect everything to work perfectly. This unfortunately was not the case and the magenta toner cartridge is again leaking toner. Tech support says that since the cartridge is over 90 days old, they can't help. So after a couple hundred page prints in color, I now need to buy another toner cartridge. This is now a pricier solution than buying an inkjet cartridge. Too bad, I really wanted to like this printer...but from day 1 it's been a headache. Do not get this, you are better off with an HP.

I received this printer a few months ago, and it's been a joy to have. It works perfectly for my home office. I originally had problems with the toner but once we switched over to high yield that problem went away.

My only complaint about the printer is the long warm up time. If the plan is to print something and run out the door, it's not going to happen. Also, printing envelopes can at times be tricky but it's nothing that can't be overlooked. Other than that, it's been a delight to own one.