Brother takes a major evolutionary step with the HL-4040CN: This is the first color laser designed by the company itself, rather than a rebranded model from another manufacturer. It's a decent first effort, offering good overall speed and print quality for a competitive price. The design sometimes falls short on ease of use, unfortunately.
Brother HL-4040CN

Pricing
$249.79 - $299.99 From 3 Vendors Get Best Prices »
- Spec Navigator
- Core Components
- Media Handling
- Network
- Connectivity
- Platform Support
- Dimensions
- General Features
- Green
- Included Hardware
- Included Software
- Resolutions
- Scanning
- Faxing
Media Handling
| Manual Feed Slot | Yes |
| Maximum Number of Input Trays | 2 |
| Maximum paper size, height | 14.0 inches |
| Maximum Sheets With All Paper Trays | 300 |
| Output Tray Capacity | 150 |
| Standard Number of Input Trays | 2 |
| Maximum paper size, width | 8.5 inches |
| Standard input sheet capacity | 300 |
| Duplex printing | No |
Platform Support
| Operating System Support |
|
General Features
| PostScript Type | none |
| Printer Emulation Type | PCL6 |
| Media slots |
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| PictBridge compatible | Yes |
| Printer languages supported | PCL6 |
- Lab Tested
- How We Test Printers »
Pros
Low price; excellent text quality
Excellent setup and documentation
Cons
Confusing control panel; heavy weight
Not expandable
Bottom Line
This basic office printer balances good pricing, speed, and print quality with a sometimes-awkward design.
Brother HL-4040CN
HL-4040CN Review, by Melissa Riofrio August 13, 2007
The setup process is easy and thoroughly documented in a printed guide as well as in animated videos on the included CD. Find a buddy to help you lift the printer, though: At about 63.7 pounds (according to Brother's specs), it's heavier than most comparably equipped color lasers.
At default settings the HL-4040CN printed competently. Its speeds--average overall--ranged from 19.3 pages per minute for plain black text to 4.2 ppm for graphics. Text in all tested fonts looked perfectly crisp. Color images erred on the yellow side; photos looked grainy, especially on glossy laser paper. Using the driver's "Fine (2400 dpi class)" setting improved images noticeably.
Brother deserves kudos for its software, which includes a comprehensive, well-illustrated user guide (in HTML and PDF) and interactive help files, as well as a dynamic status monitor. The driver offers a good supply of printing options.
The hardware, on the other hand, needs work. The control panel's LCD is great, as it can tilt 0 to 90 degrees, glows green when things are normal and red when things go awry, and communicates in plain English. But the menu buttons didn't always make sense to me: The up-arrow/plus button is for scrolling backward and the down-arrow/minus is for scrolling forward, while the "Go" button is also for pausing. The 50-sheet multipurpose tray is unmarked and hard to find (it folds out from the front of the printer).
Most odd, the toner cartridge bays are not keyed to prevent insertion of the wrong color. Brother says that such a mistake will not damage the printer, and it didn't when I intentionally switched two colors. But the printer should, at least, have recognized the mistake at the start and refused to print. Instead it printed a bizarrely colored page.
Cost per page (based on Brother's specs) is very good. The high-yield cartridges have a page capacity of 5000 for black and 4000 for each color and cost $93 and $130, respectively. A half-page of black text, therefore, will cost less than 2 cents' worth of toner to print, and a color page (using a small amount of black plus all three colors) will cost less than 12 cents. Standard-capacity cartridges with shorter page lives (and thus higher costs) are also available.
The HL-4040CN is designed to be, and is priced as, a low-end machine. Shoppers seeking more features (such as additional paper capacity) might consider its higher-end cousin, the HL-4070CDW.
Melissa Riofrio
0 Comments | 0 Topics | Print Only This Review
- Rating Breakdown
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78
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86
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79
- See Complete Lab Results »
Performance Comparison with Similar Printers
78
90
87
88
Performance
| 300dpi Line Art Image (secs) | 15.21 |
| 4 by 6 Color Photo (secs) | 21.28 |
| 4 by 6 Grayscale Photo (secs) | 18.19 |
| Color Output Quality | Good |
| Color Photo Quality | Fair |
| Copy Output Quality | n/a |
| Copy Quality | n/a |
| Grayscale Glossy Output Quality | n/a |
| Grayscale Output Quality | Fair |
| Line Art Output Quality | Very Good |
| One-Page Webpage (secs) | 16.42 |
| Overall Scan Quality | n/a |
| Sports Action Shot (secs) | 31.8 |
| Ten-Page Word Document | 40.4 |
| Ten-Page Word Document (secs) | 40.4 |
| Tested Color Speed (ppm) | 4.2 |
| Tested Glossy Photo Speed (ppm) | 1.9 |
| Tested Grayscale Speed (ppm) | 3.3 |
| Tested Lineart Speed (ppm) | 3.9 |
| Tested Text Speed (ppm) | 19.3 |
| Text Output Quality | Superior |
| Three-Page Word Document | 33.99 |
| Three-Page Word Document (secs) | 33.99 |
| Two-Page Excel Document | 19.7 |
| Two-Page Excel Document (secs) | 19.7 |
Text Printing
| Text output quality | Superior |
Average User Reviews for Brother HL-4040CN
- Latest User Reviews 1 review
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Reviewed by: kcihtred2
Duration of ownership: 6 Months
Strengths: fast speed, low cost per page and for the printer, reprint feature, good text quality
Weaknesses: setup is annoying if you don't know IP addresses, heavy, only ok picture quality
Overall: considering my old printer (a Canon Pixma iP1500, which is the worst printer of all time probably), it is a great upgrade. I have it hooked up to a Trendnet TEW-452BRP router and then have the computers hooked up wirelessly and hard-wired to the router. The main thing I want to point out is that you will want to do the advanced configuration for the network setup, and you get the IP address from the printer by hitting cancel till the screen says sleep on a green background and then you hit OK 3 times and on the final page you will find the IP address of the printer and you should use that for the printer setup. (The steps you choose are the model (HL-4040CN), language, install printer driver (if its already set up) or initial printer setup (if its the first time setting it up), accept the terms and conditions, peer to peer (if you have a setup like me), the second option which you type in the IP address, and finally let the printer install the drivers.) The automatic way is ok, its just that it messed up for me
Review Now! Already own it? Tell us What You Think
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Reviewed by: molder101
Strengths: Fast print speed * easy setup * low cost consumables * cost
Weaknesses: Heavy * light blacks * sub-par photo output
Overall: As a little background, I am not new to color laser printers. My first was a Tektronix 740N which set the bar really high. It was and is a great printer and I recommend it to anyone that is serious about quality prints. My current printer is a Xerox 6120 which for the money couldn't be beat (~$160 with full toner set). The HL-4040CN was purchased for my office to use, when our old HP inkjet printer took a turn for the worse. It was going to be too much money to buy parts, so it was only logical to move to a color laser. We were looking for a printer that was mainly 1) competitively priced, 2) offered quality output, 3) could handle a moderate load of printing, and 4) overall low operating cost. Our expectations were met with this color laser. It's fast print speed (we average 20ppm black and about 5ppm color) works for us. What was even better was it's easy setup. Whether a seasoned computer geek or not, you should be able to set it up by following the instructions. USB is a nice option, however, we obviously set it up on a network. The lost cost consumables and ability to print a few thousand pages before replacing them was nice since we print about 15,000 pages/month color (we have a dedicated high-speed b&w copier). On the slightly negative side, we weren't too hot on how heavy the printer is. While solid is nice, know that you are going to have to have a heavy duty desk, table, or something of the such. Compared to my Tektronix and my Xerox, the blacks are softer than they should be. My Tektronix was by far the winner in this test. They were simply amazing as they almost jumped off the page. High quality black output seems to be an issue with most of the newer color lasers. Not that it's a major issue, but I've noticed that photo output could be better. My Xerox 6120 is a little better and yet was half the price. Overall this printer is very good and filled out need well. We paid $285 after a 5% Buy.com coupon and that included free shipping. I would definitely recommend this printer to any workgroup of people who need to be able to print better than average color quality. Cost per print is very affordable which in the end is one of the major stengths we were looking for in a color laser. RATING: 3.8/5
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