Brother HL-2040

Awesome printer. Had this one for ages and it never breaks down! – Awesome product! Would recommend! Awesome printer. Had this one for ages and it never breaks down! This product is cheap and the toner although is around $150 it actually lasts you for ages !! Mine lasted me for about a year and a bit so overall good product from Brothers  Show details

my first laser printer, noisy fan – Bought 2 as with the old Windows XP allowed me hot swapping. Good redundancy for business. Not as black as the inkjets we had but consistent speed. Good for large volume. Pity for its noisy fan else I would have given it even a better rating. Ran perfect with an el cheapo 3rd party refill. Sadly a huge cockroach wrote the newer one off, the old one still clonks along and after 10 years perhaps makes history in longevity.

Manual Duplex + Collating Off: faster than an automatic duplex printer! – Affirm all that Mark D says. This Brother has been basically very reliable. One thing: you *can* print double-sided! The driver will help you to flip the pages correctly. Although I have a more recent printer with automatic duplex (page turning), I can actually get my double-sided print jobs done faster using the Manual Duplex option of… Read more

the HL-2040's driver. The option's on the second (Advanced) tab of the print dialogue (at least in Windows), and then you select the second icon (you can hit the '2' key).

If you're printing multiple copies, you don't want to turn over and print each page one-by-one. You want to print all of one side, then turn over the stack, and print all of the other. For that reason, turn Collating off by clearing its checkbox if necessary (it's on the main (first) tab, next to Copies, and can be set if your copies exceed 1). That's the point: you turn once, whereas an automatic duplex machine must turn each time (which means the automatic printer will be slower).

If you've got more than two pages (two or more sheets), the driver prints the correct number of each even numbered page, before giving the instruction to flip over for the odd ones.

The page grabbing is quite reliable, although a few years ago I had to follow some simple cleaning maintenance of the rollers (advice from Brother - with photos! - on the web) to keep things happy. Also, it's true that paper curls a bit straight after printing, but the mechanics work fine for that second page, and the pages settle nicely after a while. I have found recently that a batch of 50 had missing pages - about 15-20 is usually quite reliable.

Comments on graphics are probably fair - not its major strength. However, on the few occasions when I needed to do something special there, I found that I could play successfully with "System Half Tone" settings - particularly the Gamma value. Go to this on that second (Advanced) tab of the print driver, but the *first* icon. Print Setting > Manual > Settings.

Owned it for years, no problems – Thought I had to write a review as this HL-2040 I've had since 2006 impresses me with how it still works without a fuss. I'm not a big user, home use to occasionally print out a voucher or ticket etc. I even left it in storage for four years in not very nice conditions and couldn't believe it worked straight away - with the old toner still in… Read more

it!

I've seen nowadays you can buy a BW laser for next to nix but overall the performance of mine is not making me want to upgrade and I don't see the point in disposable printers! I will upgrade soon though as I want a scanner included and duplex to save paper. Needless to say I will be looking for a Brother above other brands based on my experience with this one. Simple and good quality For what I paid and the era it came out, I've no problems

Excellent – I am a printer technician, i have no affiliation with Brother or any other brand except that my employer sells them, we sell several brands but i dont like all of them in fact some are an embarassment to me and the company to the extent that when i hear that a particular brand has been brought in i cringe. I look at the big picture when it comes… Read more

to printers, ill tell you straight up now i hate ink printers, brother or otherwise. Im a laser and LED printer man, i consider price, parts availability, part price, page count, drum/toner cartridge v's seperate drum and toner, ease of install, website support, tech support, image quality etc. Im not saying nothing go's wrong with the brothers, but when they do play up parts are a beeze and the price is worthwhile and Brother are a joy to work with. Im lucky in a way there are other brands otherwise i wouldnt have a job,lol. Fast reliable laser printer, obtainable parts and tech support, incredibly easy website for driver downloads etc, small foot print i.e desk space, seperate drum and toner components, long drum life, economical printing @5% coverage. Nothing really, when my Hp lj3380 die's i will buy a brother.

Good – We bought this printer just as a cheap one to print out and black and white pages we need, and we've been very impressed. It's fast, not too noisy and although it's a little on the bulky side, it's smaller than some of the other printers on the market. This printer is good value for money and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a new… Read more

printer This is a good, efficient printer for a good price. It's quick and prints with as good quality as can be expected. It's a little on the bulky side.

Excellent – A great black and white laser printer. Easy to use and setup. Excellent for text and basic printing. The toner lasted me for ages. The replacement toners are quite economical too. Highly recommended economical, no fuss, fast bit heavy and noisy, not good for photos (probably not many use black and white for photos anyway)

Good – This printer is great and really easy to use and I highly recommend it to all you mac users out there. It is a good, cheap, reliable printer. This printer is very economical, the ink lasts me for several months. This printer by brother is really easy to set up and use, I have had no problems with this printer, since we got it, which was several… Read more

months ago. It is great that this printer is compatible with mac, as we have had problems with other printers, that say that they are mac-compatible in the past. This printer is too bulky and needs a bigger paper tray, because the one it has is quite inconvenient.

Good – I purchased my Brother laser printer a couple of years ago and it has been running very reliably ever since. Setting it up on my Mac was easy; just plug it in and you're ready to go. The print quality is great for text but fairly average when it comes to printing graphics. I am still using the toner cartridge that came with the machine so it… Read more

has been quite economical and far better than my previous inkjet printers. This model has since been superceded so I'm not sure if I can still buy replacement accessories for it, however, during its lifetime, it has performed well so I would happily considered buying another Brother printer. Cheap, fast, easy to setup, economical Will sometimes curl the paper, a bit noisy

Good – The best aspect of brother is that it has a compatible discount ink. It is very easy to replace the catridges too. It always gives a good warning when ink levels are low. A nice set up. The printing works well, as does the scanning. I havee't had any problems with Brother.

Excellent – Nice, compact Black & White laser printer. Prints nice and fast, although I would recommend having a colour printer as well, so you can print some things in colour like school assignments and such. We got ours fairly cheap ($99)? A cheap good value for money printer. Fast, reliable, had ours for nearly a year now and still haven't had to replace… Read more

the toner cartridge or the drum. Excellent quality on Reflex paper. No built in network print server, so I have to have have my computer on if other people in my house want to print something to it.

Excellent – exelent printer we print about 3000 pages per month the first printer wanted a new drum so we bought a second while we looked for a new drum but they were to expensive now the second machine is showing drum were because I told it it had a new drum when it wanted one even though I did not put a new drum in. great machine in all ways It is hard to find a third machine without going to a later model.

Bad – Many customers who do very little printing may never use more than one or two toners over several years, so will never have to face the high cost of a new drum, and will probally buy new printer because technology has moved on, or they are simply sick of looking at it. High end users such has accountants clerks, small business users etc. Who may… Read more

be doing short print runs of 2 or 3 pages quickly find out what the true cost per page is particularly as these drums rarely last the claimed life. One school worked it out that it was costing them 37 cents a page, because the drum quality had deteriated badly after using only one third of the claimed drum life. Apparently the customer is not being told that the claimed drum life of 15 or 20,000 is only attainable if they are during large print runs of a 100 pages or more, until they go looking for a warrenty replacement. Cheep to buy. Possibly one of the lest troublesome of the low cost printer in this brand. Cheep, whats the catch? Popular magazine reviewers, and vendors are usually guilty of promoting the low running costs, because the toners appeat cheaper than equivelant "Canon" or Hewlett Packard " toners. The trick is to get the initial purchase using a low unit cost generated by fierce competition from the other mamufacturers, and quote lower costs on replacement on toners, without including the eventual cost of the other part of the consumable is the drum unit, which a another reviewer highlighted, invariably costs more than the printer, prompting many customer to dump another otherwise working printer and go and buy anther one.

Good – if you are concern about the value of money, then you can pick this printer without any problem. it is a reliable and durable printer; however, the image (at gray scale) is not so good. Also, you can not expect more than 12-16 page per minute even the factory configuration tell us the speed should be 20 ppm. Overall, it is Ok and good for most… Read more

users. good balance between the quality and the price. A little bit slower than the factory configuration. 20 ppm is not what you should expect from this machine.

Good – This brother PC offers good value for money printing. It comes standard with a 1500 page toner on purchase though replacements can be found for 3000 pages. It prints high quality text - the same as if done at a Kwik Kopy store, and he picture reproduction is above average. It is reasonably quiet when printing, however on intial pweor up it can be… Read more

a little noisy while it goes through its self testing procedure. Well worth the purchase price. Inexpensive mono- laser printer. Generally quiet during printing of documents. Professional quality results at a bargain basement price. It has a small footprint so can be placed most anywhere. Only prints in black and white.

Excellent – If you are tired of forever replacing cartridges in your colour printer, this is the way to go. It's our default printer for most jobs. We use our other printer for colour jobs. Computer Choice (September/October 2007) gave it a good report and rated it as Best Buy. Cheap, fast and good quality. We've had ours for about 18 months and we have… Read more

not had to replace toner yet. It does not like cheap paper. It started to jam when we bought the cheaper Coles brand paper. Went back to Reflex and no more problems.