Brother HL-3040CN Toner Cartridges

Brother HL-3040CN Printer Review

The Brother HL-3040CN color laser printer is designed for the home or small office environment. It features fast speeds, even in color, and has built-in ethernet networking, but its toner costs are higher than competing models. The Brother HL-3040CN color laser printer is also referred to as the HL-3040, which denotes its color printer capabilities and built-in networking. It actually uses an LED for focusing the toner instead of a laser, but it still falls into the category of a laser printer.

Paper capacity is good for its price, at 250 sheets, and it also has a single-sheet multipurpose slot for alternate media types and sizes. Some small offices, and even busy home users, might find its capacity a bit small, but it should work well for most. The built-in ethernet port makes it very easy to connect and share across a network of computers. The unit also supports a number of secure printing protocols to help keep sensitive documents safe.

Brother HL-3040CN toner cartridges are more expensive than many competing models. The single black printer toner cartridge has a capacity of 2,200 pages, and each color laser toner cartridge has a capacity of 1,400 pages. The small capacities of each cartridge give it a somewhat high cost per page when compared to competing units.

Print speed is impressive for the price, at up to 17 pages per minute in both color and monochrome. The color printing speed is especially impressive, and is possible due to the single-pass printing mechanism, which prints from all three cartridges at once, rather than a single pass for each color, as is common with many other budget models. Print quality is generally very good. Text quality is sharp, but color quality can be a little fuzzy, and graphics are merely average.

Overall, the Brother HL-3040CN makes a great choice for a home or small office printer, but, much like its sisters unit and its Brother HL-4040 toner, users will want to look closely at toner costs to see if its cost of ownership is too high for their needs.