If you are a small business owner or employee and are thinking about going the laser route for a new printer, you will want to check out the latest edition from Brother’s HL line. A single-function LED (or laser class) printer, the 3040CN can produce output at a max of 17ppm in both color and monochrome. It is also conveniently compact, so it won’t take up a lot of room on a desk or table at 9.8" x 16.1" x 18.3" (HxWxD).
The HL-3040CN like we said can be set on a desk, but it comes with an Ethernet port in addition to the standard USB 2.0 interface so it can be shared on a network easily. With its 250 sheet paper capacity, depending on your office’s print volume, the unit should not have to be filled often. The main tray can accommodate up to legal-sized sheets of paper. For special paper tasks (e.g. letterhead), envelopes, and other paper sizes, there is a one-sheet capacity manual feed slot located on the rear of the machine. Unfortunately, the 3040CN does not offer its users the convenience of automatic two-sided printing.
The unit is compatible with the latest versions of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, so whatever you are running should be fine. The 3040CN also lacks what is becoming increasingly standard in printing-a wireless connection option. If you need wireless printing, there are other printers priced similarly (or less) which have it, like the HP Laserjet Pro CP1025nw ($165.00) and the HP Laserjet Pro CP1525nw e-Printer ($199.98). The memory in the unit is expandable up to 512MB, from the default 32MB that it ships with. It also has a recommended monthly duty cycle of 300-1,500 pages.
There are four individual toner cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that make up the 3040CN’s ink system. It should be noted that the unit comes with only starter cartridges that all yield roughly 1,000 pages each. The standard capacity ink cartridges yield either 2,200 or 1,400 pages respectively for black and the three colors. The imaging drum is rated for 15,000 pages, so it should last a while.
PC Magazine in their review, the text printing was rated well, but it fell short on graphics and photos. A laser or LED are never going to have the same image quality as an inkjet, but the 3040CN’s output was below that of what you’d expect from such a device. That said, likely the best bet for this unit would be a solid personal printer in a home office or office and could be shared amongst employees in a firm where color printing is not needed frequently.
