The Brother HL-2040 is an inexpensive laser printer for home or home office use. It doesn't cost much more than many inkjet printers, and per-page costs are much lower than an inkjet for monochrome printing.

The HL-2040 supports parallel port and USB connections, but you must supply the cable (around $12 to $20). The printer is lightweight and compact, so it's easy to find space for it on a crowded desktop. The 250-sheet paper tray is adequate for personal or low-volume business use, which is good, because there's no option to add another paper tray. The output area on top of the printer holds up to 100 sheets of plain paper. The single-sheet manual bypass feature lets you print envelopes or heavier paper stocks, including labels and transparencies.

Four LED lights on the top left side of the printer (Toner, Drum, Paper, Ready) keep you informed of the printer's status. A Go button, located underneath the LED lights, wakes the printer from a period of inactivity, clears the printer after an error such as a paper jam, or cancels a print job.

Text is sharp, even at small font sizes, although output quality for photos and clip art is disappointing for a laser printer. Line art tends to be a little fuzzy, and the tonal range of grays is limited. Dark grays tend toward black, and lighter grays tend to disappear into white.

The HL-2040 supports print resolutions of up to 2,400X600 dpi, and print speeds of up to 20 pages per minute. It can output the first page in as little as 10 seconds, even after a period of inactivity.

If you want to add the HL-2040 to a home network, Ethernet ($179.99) and wireless ($249.99) print servers are available as options.

The HL-2040 ships with 8MB RAM, which is not upgradeable. The package includes a starter toner cartridge (up to 1,500 pages) and a drum (up to 12,000 pages). Replacement toner cartridges (up to 2,500 pages) run about $60; replacement drums run about $115.

Pro: Inexpensive, lightweight, and compact. Fast output. Excellent text output quality. Includes parallel port and USB 2.0 interfaces.
Con: Output quality for line art and grayscale images is not as good as you would expect from a laser printer. Networking options are expensive.

Warranty
1 year limited, Express Exchange