Entered CNET Catalog: 03/20/2003
SKU: 0012502608080
Manufacturer: Brother International
Manufacturer description
The new HL-5040 is the replacement for both the HL-1440/1450 models, and is so quick and easy to install, you'll be up and running in minutes. Whether you're working at home or in the office, the HL-5040 has a print speed of up to 16 pages per minute and a print quality of up to 2400 x 600 dpi, so you'll get your document in seconds - and it will be pin-sharp and look totally professional.Product summary
The good: Fast print speeds; easy install; decent text-printing quality; extensive maintenance and troubleshooting help via included CD.
The bad: Merely fair graphics-printing quality; expandability options, while good, are eclipsed by the competition's; unreachable tech support.
The bottom line: Solid and reasonably priced, the Brother HL-5040 would be at home on any SOHO desk. However, competing lasers offer better add-ons for less money.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 02/10/2003
Boxy chassis. |
 Both USB and parallel ports. |
Setting up the Brother HL-5040, which is both Mac and PC compatible and has USB and parallel-port connections (no cables), is pleasantly easy. A handy quick-start pamphlet walks you through installation, and an included CD features a wealth of Flash videos that cover plugging in the printer, loading paper, and clearing paper jams, as well as a number of maintenance tips. The CD also contains an information-filled user guide and links to Brother's Web site, with news and tech-support information.
Compared with that of competing SOHO lasers, the Brother HL-5040's feature set falls slightly short of our expectations. It has a 250-sheet input tray and a single-sheet manual-bypass tray for printing on heavier paper and envelopes, and you can add a 250-sheet input tray for $200 extra. However, the identically priced Minolta PagePro 1250E offers a 500-sheet add-on tray for less money, a face-up output tray, and an attachment for copying and scanning, as well as more print languages (the Brother has only PCL 6 emulation). The HL-5040 is networkable via a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet print server ($180).
 Manual-feed paper tray. |
 Uncomplicated controls. |
If you already know you'll need an office laser with more features, you may want to check out the two higher-end models in this line. The HL-5050 comes with 16MB of memory (to the HL-5040's 8MB), greater paper capacity, and PostScript 3 emulation, while the HL-5070N offers all this, along with built-in networking. Prices are $349 and $499, respectively.
The Brother HL-5040's print drivers' main screen is organized into three basic tabs: Basic, Advanced, and Support. Basic lets you set parameters such as paper size and source, Advanced contains a jumble of tabs for everything from adjusting print quality to manual duplexing to setting the sleep time, and Support links to Brother's Web site, as well as to test pages for printer settings and fonts. The drivers are a little cluttered and clumsy, but they're easy enough to navigate and understand.
Should your printer experience a printing error, such as a paper jam or low toner levels, you can use the drivers to cue up an animated Flash tutorial called the Interactive Help window and fix those problems.
The HL-5040 did quite well on our speed tests. Its 12.5 pages per minute (ppm) on graphics matched the performance of the $1,000, large-business-oriented Xerox Phaser 4400N, and with 13.9ppm on text, it was faster than any other laser printers in the $300 price range.
Print quality was uneven overall, though perfectly adequate for the average office's printing needs. While text printed out crisp and clear (as with most laser printers), it looked a little light and spidery--especially as the font sizes got smaller--so it won a good rather than an excellent rating from our jury. The HL-5040's graphics looked a bit disappointing, too. Though the printer created accurate and detailed line drawings, and the photo elements of our test document showed fairly good contrast, the Brother HL-5040 had considerable trouble with the shading and gradient elements of our document. The dark ends showed no difference between 90 and 100 percent saturation, the light ends showed no difference between 5 percent shading and pure white, and there was marked vertical banding throughout the gradient element.
The HL-5040's ink consumption is in line with that of other laser printers. According to Brother's claims, a $66 toner cartridge will yield 3,300 pages (which works out to about 2 cents per page), and a $90 high-yield cartridge will print 6,500 pages (which works out to a low 1.3 cents per page).
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Laser printer quality
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The Brother HL-5040 comes with a one-year warranty, the industry standard for laser printers. The coverage can be extended one year for $60 or two years for $70. Phone tech support is available seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET.
Brother's Web site hosts drivers, manuals, troubleshooting FAQs, a customer education center that offers in-depth information about networking and managing your printer, and links to purchase consumables and add-ons. If you click the Contact Us tab of the support center, the site asks more specific questions about your reason for contacting Brother. Based on your answer, Brother's resources will point you to FAQs or recall notices, or it supplies an e-mail form, as well as a phone or fax-back tech-support number.
Unfortunately, the first time we called Brother's tech support with a simple test problem, we were informed by a recording that they were experiencing a high volume of calls and were unable to answer us just then (apparently, Monday is a particularly busy day). However, when we tried back on a Wednesday, we received the same message about the high call volume and the evils of Mondays. We were then similarly cut off without even being placed on hold. Don't plan on turning to Brother for real-time phone support.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 User Rating: 
10/10
Almost 7 Year and No Problems
Pros: Incredible stamina for a printer. Durable, dependable. Toner lasts FOREVER.
Cons: Size is a bit on the bulky side, no wireless.
User Rating: 
8/10
Hot Damn: No-Jam Bulletproof Workhorse for Cheap
Pros: Never jams, Cheap and trustworthy, easy envelopes, Mac Friendly
Cons: Halftones get a little blocked up .
User Rating: 
2/10
Do NOT buy this printer!!!!!
Pros: It can print on plain paper out of its paper tray only.
Cons: This printer is more than totally useless for printing anything other than paper out of its tray. If you want to print anything manually such as envelopes or labels completely forget it.
User Rating: 
1/10
Don't get it!
Pros: cheap
Cons: Paper jams frequently enough for me to get rid of it- worst of any printer I have owned.
User Rating: 1/10
Better hope the red light doesn't go on.
Pros:
Cons: We bought this for our small office 6 months ago, and have had nothing but headaches. After 4 replacements from the company it is still not working correctly. I'd look elsewhere for a printer.
User Rating: 2/10
manual printing sucks
Pros: good text print quality
Cons: Repeatedly have problems manually printing envelopes. Prints okay for a few envelopes then the out of paper lights up and it stops printing. The only way to continue printing is to cancel all print jobs and start all over. Ditto for long text print jobs s
User Rating: 
5/10
Good local printer, but don't try to use in Citrix environment
Pros: Good speed, quality for local printing.
Cons: Brother driver does not play well with Citrix Metaframe XP. First page can take up to 15-20 seconds to print.
User Rating: 2/10
Returned after 1 day of use.
Pros: Good text quality. Fast. Initially thought this would be a good choice b/c it was rated highly in PC magazine and PC world as one of the ten best printers. I choose it over the 1440 due to multiple user complaints of poor print quality after limited u
Cons: Large. Loud. Had to return after day one due to low toner light remaining on and failure to print. I reached support after being on hold for only 5-10 min. There impression was that I had a defective toner or drum cartridge. They offered to send me
User Rating: 8/10
Very Nice For The Price
Pros: Clean print and graphics for me. No problems with envelopes. Easy Set-up for Macintosh. Very economical to use. Fast printing on most documents.
Cons: Slower printing on PDF documents with graphics. Sometimes prints documents crooked when feeding paper manually from front.
User Rating: 8/10
Great Value for $250!
Pros:
Cons:
User Rating: 
9/10
Not bad for AU$420
Pros:
Cons:
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HL-5040 Monochrome Laser Printer. specifications
- General
- Printer Type Workgroup printer - Laser - Monochrome
- Width 15.0 in
- Depth 15.1 in
- Height 9.9 in
- Weight 23.1 lbs
- Printer
- Connectivity Technology Wired
- Interface USB , Parallel
- Max Resolution ( B&W ) 2400.0 dpi x 600.0 dpi
- Image Enhancement Technology Brother HQ1200
- Language Simulation PCL 6
- Fonts Included 12.0 x Barcode , 11.0 x Scalable , 49.0 x Bitmapped
- Processor
- Processor Fujitsu SPARClite 133.0 MHz
- RAM
- RAM Installed ( Max ) 8.0 MB / 136.0 MB (max)
- Technology SDRAM
- Media Handling
- Media Type Envelopes , Transparencies , Bond paper , Labels , Plain paper
- Max Media Size (Custom) 8.5 x 14.0
- Media Sizes Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in) , B6 (4.92 in x 6.93 in) , A6 (4.13 in x 5.83 in) , B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in) , A5 (5.83 in x 8.25 in) , Legal (8.5 in x 14 in) , A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in) , Executive (7.25 in x 10.5 in)
- Envelope Sizes International B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in) , International DL (4.33 in x 8.66 in) , International C5 (6.38 in x 9 in) , Com-10 (4.13 in x 9.5 in)
- Total Media Capacity 250.0 sheets
- Media Feeder(s) 1.0 x Autoload - 1.0 sheets , 1.0 x Manual load - 250.0 sheets
- Telecom
- Modem None
- Networking
- Networking None
- Scanner
- Type None
- Copier
- Copier Type None
- Expansion / Connectivity
- Expansion Bays Total (Free) None
- Expansion Slots Total (Free) 1.0 ( 1.0 ) x Memory - DIMM 100-pin
- Connections 1.0 x Parallel - IEEE 1284 (EPP/ECP) - 36 pin Centronics , 1.0 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin USB Type B
- Compatible Slots None
- Miscellaneous
- Pricing Type Refurbished
- Power
- Power Device Power supply - Internal
- Power Consumption Operational 460.0 Watt
- Power Consumption Stand by / Sleep 75.0 Watt
- Battery
- Type None
- Software / System Requirements
- OS Required Apple MacOS X 10.2.1 , Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/XP , Microsoft Windows 2000 / NT4.0 , Apple MacOS X 10.1 , Apple MacOS 8.6 - 9.2
- Environmental Parameters
- Sound Emission (Idle) 30 dB
- Sound Emission (Operating) 50 dB
