Brother 4040CN Reviewed

Brother’s colour laser printer 4040CN released a few months back and we had duly introduced its features and other necessities on Cartridge Save a few months back. The available features, usability options and the price were totally acceptable to us then. This time round, we decided to put it to grind.

The 4040CN is boxy and on the heavier side with 64 pounds of dead weight. Boxy, bulky and heavy works for offices. But, why do offices need PictBridge and USB ports on its printers? The main criteria for offices would be to channelise printing through authorised workstations. The presence of these input ports seems ambiguous to us.

4040CN can hold 250 pages of paper at best. Offices need much more than this. Refilling paper every hour or two doesn’t make much sense. The absence of a second tray and the ability to hold more paper rules this one out for bigger firms. For smaller offices, the present capability might be optimum.

Excellent sharp black prints. Average colour prints. This is grand for offices as the major use revolves around printing in black. A better colour output would have been desired but no qualms. But here’s a notable problem: the speed of prints for black. It prints around 15ppm for both black and colour. The print speed for colour is perfectly OK, but while its competitors are spitting out 30-40ppm, this Brother office printer might lose out of the race.

Priced moderately at £200, there should be no complaints on the pricing. Even toner cartridges are on the cheaper range with each black print costing a penny and colour at around 5 pennies. But, the lack of speed along with notable omission of duplex printing will make it tough for the sales team to push this to offices. But, an exceptional printing quality and a few other sans-PC features makes it appealing for smaller offices.