Brother HL-2040 Monochrome Laser Printer

. Before buying my HL-2040 I read other people's reviews and thought I'd have a few problems to put up with for the sake of the low price of this product. Not so. After three months of use it hasn't once made the room lights flicker. Page curl I sometimes notice but it's slight if it's there at all. . And as for noise, the printer is usually in sleep mode and makes none (it goes into sleep mode for power saving about five minutes after starting up or printing, and I don't print that much, only 770 pages in 3 months). During startup and while actually printing there is a roaring sound but it's fairly low decibel white noise and not disturbing to me, even though the printer is only two feet away. . No need for toner or drum replacement yet. The "Print Settings" printout says I have 93.5% remaining life of the drum, which predicts a drum life of almost 12,000 pages. Toner consumption should be low because the default values in Printing Preferences-Advanced are set to 300dpi Resolution and Toner Save Mode ON. The results with these settings are just fine for most of what I print. . I didn't install the software from the setup cd-rom that came with the printer, so no comment on it. Because my OS is Windows XP Pro x64, I had to download a special printer driver from the Brother website, and it does its job without problems. . So, I have no complaints with the HL-2040 and plenty of praise for its low cost, print quality and printing speed.

Note - this review was for the printer when it was $88... things seem to have changed a lot! The price of toner ink has nearly doubled as well. So be wary. I had been without a printer at home for about a year now as my old (sub-par) printer did not have a USB cable and my laptop didn't have an LPT port. I originally saw this printer in the Computer Shoppers Guide and then came to Amazon for purchase. The setup for this printer was the easiest and most brilliant I've ever seen on any piece of hardware. Installation software was very well written and had an excellent visual guide for reference. The drivers have caused no problems at all. The overall quality is great for the casual black and white printing need. The speed is superior and I absolutely love the response time for hitting execute to the milliseconds it takes to wake up the printer and fire off the first page. Construction may seem a little clunky with plastic everywhere, but it works the way it needs to for the casual printer. When it prints it's fairly loud due to the scrolling bar and the material selection of the unit. But it isn't overly so and this is only a worry if you're attempting to print in the middle of the night and you might wake up your spouse (oops). All in all - it's still quieter than the old dot matrix printers of yore and for the price, speed, and error free issues i fully endorse this printer for casual use.

this printer is GREAT! if you want a no hassle "set-up and go", and keep on going, B/W printer, this is it. this is THE best printer I have owned or used. true - it is B/W printer only ~ no scanner or other "stuff" attached, but most of the "dump screen", or print for later reference i use B/W. did you know that most color printers still use the color cartridges for B/W printing!?!? why? anyway, it is quiet, always ready, very large ink cartridge(i think 1,500 pages!!), no stops, paper jams, or lights flashing telling you "yellow ink is LOW, so i will not print until it is replaced"(even though it is B/W you want to print), self setting smart adjustments so you get the best settings for what your printing ~ not 4 pages that each contain a section of what you wanted printed. even if it broke, i would buy another one from Amazon immediately! it is very inexpensive, and I have another color printer with all the bells and whistles, i got from Amazon, to do the color, faxing, scanning, copying and ink cartridge purchasing for. well, i could go on & on about mr. reliable (the Brother hl-2040), but i think you got the drift paul note: B/W in this review = monochrome printing

I bought this printer to replace my HP Laserjet Series II that I purchased new in 1988. I doubt that I will get 19 years out of this one, however, it turns out to be a very good little basic monochrome printer. Having both the Centronics and the USB port for connectivity allowed me to replace it right in where the HP used to be on my wireless printserver without changing any of my "legacy" configuration or I could move it to a USB configuration if needed. The time to print the first page can be a little long, but once this printer gets going it is reasonably quick. The first toner cartridge that came with the printer is still hanging in there pretty well with near daily use for about a month. It can be a quite tricky lining up a manual feed page to go through square and straight. If I want a letter on letterhead to come out parallel to the edges of the page, I usually open the paper tray and let it go through the conventional path. Envelopes through the manual feed are just too crumpled by the time they feed through the entire paper feed path to the output bin. I've had no problem feeding through label stock or even the half-label/half-paper shipping labels provided by my shipping company. I'm pretty happy with this - it's a considerable upgrade from the printer I'm replacing in terms of resolution and speed. However, I certainly don't have any illusions or expectations that this product is as durable as the behemoth tank that it replaced.