The HL-4040CN is Brother's first foray into the color laser printer market. It is designed for small offices and can also meet the needs of home office users.

Brother chose to design its own laser color printer engine rather than license a proven design, so we were keenly interested to find out how the HL-4040CN would perform. What we found was a surprisingly fast printer; rated at 21ppm for both color and monochrome printing, the HL-4040CN proved quick off the mark. Black text was generally very crisp, although some small fonts were a bit difficult to read. Color text output was good, although again, small fonts were a little jagged and somewhat prone to color banding.

Grayscale photo printing was very good, with no banding. Color accuracy in color photos was good, but we noticed a touch of banding on large images. Overall, the HL-4040CN's text and photo quality make it a good choice for in-home use, but not quite good enough for printing material that will be distributed to clients.

The HL-4040CN has USB and Ethernet ports, so it is network ready out of the box. It has a front-mounted USB port for printing directly from PictBridge-compatible cameras and USB Flash drives.

Another feature we liked was two forms of reprints. In the first, the last print job you send to the printer is held in the printer's memory; if you decide you want more copies, just press the Reprint button. The second method lets you issue a four-digit security code for a print job; this means that no one can walk up to the printer and use the reprint function unless they know the correct security code, which is a handy feature if you work with sensitive documents.

The Brother HL-4040CN is a good printer with some unique features for its price range. Its main drawbacks are its average color output quality and the cost of replacing its four laser toner cartridges.


Pros: USB and Ethernet ports, secure printing, easy reprints, good text quality
Cons: Average color imaging with some banding, toner can be expensive

Warranty
1 year, limited on-site