jstergis's Full Review: Star Micronics DP8340 Matrix Label Printer
My beloved Konica Minolta PagePro 1350W would need a new drum soon, something I didn’t want to spend 120$ on. I was looking out for an equivalent printer, but because of a few nasty quirks (most notably poor graphics quality and the toner reset chip) with the Konica, I wanted a different one. I knew someone who has a Brother DCP-7020 and I liked it. When I saw the Brother HL-2040 on sale at staples for 60$ after a 20$ Easy Rebate I had to snatch it up, as it was basically the same as my friend’s Brother, only with less memory and no copy feature.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
When I unpacked the printer, I was somewhat surprised. It was a lot smaller than I had expected, measuring only about 6” High by about 14” wide and deep. The base size was about the same as the Konica, but it was about half the height. It is rather light and easy to move as well. The drum and toner were already put together in another bag. All I really had to do is remove the tape, install the cartridges, and install it on the computer. All of those tasks were easy enough for the absolute novice. I loaded up the paper tray and fired it up. So far so good. I first printed a basic test page, which came out very nicely.
SUPPLY PRICE
Toner runs just under 50$ at Newegg.com (TN-350). The starter runs about 1500 pages, but my friend got 2000 out of the same cartridge before noticing any print quality issues on his DCP-7020. I am assuming I’ll get about that on this printer, and I figure I’ll be able to get about 500 extra out of the replacement, which yields 2500 pages. The drum only lasts 12000 pages, which I shouldn’t have to worry about for a few years, because I don’t print all that much, but it’s still a sad decline from my 20,000 page Konica drum. The Brother DR-350 drum unit runs about 80$ on Newegg.
PAPER HANDLING
I really like the paper drawer, Brother, using 21 lb. Paper, rates it for 250 sheets. I use 20 lb. Paper and can fit roughly 300 pages in it. People say in their reviews that the tray can’t hold legal size paper, IT CAN! You can flip down the back of the tray, and it hangs out the back, but it does fit. There is also a 1 sheet manual feed that can help accommodate card stock and other things that may not feed through the tray all that easily. The guides are a joke though; they’re useless because they’re far too loose. The paper feeds through an S path to the top tray, which holds about 100 sheets. It has a flip out piece to hold the paper a bit better as well. People complain about curling. To complain about that makes me think they’re incredibly nitpicky. It curls them a touch, but no more than any other personal laser printer I’ve seen. Mine may just be a bit better than most in that aspect, but I don’t have an issue with curling unless I have to duplex, in which case I just curl them back the other way, problem solved.
DRIVER/PANEL STATUS
The driver is very intuitive, or so I think. It allows for manual duplexing (which is easy) DPI settings of 300X300, 600X600, or 600X2400, tons of paper settings, watermarks, everything you would need. My favorite feature is a status sheet you can print through the driver. It gives you the drum life, how many pages you’ve run from the manual feed and the tray, how many jams it has had in all three locations, and much more. It’s very useful.
The panel isn’t too difficult to work with. There’s four LED Lights: toner, drum, paper, and ready, along with a ‘Go’ button which is relatively useful despite it’s vague title. Here's what it can do:
-Cancel the current job, hold it for three seconds, or until all lights come on
-Warm up the printer, just hit it
-Resume printing after clearing some jams or loading paper, tap it once
-Send a job to the paper tray that you told to go to the manual feed, just tap it
-Reset the drum counter, open the toner access door, and hold it for three seconds, then close it. I believe this only works when it gives you drum replace errors
-Print a test page, hold go while you turn the printer on, then tap it once
-Print a page count sheet, tap go three times when it is not sleeping
QUALITY/SPEED
The speed of this printer is rated at 20 ppm. It actually goes FASTER, I’ve clocked it at 21 ppm every single time I’ve printed something long enough to tell. In all resolutions it’s the same, although it tends to pause to get data in HQ1200 mode between pages, slowing it down.
The text quality is excellent in all modes, even with toner save on. Graphics, however, tend to suffer from crosshatching and poor dithering in lower resolutions. It really can’t print shades of gray (for instance, in moving water) in lower resolutions, but in HQ1200 it’s not so bad, and sure beats my Konica on most photos.
UPDATE: Check out this, I did a few quick clips of the printer in action, you can see how fast it actually prints here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVk-ZVRBibk
ANOTHER UPDATE:
I printed and scanned several images on the Brother in HQ1200 mode. I scanned it with an HP Scanjet 4200C. Images is here: http://wild-peru.110mb.com/Brother/brother.html
It looks very much better on the print, so I almost hate to put that up, but it should get the point across that it does pretty good graphics
So far, I am thrilled with this printer, I share it on my home network with printer sharing as that machine is on all the time anyway. Don't hesitate if you want a good, low cost laser!
UPDATE 4/16/2007
My toner low light came on at 1550 pages, but the prints still looked perfect, so I covered the holes on the side of the drum with electrical tape (the printer shines a light through, if the light goes through there's no toner left, but if it doesn't it acts like there's a full cartridge)
I'm now up to 1850 pages and the prints still look good as new, no fading out whatsoever. There's no reason not to trick the printer and get an extra several hundred pages out of the cartridge. It's a waste not to! http://wild-peru.110mb.com/brtape.jpg is a photo of where the tape should go on each side of the cartridge.
Also, when I need toner I'll get it from Newegg because for one it's about 20$ cheaper than the local staples and for two there's free shipping on it, so it beats going 15 miles out to Staples.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 60.00 Operating System: Windows
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