Pros: The price, acceptable quality for printing text, speed, compact size and substantial paper tray holder.
Cons: Quality of anything other than black text, few features, curls paper a little.
The Bottom Line: You get more than you pay for if you fit in the category of moderate to light printer that has the occasional large print job needed quickly.
mongomad1's Full Review: Brother HL-2040 Laser Printer
This was purchased for my home use by our company. What we needed was something to print things quickly with decent quality all at an affordable price. The Brother HL-2040 delivers based on our needs and criteria. We often need to meet abruptly and preparing information takes some time but the real bottleneck landed at my HP Officejet 4215 all-in-one. I am ready to walk out the door to our clandestine meeting site, but I still hear the whirring of my old printer on page two of twenty-four.
Product Specs from brothers website
Print Technology: B/W Laser
Printer Driver Compatibility: Windows, Mac OS & Linux
Max. Print Speed: 20 pages per minute
Max Monthly Duty Cycle: 10,000 pages
First Time to Print: Less than 10 seconds. This is when you have not printed for awhile and it is saving energy.
Print Resolution: HQ1200 (up to 2400x600dpi)
Standard Paper Capacity: 250-Sheet Input
Multi-purpose Tray Capacity: Single-sheet manual bypass
Standard Interfaces: Parallel, USB
Optional Interfaces: NC-2100p (external ethernet print server) & NC-2200w (external wireless print server)
Emulation: GDI
Standard Memory: 8MB Memory
LCD Display: None
CPU (Processor) Type: Fujitsu SPARClite
CPU (Processor) Speed: 96 MHz
Unit Dimensions (W"xD"xH"): 14.6"x14.2"x6.5"
Unit Weight: 14.3 lbs.
"In-Box" Consumables: 1 Starter Toner Cartridge (1,500 pages), 1 DR350 Drum Unit (12,000 pages)
Energy Star Compliant: Yes
Operating Env - Temperature: 50-90.5 degrees F
Operating Env - Humidity 20-80% (w/out condensation)
Machine Noise (Standby/Operating): 30dB/51dB
We all had the same issue and new laser action was the solution to help us kill more trees in an expedient manner. One of my business partners went out and picked us up a pair of these as the third member of our triumvirate is doing well to have a pen and paper, heaven forbid actually have paperwork for our status reports. He is a great guy and invaluable to us, but his other job is quite demanding of his time. Not for long...
Initial Set-up
While I do have a fair amount of experience with printers, including lasers, I can not see this being a problem at all to set up for anyone. My mother could do it, God love her, and that says something since she is not exactly the most tech savvy individual, to put it mildly (hours of repetitive conversations of how to attach a document to an e-mail. Now she has cheat sheets I created for her).
All you do is place the toner cartridge in it, run the software provided (CD) on the computing device of your choice, plug in the power cable, plug it into an available USB port and you are ready to clear out those pesky rainforests double time. Actually far quicker than double an inkjet of any kind.
For the Laser impaired, how it works. If you already know or don't care, skip this part, but it can help you diagnose problems
It is Elfun magic only those Keebler Elves could invent. What happens is that your document or file is sent from your PC or other device to its memory which interprets it as what needs to be printed. It translates that to the mechanism known as the primary charge roller or a corona wire, dependent on the device. I believe this one to have the former since it is new, a long metallic wheel - like a rolling pin, but metal.
This in turn sends a slightly positive charge where it needs to place characters or graphics to the printer's drum, also like the wheels of Fred Flintstone's Jeep, that is negatively charged as is the toner. The toner is more like plastic powder than ink, but does have a negative charge to it. As the paper feeds through, the drum passes over the toner, picking up pieces where it has been slightly positively charged (opposites attract, ask my wife) and places them on the paper where it passes through the oven (fuser) and it is melted to a nice black letter or whatever you sent to it.
There are steps I skipped, but my reason for telling you all this is so you can troubleshoot your device for basic issues versus buying another toner cartridge when you need another drum or buying another drum when you need the device that sends the electrical charge.
If you have a black streak or spot on each page, you probably have a drum that has lost its negative charge permanently in a specific area. You need a new drum ($80-$90). Might be best to buy a new printer at that point.
If the letters are more faded than usual and you know you have plenty of toner left, you need the device that provides the electrical charge to the drum as it has lost its power and is sending less of a charge than needed. Since I do not see them readily available online, they probably are more than the printer is worth.
Other than that, this baby will tell you when it needs more toner by an indicator light aptly named "Toner". It also has one named "Drum", but I am not sure what diagnostics it performs so that I wonder if it lights up when you have the streaking problem or a spot every so often, but uniform, indicative of a permanent loss of negative charge.
Upkeep Costs and Features of note
I have not gone through an ink toner yet, they cost between $25-$58 (shop around) so I also am not sure if it lights up when you are out, or if you have a ways to go before you do. The patented take it out and shake it method could increase the toner cartridge's life a little. I say if you make it to the end of toners 7 or 8 times with the same drum, buy a new printer versus replacing the toner again as the drum is about to go and you will spend well over the product's price on them both. Ah, what the heck, if you plan to buy the same model and it is still compatible with the cartridge, run it until she dies. You can get the use of the toner in the new one.
Its features are basic. It looks nice in black and grey, has lights to show that you are out of toner, the drum has gone bad and/or the toner is low. There is a "Go" button to press after you replace the paper so that it will resume printing and a slot to enter varying paper sizes. Its size is also a plus as it is negligibly larger than your average deskjet printers. It will curl pages a bit and I see no sense in using the most expensive paper to prevent this as it is not that bad. Using the priciest paper in it is like putting $5,000 worth of dubs on a Yugo.
Quality of Print
Not the greatest, but as good as you could expect given its price tag of around $100. It does poorly with converting color to grey scale. I noticed that it totally ignores things that are very lightly shaded. Our company's logo has a shadow effect and there was no grey underneath said logo as it appears on the document on the screen. I certainly would not use this other than for printing text and the most basic of designs.
Speed
It is as fast as they say if not faster as far as 20 pages per minute. It takes near that to get one page from my Officejet, though the quality is not comparable. A plus is that it does not smear if you touch it shortly after removing it like with an inkjet.
Is it worth it?
Yes, if you have large, text only documents you need printed quickly. It is professional enough to share with colleagues in a meeting but maybe not the best tool for customer interaction if you were planning to use it in that fashion. Also, if you plan to do an abundant amount of printing daily, a more substantial printer may serve you better and cost less in the long run.
If this review was informative, please feel free to visit my other printer review and see one to stay away from:
Compact laser printer ideal for home or small office use Fast print speeds of up to 20 ppm; first page out in under 10 seconds 2400 x 600 dpi resoluti...More at Amazon Marketplace
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